And while I do not ask any man to indorse my theory, I confess myself anxious that what I sought to write and express, and the ground I built on, shall be at least partially understood, from its own platform.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

It is also the custom of people of weight and power, when they go into battle or strife, to have many people with them whom they can send out before them for their defence; for the men do not fight worse who have little property, but even better than those who are brought up in the midst of wealth."
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

Revolts have illuminated with a red glare all the most original points of the Parisian character, generosity, devotion, stormy gayety, students proving that bravery forms part of intelligence, the National Guard invincible, bivouacs of shopkeepers, fortresses of street urchins, contempt of death on the part of passers-by.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Hence generally, in buildings of stone and marble, the mutules are carved with a downward slant, in imitation of the principal rafters.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio

“Oh! yes,” said Gerard, “I believe our spirit is sufficiently broken at Mowbray.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

But it seems that a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea, but of several particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

As for drinke it is vsuallie filled in pots, gobblets, iugs, bols of siluer in noble mens houses, also in fine Venice glasses of all formes, and for want of these elsewhere in pots of earth of sundrie colours and moulds whereof manie are garnished with siluer) or at the leastwise in pewter, all which notwithstanding are seldome set on the table, but each one as necessitie vrgeth, calleth for a cup of such drinke as him listeth to haue: so that when he hath tasted of it he deliuered the cup againe to some one of the standers by, who making it cleane by pouring out the drinke that remaineth, restoreth it to the cupbord from whence he fetched the same.
— from Chronicles (1 of 6): The Description of Britaine by William Harrison

Promising, this, for an American youth who was expected to go into business or study a profession!
— from Memoirs by Charles Godfrey Leland

'Behold, God is become our salvation; we will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord Jehovah is our strength and our song; he also is become our salvation, therefore with joy Page 166 will we draw water out of the wells of salvation.'
— from The Power of Faith Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. by Isabella Graham

Horse not used to him yet, Sir, And if he should spot him, might throw the young pup— We must "go it blind," only square chance, you bet, Sir, Of winning,—espesh'lly with JOE's jockey up!
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 30, 1891 by Various

Many, even of those who use good forms, mutter their prayers over after they have got into bed, or scramble over them while they wash or dress in the morning.
— from Practical Religion Being Plain Papers on the Daily Duties, Experience, Dangers, and Privileges of Professing Christians by J. C. (John Charles) Ryle

The wild, sweet-scented flower grew in but one spot near the town—an island in the centre of the Woodbridge Swamp, where Captain Kidd in a freak of fancy had planted it over the body of a comrade, tradition said, and no one ever disputed the story.
— from The ghosts of their ancestors by Weymer Jay Mills

The Baron floated gently into Boston one spring day, armed with letters of introduction to a few of the literati from men of prominence in Europe.
— from Letters from a Son to His Self-Made Father Being the Replies to Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son by Charles Eustace Merriman

Conniving, my guess is, behind old Slayton's back.
— from Triplanetary by E. E. (Edward Elmer) Smith

Unless whitened by recent storms the glacier is bare of snow in summer with a rough uneven surface of a dirty blue green color, partly covered with rocky debris, and its volume diminishes downward by thawing until at a definite point the whole is melted and flows away as a river of water instead of ice.
— from Glaciers of the Rockies and Selkirks, 2nd. ed. With Notes on Five Great Glaciers of the Canadian National Parks by A. P. (Arthur Philemon) Coleman