There are no ghosts in Canada!” said Mr. D——. “The country is too new for ghosts.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

Speaking only about museum exhibits from New Guinea, I can say that many so-called ceremonial objects are nothing but simply overgrown objects of use, which preciousness of material and amount of labour expended have transformed into reservoirs of condensed economic value.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

For whole generations it continues standing, 'with a ghastly affectation of life,' after all life and truth has fled out of it; so loth are men to quit their old ways; and, conquering indolence and inertia, venture on new.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

They made me think, too, of three maidens in a legend, abandoned in a solitary place over which night had begun to fall; and while we drew away from them at a gallop, I could see them timidly seeking their way, and, after some awkward, stumbling movements of their noble silhouettes, drawing close to one another, slipping one behind another, shewing nothing more, now, against the still rosy sky than a single dusky form, charming and resigned, and so vanishing in the night.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

In 1847 Vulpes gathered these papers together, and with some slight alterations published them under the title of ‘Illustrazione di tutti gli instrumenti chirurgici scavati in Ercolano e in Pompeii’.
— from Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times by John Stewart Milne

Within the field of medicine, psychiatry does, it is true, occupy itself with the description of the observed psychic disorders and with their grouping into clinical symptom-pictures; but in their better hours the psychiatrists themselves doubt whether their purely descriptive account deserves the name of a science.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

When I walk out in my garden I cannot see the beautiful flowers but I know that they are all around me; for is not the air sweet with their fragrance?
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

Galvanism is certainly, so long as the pile is working, an aimless, unceasingly repeated act of repulsion and attraction.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

“This, gentlemen, is Colonel Sebastian Moran, once of Her Majesty's Indian Army, and the best heavy game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

He couldn’t have come across far over toward the east there, because when I had the fire going, I could see it was all marshy.”
— from Roy Blakeley's Silver Fox Patrol by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

"Still all the day the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark."
— from The Old Helmet, Volume II by Susan Warner

It is called in the context a supper ; and the period in which the invitation was given is called supper-time ; perhaps in allusion to the period of p. 134 our Lord’s incarnation, and of the promulgation of the gospel, which happened in the eve of time, and is therefore styled by prophets and apostles “the last days,” Acts, ii. 17.
— from Sermons by the late Rev. Richard de Courcy by Richard De Courcy

The King banked both games, and sometimes took a hand in the poker game if conditions seemed propitious.
— from Old Judge Priest by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb

Now when Trypho knew what had befallen Demetrius, he was no longer firm to Antiochus, but contrived by subtlety to kill him, and then take possession of his kingdom; but the fear that he was in of Jonathan was an obstacle to this his design, for Jonathan was a friend to Antiochus, for which cause he resolved first to take Jonathan out of the way, and then to set about his design relating to Antiochus; but he judging it best to take him off by deceit and treachery, came from Antioch to Bethshan, which by the Greeks is called Scythopolis, at which place Jonathan met him with forty thousand chosen men, for he thought that he came to fight him; but when he perceived that Jonathan was ready to fight, he attempted to gain him by presents and kind treatment, and gave order to his captains to obey him, and by these means was desirous to give assurance of his good-will, and to take away all suspicions out of his mind, that so he might make him careless and inconsiderate, and might take him when he was unguarded.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

I saw, with half an e’e, that Peter was trying to put me to my mettle, and I devoutly wished that I had had James Batter at my elbow to have given him play for his money—James being the longest-headed man that ever drove a shuttle between warp and woof; but most fortunately, just as I was going to say, that “every honest man, who wished well to the good of his country, could only have one opinion upon that subject,”—we came to the by-road, that leads away off on the right-hand side down to Hawthornden, and we observed, from the curious ringle, that one of the naig’s fore-shoon was loose; which consequently put an end to the discussion of this important national question, before Peter and I had time to get it comfortably settled to the world’s satisfaction.
— from The Life of Mansie Wauch Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself by D. M. (David Macbeth) Moir