I have fallen like a poor stray shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have scattered your means to the winds.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

So that all our mechanical laws would be not eternal, but evolved, and would have survived innumerable different mechanical laws, or that they had attained supremacy in isolated corners of the world and not in others?—It would seem that we need caprice, actual lawlessness, and only a capacity for law, a primeval state of stupidity which is not even able to concern itself with mechanics?
— from The Twilight of the Idols; or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer. The Antichrist Complete Works, Volume Sixteen by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

It was essentially a local and limited traffic, rather inland than maritime, for long and perilous sea voyages only commenced towards the end of the fifteenth century, or about the time when Columbus discovered America."
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

[49] en muchos puntos flaquease la «Amalia», porque su estilo no es rigurosamente académico, ni el plan del drama está trazado con precisión; no obstante, lo que allí aparece rebelde a la exigencia artística, es muchas veces lo que mejor expresa un carácter o acaba de acentuar un acontecimiento.
— from Heath's Modern Language Series: The Spanish American Reader by Ernesto Nelson

Probably the most accurate version was that at first all the available police formed a cordon round the crowd, and a messenger was sent for Lembke, a police superintendent, who dashed off in the carriage belonging to the head of the police on the way to Skvoreshniki, knowing that Lembke had gone there in his carriage half an hour before.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I have seen another player of many years’ standing first lead a plain suit and then call; his partner echoed it, and they lost four by cards, and I have been told that some time after a table had broken up, and three of the party had left the house, one of the club servants, entering the card-room, found the fourth still sitting at the table, and continuing to signal.
— from Whist; or, Bumblepuppy? Thirteen Lectures Addressed to Children by John Petch Hewby

'She was so tired, poor little mamma, she only woke in time to dress for luncheon, and papa said he was very glad.'
— from Nurse Heatherdale's Story by Mrs. Molesworth

Nearly everybody else was there: the Agent, bearing his ill fortune like a philosopher; some officers from the Post, and the doctor; some enlisted men, blue-legged with yellow stripes; civilians male and female, honorable and shady; and then the Indians.
— from Members of the Family by Owen Wister

Page 135 [135] V. Good and Faithful Servants FATHER O'FLYNN Of priests we can offer a charming variety, Far renowned for larning and piety; Still, I'd advance you, widout impropriety, Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.
— from A Celtic Psaltery Being Mainly Renderings in English Verse from Irish & Welsh Poetry by Alfred Perceval Graves

For the first time in history an elaborate written constitution was applied to a federation; and the details were so skilfully arranged that the instrument framed for thirteen little agricultural communities works well for forty-four large and populous States.
— from Formation of the Union, 1750-1829 by Albert Bushnell Hart