" The whole plausibility of this rationalist tirade is due to the fact to which we have already paid so much attention.
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James

Nay, she even carried her absurd prejudices so far that she brought her mattress and laid it down on the floor in my room, for fear that the Irish vagabond should murder her during the night.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

When, as sometimes happens, a lad dies from the effect of the operation, he is buried secretly in the forest, and his sorrowing mother is told that the monster has a pig’s stomach as well as a human stomach, and that unfortunately her son slipped into the wrong stomach, from which it was impossible to extricate him.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

Thaddeus learned that no short time had already passed since the hounds had entered into the abyss of the forest.
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

The wind was whistling through the rigging, loose ropes flying about; loud and, to me, unintelligible orders constantly given and rapidly executed, and the sailors "singing out" at the ropes in their hoarse and peculiar strains.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only just out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two guns entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Let him be applied to, if you please, for it will be less unpleasant to me than to have a perfect stranger.”
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she relapsed into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her patient, sourish smile.
— from The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. The Man Of Property by John Galsworthy

Sick as a horse , a popular simile,—curious, because a horse never vomits.
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable; and although at every period those who travelled in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's development have rarely had any permanent success, and each has in time endured to receive the good which the others have offered.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

Dreads—Dizziness .—There are other symptoms of which people have heard as preliminary signs of brain hemorrhage which occasionally disturb them to a great degree and set up a set of dreads that may be difficult to banish.
— from Psychotherapy Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of Disease by James J. (James Joseph) Walsh

Still in life and power Thy spirit cometh over wild and wave, Is ever near me in the trial-hour, A ready help, a presence strong and brave.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, March 1850 by Various

As he spoke an orderly came into his billet (a small farmhouse), saluted, and handed him a pink slip, which was a telephone message.
— from Now It Can Be Told by Philip Gibbs

She had on a cobweb-laced handkerchief, a pink satin long cloak, lined with ermine mixed with squirrel-skins.
— from Love Romances of the Aristocracy by Thornton Hall

l plight of those inside it, an almost maddening craving to know what had been the cause of their law-breaking, the nature of their crimes, how far their present degradation could morally uplift them, what was happening to their human belongings, what would happen to themselves when they were once more free, whether indignation, revolt, dull indifference, remorse, or the harrowingly abject penitence so frequent in suffering beings was uppermost in their minds.
— from Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences by Lytton, Constance, Lady

I never thought to have come in here a prisoner," she went on, turning to the soldiers; "I pray you all good fellows and friends, bear me witness that I come in no traitor, but as true a woman to the queen's majesty as any is now living, and thereon will I take my death."
— from The Reign of Mary Tudor by James Anthony Froude

Now a modern realist (we have a painful suspicion) if he were describing this pleasant man would deal rather roughly with him.
— from Plum Pudding: Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned by Christopher Morley

Eugene thanked him, and put spurs to his horse.
— from Prince Eugene and His Times by L. (Luise) Mühlbach

They tell us that if we had a proper system of spelling the acquisition of the art in childhood would take care of itself after a little elementary instruction.
— from The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 5 July 1906 by Various