The two princes whose titles were allowed have torn Poland limb from limb; it is now absorbed in Russia and Prussia.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Like his fabled Arthur Gordon Pym, I expected any moment to see that "shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men," thrown across the cataract that protects the outskirts of the pole!
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

If I be a diviner and full of the divining spirit which wandereth on high mountain-ridges, ‘twixt two seas,— Wandereth ‘twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud—hostile to sultry plains, and to all that is weary and can neither die nor live: Ready for lightning in its dark bosom, and for the redeeming flash of light, charged with lightnings which say Yea! which laugh Yea!
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Among his brother soldiers, and fresh from the Oxford worship of old classical models, the religious feeling that accompanies all true refinement, and that was indeed part of the English nature in him as in Addison, prompted Steele to write this book, in which he opposed to the fashionable classicism of his day a sound reflection that the heroism of Cato or Brutus had far less in it of true strength, and far less adaptation to the needs of life, than the unfashionable Christian Heroism set forth by the Sermon on the Mount.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

August the twenty-eighth—the day we saw five live iguanodons in a glade of Maple White Land.
— from The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

The pleasure which we experience from light is in fact only the pleasure which arises from the objective possibility of the purest and fullest perceptive knowledge, and as such it may be traced to the fact that pure knowledge, freed and delivered from all will, is in the highest degree pleasant, and of itself constitutes a large part of æsthetic enjoyment.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

But Sir Tristram answered her, “Fair lady, it is not my place to take part in this quarrel while her lord and husband is here to do it.
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

Strategies for locating interesting information.
— from The Online World by Odd De Presno

A Note on the Text The Age of Innocence first appeared in four large installments in The Pictorial Review, from July to October 1920.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The cloth she had been holding dropped from her hands—her lips fell apart—all the little colour that there was naturally in her face left it in an instant.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

If we are his, then indeed he is fearful: fearful to the mere consciousness of nature; a consciousness which no arguments can overcome; fearful if it be merely the parting from life, if it be merely the resigning that wonderful thing which we call our being.
— from The Christian Life: Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps by Thomas Arnold

2 A, is a bird's eye view of a vessel at anchor; B, her cable; EE, two Torpedoes; CD, is their coupling line, about 120 feet long; it is here represented touching the cable collapsing, and the Torpedoes driving by the tide under the vessel.
— from Torpedo War, and Submarine Explosions by Robert Fulton

But—if you really find Frontier life intolerable, I can only give you free leave to go home, directly I scrape together the money for your passage."
— from Captain Desmond, V.C. by Maud Diver

If I did not find life in what professed to be literature, I disabled its profession, and possibly from this habit, now inveterate with me, I am never quite sure of life unless I find literature in it.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg William Dean Howells Literature Essays by William Dean Howells

Indeed foresight, like insight, is common to all men: a superior degree of this common possession constitutes the prophet.
— from Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity by Robert Patterson

With nothing to rest your trap on except your knee and with fingers like icicles it will require all the strength in your left hand to mash together the spring of a good No. 1 1/2, while with the right you adjust the pan and latch.
— from Steel Traps Describes the Various Makes and Tells How to Use Them, Also Chapters on Care of Pelts, Etc. by A. R. (Arthur Robert) Harding

Now have the fires lowered; it is not worth while to waste our coal uselessly.”
— from The Blockade Runners by Jules Verne