She lay now at comparative ease; she looked pretty, though pale; her face was delicately designed, and if at first sight it appeared proud, I believe custom might prove it to be soft.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

I have given my reasons for believing that all our greater fossiliferous formations were deposited during periods of subsidence; and that blank intervals of vast duration occurred during the periods when the bed of the sea was either stationary or rising, and likewise when sediment was not thrown down quickly enough to embed and preserve organic remains.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

This led on to many interchanges of endearment and enjoyment on all sides, in the midst of which the Inexhaustible being observed staring, in a most imbecile manner, on Mrs Boffin's breast, was pronounced to be supernaturally intelligent as to the whole transaction, and was made to declare to the ladies and gemplemorums, with a wave of the speckled fist (with difficulty detached from an exceedingly short waist), 'I have already informed my venerable Ma that I know all about it!'
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

‘Cotgrave has in his dictionary, “ Mignard —migniard, prettie, quaint, neat, feat, wanton, dainty, delicate.”
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson

Do you know, I'm really afraid Mrs. Hale is very far from well, from what Dr. Donaldson says.'
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

"We should also remember that we are but now enjoying some respite from a great pestilence and from war, to the no small benefit of our estates and persons, and that it is right to employ these at home on our own behalf, instead of using them on behalf of these exiles whose interest it is to lie as fairly as they can, who do nothing but talk themselves and leave the danger to others, and who if they succeed will show no proper gratitude, and if they fail will drag down their friends with them.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

For what difference does it make whether goods or advantages be the better name, while the Stoic no less than the Peripatetic is alarmed at the prospect of losing them, and while, though they name them differently, they hold them in like esteem?
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

You can no more imbue the former with desirable dispositions by force of education, even the most careful, than the schools can turn out Tennysons and Brownings by completest tuition.
— from Old Melbourne Memories Second Edition, Revised by Rolf Boldrewood

The facts which Dr. Delany grouped together as to the climate and soil; as to productions and trade; as to the readiness of the people to take hold of these higher ideas; and as to the anxiety of the people to have him and his party return, were new and thrilling.
— from Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party by Martin Robison Delany

A sailor will laugh at a storm that is full of terrors to the landsman, for it is certain that familiarity with danger does breed contempt.
— from Lost in the Cañon The Story of Sam Willett's Adventures on the Great Colorado of the West by A. R. (Alfred Rochefort) Calhoun

“He sure was a heap tickled to know that the deck wasn’t all filled with dirty deuces.”
— from 'Drag' Harlan by Charles Alden Seltzer

Rev. W. F. Warren, D. D., president of Boston University, came also with his most attractive family to Wilbraham.
— from Old Times in Dixie Land: A Southern Matron's Memories by Caroline E. (Caroline Elizabeth) Merrick

To know the secret of the Lord, to walk in this world not guideless, but led by the Lord of life, to approach death itself not fearful, but in the hands of that Infinite Love for whom death does not exist, surely this is worth more than the gold and precious stones which belong only to the earth and are earthy.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Proverbs by Robert F. (Robert Forman) Horton

For what did death mean for her?
— from Let us follow Him by Henryk Sienkiewicz

Upon this Caroline complains of the bad morals of the lower classes: she complains of the education and the knowledge of figures which distinguish domestics.
— from Analytical Studies by Honoré de Balzac

The journey of Laeg to Fairyland is then told in the literary form with different detail to that given in the Antiquarian one, and the full conclusion is then supplied in this form alone; so that we have, although in the same manuscript version, two quite distinct forms of the original legend, the first defective at the end of the story, the other at its beginning.
— from Heroic Romances of Ireland, Translated into English Prose and Verse — Volume 1 by Arthur Herbert Leahy

Yet Ribera was pitiless and both families were deported, doubtless to perish among unbelievers.
— from A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3 by Henry Charles Lea