They offered to the tired thinker, the starved and weary labourer, the broken nun, the harassed townspeople, an attraction which the Church herself dared not openly afford; and many who had wandered away from the hard-and-fast, strict-and-narrow fold of Rome, found a refuge in Mysticism, who might else have thrown aside all claim to faith.
— from The End of the Middle Ages: Essays and Questions in History by A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

The spirit of daring adventure which spurred his forefathers to feats of reckless foray and ruthless feud has, in a milder age, developed into the performance of deeds of valour for the benefit of suffering humanity.
— from The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 4 by Frederick Whymper

But yet beyond the dim though sordid figure of Rose Fawcett, another rises.
— from Instigations Together with An Essay on the Chinese Written Character by Ezra Pound

Things went along uneventfully until the fourth, Tom now and then showing a flash of real form and receiving eager applause from his school-mates on such occasions.
— from Pitcher Pollock by Christy Mathewson

The sea vanishes magically and before his entranced vision he sees The One Town, full of regular fellows and real people.
— from Europe Revised by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb

Exporidium usually recurved, cut to about the middle into six to ten lobes; if collected and dried when first open, rather firm and rigid; when exposed to weather becoming like parchment paper by the peeling off of the inner and outer layers.
— from The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise Its Habitat and its Time of Growth by Miron Elisha Hard

But, whether by force of recoil from a revival of the fires of Smithfield or from a perception that mere cruelty did not avail to destroy heresy, the theological ultima ratio was never again resorted to on English ground.
— from A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes by J. M. (John Mackinnon) Robertson

Mark Inglefield, on the contrary, was fond of rich food and rich wines, and he indulged in them; his tastes (in which may be included his vices) were the very reverse of Mr. Manners's, and if he chafed under the restraint in which he was held he was careful not to betray himself to his patron.
— from Toilers of Babylon: A Novel by B. L. (Benjamin Leopold) Farjeon

The first proselytes are anxious to define those distinctive features which mark it off from other religions: for all religions have certain elements in common.
— from Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition by Arthur Stanley Turberville

Where we had looked to see the endless interlacings of greenery, and swelling clusters dropping fatness on a carpet of turf, we find only reddish fallows, and rows of dead gooseberry bushes.
— from When Love Calls by Stanley John Weyman