And in "The Cotter's Saturday Night" we have a glimpse of Scotch peasant life that makes us almost reverence these heroic men and women, who kept their faith and their self-respect in the face of poverty, and whose hearts, under their rough exteriors, were tender and true as steel.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

The Commissariat store-houses were situated here, just beyond the broken ground of Simcoe Place; long white structures of wood, with the shutters of the windows always closed; built on a level with the bay, yet having an entrance in the rear by a narrow gangway from the cliff above, on which, close by, was the guard-house, a small building, painted of a dun colour, with a roof of one slope, inclining to the south, and an arched stoup or verandah open to the north.
— from Toronto of Old Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario by Henry Scadding

And these your professed politicians, the only true practical philosophers of the world, (as they think of themselves) so full of affected gravity, or such professed lovers of virtue and honesty, what wretches be they in very deed; how vile and contemptible in themselves?
— from Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

The good old Scotch poet little dreamed of such an innovation, when he lamented that horse-racing was falling into disrepute through the prevalency of games of chance.
— from The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England Including the Rural and Domestic Recreations, May Games, Mummeries, Shows, Processions, Pageants, and Pompous Spectacles from the Earliest Period to the Present Time by Joseph Strutt

Mr. Peter Legh grandchild of Sir Peter Lee of Lime, slaine in London by Mr. Browne, and buried at Winwicke ye 14 day.
— from Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire A Wayfarer's Notes in the Palatine Counties, Historical, Legendary, Genealogical, and Descriptive. by James Croston

There was the grey old spired pile, lying lovely against the pale evening light.
— from Poppy: The Story of a South African Girl by Cynthia Stockley

When you least expect it, the wooden walls open, and discover a glimpse of some placid lake, embedded like a jewel in a frame of dark green orange trees laden with golden fruit, and covered with every sort of water lily, varying from the most dazzling white to the deepest crimson and violet.
— from Cuba Past and Present by Richard Davey

In his greatness of soul Pere Langon had shut his eyes to things that pained him more than they shocked him, for he had seen life in its most various and demoralized forms, and indeed had had his own temptations when he lived in Belgium and France, before he had finally decided to become a priest.
— from The Money Master, Volume 2. by Gilbert Parker

To the intellectual eminence of her people we owe the germs of science, philosophy, law, and astronomy.
— from Due West; Or, Round the World in Ten Months by Maturin Murray Ballou

—A normal solution of sugar, containing 342 grammes of sugar per litre, has a pressure of 22.35 atmospheres, and it may well be asked why such an enormous pressure is not more evident.
— from The Mechanism of Life by Stéphane Leduc

But the great city presented herself to him in the guise of some prodigious living creature, breathing, feeding, suffering, triumphing, above all mating and breeding, terrible in her power and vitality, age old, yet still unspent.
— from The Far Horizon by Lucas Malet