For although this or that dramatis persona may speak of gods or of God, of evil spirits or of Satan, of heaven and of hell, and although the poet may show us ghosts from another world, these ideas do not materially influence his representation of life, nor are they used to throw light on the mystery of its tragedy.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

At 3 feet 3 inches from the ground a square platform of round peeled sticks, about 1 foot 3 inches each way, is arranged; one foot above the level of the platform a sort of railing is fixed round three sides of the square, and from the open side a ladder with four steps reaches down to the ground; the railing is carried down to the ground on each side of the ladder, and supports a fringe of cocoa-nut leaves ( jari-lipan ).
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

In the face of all we had seen it was difficult for us as ordinary reasoning men any longer to doubt its truth, and therefore at last, with humble hearts and a deep sense of the impotence of human knowledge, and the insolence of its assumption that denies that to be possible which it has no experience of, we laid ourselves down to sleep, leaving our fates in the hands of that watching Providence which had thus chosen to allow us to draw the veil of human ignorance, and reveal to us for good or evil some glimpse of the possibilities of life.
— from She by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

[ They all go out except sir robert chiltern .
— from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

Then fought they fiercely with their swords and lashed together with such mighty strokes that blood ran to the ground on every side.
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

The Gentleman of Elvas states that Guaxule was subject to the queen of Cofitachiqui, but this may mean only that the people of the two towns or tribes were in friendly allianc
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

In Mark 8 it is said, ‘All things shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, the sins and the blasphemies wherewith they shall blaspheme: but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost has never forgiveness, but will be guilty of everlasting sin; (because they said, He has an unclean spirit).’
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

when Nature in herself did found This globe of earth, she then did purely round; The summit and abyss her pleasure made, Mountain to mountain, rock to rock she laid; The hillocks down she neatly fashion’d then, To valleys soften’d them with gentle train.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

Since "Adam delved and Eve span"--if they ever did--in the Garden of Eden, "somewhere in Asia," to the "goings on" in the Garden of the Gods directly under Pike's Peak--the earth we inhabit has at no time and nowhere wanted for liveliness--but surely it was never livelier than it now is; as the space-writer says, more "dramatic"; indeed, to quote the guidebooks, quite so "picturesque and interesting.
— from Marse Henry, Complete An Autobiography by Henry Watterson

Again the glint of evil seemed to shine from those blue eyes, which changed their hue with every humour.
— from The Bond of Black by William Le Queux

The trail dived into it and was quickly lost in a dense growth of Engelmann’s spruce.
— from Scott Burton on the Range by Edward G. (Edward Gheen) Cheyney

Beside the gift of English, Eleanor had its comrade gift of excellent silence.
— from The Militants Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

Indeed I am convinced that, had I possessed the whole globe of earth, save one single drachma, which I had been certain never to be master of—I am convinced, I say, that single drachma would have given me more uneasiness than all the rest could afford me pleasure.
— from The Works of Henry Fielding, vol. 11 A Journey From This World to the Next; and A Voyage to Lisbon by Henry Fielding

Not all the gold on earth should induce me to make such an arrangement, with a man who does not know the use of money, but lets it slip through his fingers faster than flour through a sieve.
— from The Comedies of Carlo Goldoni edited with an introduction by Helen Zimmern by Carlo Goldoni

In the nautical almanack the distances are given to every three hours, but the irregularities of the moon's motion being such as to cause some inequality in the different parts of this interval, the distance at the hour preceding, and at the hour following the time of observation, was found by interpolation from the two nearest given on each side; and having the distances at Greenwich for each hour, the observed distance can never fall more than half an hour from one of them; and the moon's inequalities do not then produce any sensible error in the corresponding time, as obtained from common proportion.
— from A Voyage to Terra Australis — Volume 1 Undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802 and 1803, in His Majesty's ship the Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland schooner by Matthew Flinders

A safety-razor for a cent, with twenty gold-monogramed blades and a guaranty of expert surgical attendance if he cuts himself, would stir his active interest neither more nor less than a safety-razor for a hundred dollars, with one Cannotbedull blade and an iron-clad agreement to pay the makers an indemnity if he found it unsatisfactory.
— from The Perfect Gentleman by Ralph Bergengren

In the offices, and in the kitchens, a plate of soup or a glass of eau sucrée was not given out without the authorization of the Marshal, who was invariably informed of all that happened in the palace.
— from Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, Vol. 2 of 2 by Madame de (Claire Elisabeth Jeanne Gravier de Vergennes) Rémusat