The general expectation now was that the "much" would fall to Fred Vincy, but the Vincys themselves were surprised when ten thousand pounds in specified investments were declared to be bequeathed to him:—was the land coming too?
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

"Et bien qu'il est voirs que chascuns hons egalement doit de son cors servir son seigneur ou sa commune, pour aler en ost en tens de besoingne; et bien que trestuit li autre royaume d'occident tieingnent ce pour ordenance, ciz pueple de Bretaingne la Grant n'en veult nullement, ains si dient: 'Veez-là: n'avons nous pas la Manche pour fossé de nostre pourpris, et pourquoy nous penerons-nous pour nous faire homes d'armes, en lessiant nos gaaignes et nos soulaz?
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

So sang the Hierarchies: Mean while the Son On his great expedition now appeared, Girt with Omnipotence, with radiance crowned Of Majesty Divine; sapience and love Immense, and all his Father in him shone.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

That is a good enough name for it: Conscience—that independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man who is the man's Master.
— from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain

To be able to separate best English from merely good English needs a long process of special education, but to recognize bad English one need merely skim through a page of a book, and if a single expression in the left-hand column following can be found (unless purposely quoted in illustration of vulgarity)
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

Et plaga codi non solum ad robor corporum, sed etiam anirum facit: “The climate is of great efficacy, not only to the strength of bodies, but to that of souls also,” says Vegetius; and that the goddess who founded the city of Athens chose to situate it in a temperature of air fit to make men prudent, as the Egyptian priests told Solon: Athenis tenue colum; ex quo etiam acutiores putantur Attici; crassum Thebis; itaque pingues Thebani, et valentes: “The air of Athens is subtle and thin; whence also the Athenians are reputed to be more acute; and at Thebes more gross and thick; wherefore the Thebans are looked upon as more heavy-witted and more strong.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Of course,” she added teasingly, “I did my hands up in lemon juice and kid gloves every night after it.”
— from Anne of the Island by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

My effects I had carted away with a deal of trouble, and a great expense: notwithstanding the ice and snow my removal was completed in a couple of days, and on the fifteenth of December I gave up the keys of the Hermitage, after having paid the wages of the gardener, not being able to pay my rent.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“For they were no ways inferior,” they said, “to the army which made Galba emperor, nor to the pretorian troops which had set up Otho, nor the army in Germany, to whom Vitellius owed his elevation.”
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

Against great emotions no one can defend him by any forethought.
— from Ceres' Runaway, and Other Essays by Alice Meynell

She lay in the Sloyne, in the midst of a broad basin of the Mersey, with a pleasant landscape of green England, now warm with summer sunshine, on either side, with churches and villa residences, and suburban and rural beauty.
— from Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 2. by Nathaniel Hawthorne

No great popular assembly asserts its sovereignty, as in the ancient German epoch; no generals and temporary kings are chosen by the nation.
— from PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

They know that he was a really great English novelist—they may even know that he lived as a contemporary of Dickens—but they do not know a line of any of his works.
— from Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Patrick Braybrooke

We shall travel viaggiáre day and night giórno e notte till finchè we arrive.
— from Exercises upon the Different Parts of Italian Speech, with References to Veneroni's Grammar to which is added an abridgement of the Roman history, intended at once to make the learner acquainted with history, and the idiom of the Italian language by Ferdinando Bottarelli

Carl Thornton had his message and, if he was guilty, even now he was on his way.
— from Double Challenge by Jim Kjelgaard

For albeit that there be much more ground eared now almost in euerie place, than hath beene of late yeares, yet such a price of corne continueth in each towne and market without any iust cause (except it be that landlords doo get licences to carie corne out of the land onelie to kéepe vp the peeces for their owne priuate gaines and ruine of the common-wealth) that the artificer and poore laboring man, is not able to reach vnto it, but A famine at hand is first séene in the horsse manger when the poore doo fall to horssecorne.
— from Chronicles (1 of 6): The Description of Britaine by William Harrison

And, lest my words should not be goodly enough, nor my notions grateful to the critics of this age, who cast every thing as new and nice, which is someway singular, and not suited to their sentiments; that it may appear the cause here cleared and vindicated is not of yesterday, but older than their grandfathers who oppose it, I dare avouch, without vanity, there is nothing here but what is confirmed by authors of greatest note and repute in our church, both ancient and modern, namely, Buchanan, Knox, Calderwood, Acts of General Assemblies, Causes of Wrath, Lex Rex, Apologetical Relation, Naphtali, Jus Populi, History of the Indulgence, Banders Disbanded, Rectius Instruendum, and some other authors much respected, whose authority, more always repelled by rage than ever yet refitted by reason; though I value more than all the vain oblatrations of the opposers of this testimony, and think it sufficient to confute all imputations of its novelty, and to counterbalance the weight that may be laid on the contradictions of the greatest that treat on this subject, yet I do not lay so much stress on the reason of their authority as on the authority of their reason, which is here represented with that candour and care, that, lest any should cavil that they are wrested or wronged when made to speak so patly to the present controversies, I have chosen rather to transcribe their words, than to borrow their matter dressed up in my own, except where the prolixity and multiplicity of their arguments, as clearly demonstrating that which I adduce them for, as that for which they were primarily intended, did impose the necessity of abridging them, which yet is mostly in their own words, though reduced into a sollogistical form.
— from A Hind Let Loose Or, An Historical Representation of the Testimonies of the Church of Scotland for the Interest of Christ. With the True State Thereof in All Its Periods by Alexander Shields