The foundations of temples and palace-buildings can be traced, and both enclosures are abundantly strewn with blocks of marble and fragments of lions, dragons, and other sculptures, testifying to the former existence of a flourishing city, but exhibiting now scarcely one stone upon another.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

His parents were poor, though they were probably connected with the Lancashire branch of the old family of Le Despensers, "an house of ancient fame," from which the Northampton Spencers were also descended.
— from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I by Edmund Spenser

And again how conciliatory, how full of love does all the world show itself towards us so soon as we do as all the world docs, and "let ourselves go" like all the world.
— from The Genealogy of Morals The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

He spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings expressed in his speech, with an eye so full of lofty design and heroism, that can you wonder that these men were moved.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Nothing is more laughable than the fact that this man has received so much posthumous praise for strictly consequential reasoning; his pedantic style full of loud declamation about trifling matters being actually mistaken for such.
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer

Up, and all the morning at the office, and then to dinner, and after dinner to the office to dictate some letters, and then with my wife to Sir W. Turner’s to visit The., but she being abroad we back again home, and then I to the office, finished my letters, and then to walk an hour in the garden talking with my wife, whose growth in musique do begin to please me mightily, and by and by home and there find our Luce drunk, and when her mistress told her of it would be gone, and so put up some of her things and did go away of her accord, nobody pressing her to it, and the truth is, though she be the dirtiest, homeliest servant that ever I kept, yet I was sorry to have her go, partly through my love to my servants, and partly because she was a very drudging, working wench, only she would be drunk.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

‘And of them Dodson and Foggs, as does these sort o’ things on spec,’ continued Mr. Weller, ‘as vell as for the other kind and gen’rous people o’ the same purfession, as sets people by the ears, free gratis for nothin’, and sets their clerks to work to find out little disputes among their neighbours and acquaintances as vants settlin’ by means of lawsuits—all I can say o’ them is, that I vish they had the reward I’d give ‘em.’
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

She is fond of love ditties, and it is good to call on her in love affairs.
— from The Younger Edda; Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson

He spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings expressed in his speech, with an eye so full of lofty design and heroism, that can you wonder that these men were moved?
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The contrast was striking—in short, by the joint effect of contrast and resemblance, my love for one lady decreased as fast as it increased for the other; and I had just wit and judgment enough to escape from snares that could not have held me long, to chains that have power to hold me for ever.”
— from Tales and Novels — Volume 07 Patronage [part 1] by Maria Edgeworth

In early autumn the stems terminate in large buds which, falling off, lie dormant all winter at the bottom of the pond.
— from Wild Flowers An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors by Neltje Blanchan

I have seen Rhingia rostrata acting in this manner with the flowers of Lychnis dioica, Ajuga reptans, and Vici sepium.
— from The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom by Charles Darwin

Each [443] improvement in the microscope, while it has widened our knowledge of those minute forms of life described above, has revealed further evidence of the fact that all the larger forms of life consist of units severally allied in their fundamental traits to these minute forms
— from Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3 Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions. by Herbert Spencer

In his great, lonely bedroom, full of tall mahogany furniture, Owen lay down; and he asked himself how it was that he had left America without seeing her.
— from Sister Teresa by George Moore

There were a water bag full of large diamonds, and over three hundredweight of cups, vases, and images of gods made from the purest gold.
— from The Empire Makers: A Romance of Adventure and War in South Africa by Hume Nesbit

He voted in favour of Lord Stafford, the victim of the Whigs; he did his utmost to save Lord Russell, the victim of the Tories; and, on the whole, we are inclined to think that his public life, though far indeed from faultless, has as few great stains as that of any politician who took an active part in affairs during the troubled and disastrous period of ten years which elapsed between the fall of Lord Danby and the Revolution.
— from Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 4 With a Memoir and Index by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron