"Now, if six yards were added to the length of the girdle, what would then be the distance between the girdle and the earth, supposing that distance to be equal all round?"
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

The zest is gone, as the English say.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

i make sure of them by going after them every Sunday hour before school time, I also got 4 girls to come.
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

His life was gentle, and the elements / So 5 mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up, / And say to all the world:
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

But if any one desires to hear what will be the end to the warfare itself, let him learn that the distance still remaining before we reach the river Ganges and the Eastern Sea is not great; and I inform you that the Hyrcanian Sea will be seen to be united with this, because the Great Sea encircles the whole earth.
— from The Anabasis of Alexander or, The History of the Wars and Conquests of Alexander the Great by Arrian

He looked more than usually grave, and though expressing satisfaction at finding Miss Dashwood alone, as if he had somewhat in particular to tell her, sat for some time without saying a word.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

But now he had to give the painter some sort of answer and, glancing at the easel, said, "Are you working on a picture currently?"
— from The Trial by Franz Kafka

A mere glance at the epistle suffices to detect the presence of Judaism in the teaching which the Apostle combats.
— from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A revised text with introductions, notes and dissertations by J. B. (Joseph Barber) Lightfoot

His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed.
— from The Happy Prince, and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde

All novitiates, on ascending into heaven, are examined as to the quality of their chastity, being let into the company of virgins, the beauties of heaven, who from their tone of voice, their speech, their face, their eyes, their gesture, and their exhaling sphere, perceive what is their quality in regard to the love of the sex; and if their love be unchaste, they instantly quit them, and tell their fellow angels that they have seen satyrs or priapuses.
— from The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love To Which is Added The Pleasures of Insanity Pertaining To Scortatory Love by Emanuel Swedenborg

Rénine went for a walk into the country, with his hands clasped behind his back and without vouchsafing a glance at the exquisite spectacle of the white meadows.
— from The Eight Strokes of the Clock by Maurice Leblanc

The idea did not then exist, that in the space of an hundred years, posterity might discover a different and much better system of government, and that every species of hereditary government might fall, as Popes and Monks had fallen before.
— from The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Volume III. 1791-1804 by Thomas Paine

Extending as our interests do to every part of the inhabited globe and to every sea to which our citizens are carried by their industry and enterprise, to which they are invited by the wants of others, and have a right to go, we must either protect them in the enjoyment of their rights or abandon them in certain events to waste and desolation.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

The good and the evil she has done—the influence which she has exerted, one way or the other, over the destinies of the human race, is written in the everlasting chronicle; and her fate is in the hand of Him who raises or crushes empires.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850 by Various

The Invincible sailed daily up the river with the flood tide, anchoring during the ebb, and they got on very well till the night of January 1, 1851, when the vessel grounded at the ebb, "swung round on her heel, and, thumping violently, was carried by the tide (dragging her anchor) some two or three miles, grounding finally upon the shoal of Gull Island.
— from The Romance of the Colorado River The Story of its Discovery in 1840, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great Canyons by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh

Yet little though there be to interest the curious, Giovanni Acuto, that Englishman Sir John Hawkwood of the White Company, one of the first of the Condottieri, the deliverer of Pisa, "the first real general of modern times," is buried here.
— from Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition by Edward Hutton