Perhaps I know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone surfers so excruciatingly that he was compelled to invent laughter.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

A radiant baldric, o'er his shoulder tied, Sustain'd the sword that glitter'd at his side: Gold was the hilt, a silver sheath encased The shining blade, and golden hangers graced.
— from The Iliad by Homer

He laid his hand on her head, and said, solemnly, "Ellen, this is the secret you have promised grandmother never to tell.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. (Harriet Ann) Jacobs

He extracted great happiness from squelching her, and she squelched easily these days, though it had been different in the first years of their married life, before the brood of children and his incessant nagging had sapped her energy.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London

If you consent to pay the price of the blood which has been shed, to deliver up the booty which has been plundered, and to restore the city of Nisibis, which is in Irak, and belongs to our empire, though now in your possession, I will sheathe the sword of war; but should you refuse these terms, the hoofs of my horse, which are hard as steel, shall efface the name of the Romans from the earth; and my glorious cimeter, that destroys like fire, shall exterminate the people of your empire."
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

He also saw something else that was strange.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

But the greater number of varieties have a singularly short existence: thus Loudon remarks (9/87. '
— from The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication — Volume 1 by Charles Darwin

“But exalt her, and she shall exalt thee.”
— from My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year by John Henry Jowett

Circumstances, however, are sometimes so extraordinary that a veiled lady becomes an object of concern to everybody.
— from Anderson Crow, Detective by George Barr McCutcheon

As for him he was trembling from head to foot, his arms scarcely strong enough to hold her, his young worn face bent down over her.
— from Robert Elsmere by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

After a severe action of an hour and a half, a solid shot entering the pilot-house of the flag-ship, carried away the wheel, and the tiller-ropes of the Louisville were disabled by a shot.
— from From Fort Henry to Corinth by M. F. (Manning Ferguson) Force

Now, fellows, this is what I propose: We're eighty-five of us in these dining-rooms; now, at two 'sinkers' each, that makes one hundred and seventy 'sinkers' every time; at six times that makes one thousand 'sinkers' a week.
— from The Eternal Boy: Being the Story of the Prodigious Hickey by Owen Johnson

The best way is, if possible, to triumph over disease by setting it at defiance, somewhat on the same principle as one avoids being stung by boldly grasping a nettle.' [ 1 ] Dickens had a somewhat similar experience, though not, of course, to the like extent.
— from Abbotsford by W. S. (William Shillinglaw) Crockett

But all sacred significant ceremonies which, by their holy and spiritual significations, express to us some mysteries of grace, and of the kingdom of God, must be thought to direct us unto a supernatural good; therefore they are not of that sort of things which the law of nature requireth; for this law
— from The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) by George Gillespie

She had always, she said, endeavoured to induce him to leave Orley Farm to her child from the day of the child's birth, and had at last succeeded.
— from Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope

But he also saw something else that surprised him.
— from Baseball Joe on the School Nine; or, Pitching for the Blue Banner by Lester Chadwick