In his old age he related with pleasure, that, by the distress of the siege, himself, and the countess his wife, had been reduced to a single cloak or mantle, which they wore alternately; that in a sally his horse had been slain, and he was dragged away by the Saracens; but that he owed his rescue to his good sword, and had retreated with his saddle on his back, lest the meanest trophy might be left in the hands of the miscreants.
— 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 knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist had never believed that there could be so terrible a sight.
— from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

“This lady owns by no means a poor village,” said Chichikov to himself; wherefore he decided then and there to have a talk with his hostess, and to cultivate her closer acquaintance.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

CHAPTER V. How at feast of the wedding of King Arthur to Guenever, a white hart came into the hall, and thirty couple hounds, and how a brachet CHAPTER VI.
— from Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Malory, Thomas, Sir

And the next moment he and the captain had dropped aboard of us, and we had shoved off and given way.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 220 Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
— from The Waste Land by T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot

But if he directly attacks a general principle without having a particular case in view, he leaves the circle in which all nations have agreed to confine his authority, he assumes a more important, and perhaps a more useful, influence than that of the magistrate, but he ceases to be a representative of the judicial power.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

“There's a book here in which I read about the trial of a Jew, who took a child of four years old and cut off the fingers from both hands, and then crucified him on the wall, hammered nails into him and crucified him, and afterwards, when he was tried, he said that the child died soon, within four hours.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

From his agonizing, throbbing cough, his thinness, and the flush on his cheeks, one may judge that he is in the first stage of consumption.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

After dinner, they brought me back to the Chateau d'Auret, where M. le Marquis was awaiting me; who affectionately welcomed me, and would hear what we had done at our banquet; and I told him all the company had drunk many times to his health.
— from The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) by Various

At a General Council of Condolence, held at the Council House, Fort George, 6th November, 1842, Present—The Six Nations, Hurons, Potawatitimies, and Chippawas.
— from The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock, K.B. Interspersed with notices of the celebrated Indian chief, Tecumseh, and comprising brief memoirs of Daniel De Lisle Brock, Esq., Lieutenant E.W. Tupper, R.N., and Colonel W. De Vic Tupper by Brock, Isaac, Sir

There was a flash of steel as it descended, a shrill cry that broke off into a moan; and the Doctor, hardly able to check himself, almost stumbled over the woman as she fell at his feet.
— from A Bachelor's Dream by Duchess

Besides, she had much to do with his accompanying the Corner House girls on their recent motoring trip, and Sammy's own mother said that that vacation journey had "made a new boy of Sammy."
— from The Corner House Girls Growing Up What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended by Grace Brooks Hill

And then the exultant return home after the curtain had fallen upon the wild enthusiasm of an electrified audience!
— from Ellen Terry and Her Sisters by T. Edgar (Thomas Edgar) Pemberton

Nor could he believe that Jinny was not gloating over the Nemesis that had overtaken his attempt to crush her will.
— from Jinny the Carrier by Israel Zangwill

Across the shoal the sea was running wildly, while inshore the spray dashed so high as to completely hide the steamer from view at times.
— from The Life Savers: A story of the United States life-saving service by James Otis

On the other hand, as they can have recourse to material constraint only in accidental cases, as they can reckon but exceptionally on the intelligent obedience of patients, it is especially by the evolution of sympathies, those quick rays of the soul which usually survive the intellect, and are often extinguished only with life, that the Gheelois have understood the tactics of social government.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868 by Various

The old homestead at The Craggs has been a place of unobtrusive but astounding achievement.
— from The Valley of Gold: A Tale of the Saskatchewan by David Howarth