It is certainly too puerile a specimen of work to find place here.
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

And with these words, without waiting for permission, he turned to walk out of the court.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I was formed for peaceful happiness.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

An inexplicable faint-hearted fear possessed his soul.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The remainder of the first period has filled two volumes in quarto, being the third, fourth, fifth, and
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

The obedient nature will readily yield to such exhortations, but the disobedient, who heeds not the prelude, shall have the law ready for him: If any man smite another who is older than himself, either by twenty or by more years, in the first place, he who is at hand, not being younger than the combatants, nor their equal in age, shall separate them, or be disgraced according to law; but if he be the equal in age of the person who is struck or younger, he shall defend the person injured as he would a brother or father or still older relative.
— from Laws by Plato

He had chanced to hear of me from Professor Haslar; he said, as a typically sound and sane young man, and he wished, as far as possible, to leave his money where health and integrity were assured.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Placing it in a favorable position, he joined the females, who now found themselves alone with him for the first time since they had left the friendly ramparts of Fort Edward.
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper

A band of at least fifty predatory horsemen assailed him, and demanded the surrender of the elephant, which he met by pointing his musket and giving them defiance.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

Sigurd Slembe sailed north around Stad; and when he came to North More, he found that letters and full powers had arrived before him from the leaders who had given in their allegiance to Harald's sons; so that there he got no welcome or help.
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

But who can doubt that it was from him that the family had learned to despise and to resist the base superstition; or that Bridget Bishop, whose house he rented, as Mr. Upham tells me, the first person hanged in the time of the delusion, would have found an efficient protector in her tenant, had he been living, to head the opposition of his family to the misguided clergymen and magistrates?
— from The Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes: An Index of the Project Gutenberg Editions by Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Oh, there’s nothing to worry about,” the hunter said to the fond parent, helping her little one out of the chair.
— from South American Jungle Tales by Horacio Quiroga

Never, perhaps, since the old times of a Marozia and a Theodora, whose boundless and shameless power in the eternal city had given rise to the fable of a female Pope, had a woman occupied a position of so much power and pre-eminence in Rome.
— from A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2) by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

There is a certain governor, of whom we personally can remember only, that he found the Fresh Pond heronry, which we sought in vain; and in memory the august sheriff of a neighboring county still skates in victorious pursuit of us, (fit emblem of swift-footed justice!)
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 05, March, 1858 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

Annette tossed her head, for Philip had growled audibly.
— from The Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Stories by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Piotr closed his eyes—and the radiant vision appeared before him of the semi-nude girls of the wood, who filed past him, and sanctified him by the serenity and the peace of their chaste eyes.
— from The Created Legend by Fyodor Sologub

The following passage, however, may have been suggested by the reminiscences of her aged relative:-- "We are prone to think that with a catechism of pure reason promulgated among the people it would be easy to convert them; but at every step we find ourselves upon the holy ground of history, and compelled to trace the footsteps of the past.
— from Black Forest Village Stories by Berthold Auerbach

As Bonaparte's spies enabled him to feel every throb of the French pulse, he must at once have seen how great was the prestige which he gained by [pg.336] these first diplomatic successes, and how precarious was the foothold of the English Ministers on the slippery grade of concession to which they had been lured.
— from The Life of Napoleon I (Complete) by J. Holland (John Holland) Rose

Another old friend and former partner has bought it in and sent up the price.
— from The Three Partners by Bret Harte

Travelers sometimes tell us that of all the nations of the earth the Americans have the fewest public holidays.
— from Popular Amusements by J. T. (Jonathan Townley) Crane