‘But, Clinker (said he) if you should have eloquence enough to persuade the vulgar to resign those tropes and figures of rhetoric, there will be little or nothing left to distinguish their conversation from that of their betters.’
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

“And how I pity her mother,” she went on; “today she showed me her accounts and letters from Pénza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!”
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

In each of the head bed-posts, just above where the bedsteads are inserted into them, there was a small drawer, so artfully adapted to the mouldings of the timber-work, that it might have escaped even the most curious search: which drawers were easily opened or shut by the touch of a spring, and were fitted each with a shallow glass tumbler, full of a prepared fluid blood, in which lay soaked, for ready use, a sponge, that required no more than gently reaching the hand to it, taking it out and properly squeezing between the thighs, when it yelded a great deal more of the red liquid than would save a girl's honour; after which, replacing it, and touching the spring, all possibility of discovery, or even of suspicion, was taken away; and this was not the work of the fourth part of a minute, and of which ever side one lay, the thing was equally easy and practicable, by the double care taken to have each bed-post provided alike.
— from Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) by John Cleland

I mean, not without the consciousness of having earnestly endeavoured to kindle young minds, and to guard them against the temptations of scorners, by showing that the scheme of Christianity, as taught in the liturgy and homilies of our Church, though not discoverable by human reason, is yet in accordance with it; that link follows link by necessary consequence; that Religion passes out of the ken of Reason only where the eye of Reason has reached its own horizon; and that Faith is then but its continuation: even as the day softens away into the sweet twilight, and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals into the darkness.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

But Roderick, when he had thought of all they had said, became filled with a burning desire to enter the enchanted tower, and despite the warnings of his bishops and counsellors, who told him again that none had ever entered the tower alive, and that even great Cæsar had not dared to attempt the entrance— Nor shall it ever ope, old records say, Save to a king, the last of all his line, What time his empire totters to decay, And treason digs, beneath, her fatal mine, And high above, impends avenging wrath Divine— despite all admonition, he rode forth one day, accompanied by his cavaliers, and approached the tower.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole

I made a march through the peach orchard with pole in hand to fish down the soft Early Crawfords that had escaped even the keen eyes of father and mother when they made their last detour.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

"I can't say what I should do in such a case; but it always seemed to me that a man should have energy enough to save himself, and not expect the 'weaker vessel,' as he calls her, to do it for him," answered Christie, with a conscious look, for Mr. Fletcher's face made her feel as if something was going to happen.
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott

hoper gar autos ho Erasistratos eipe, touto monon auto symbêsetai to tôn anô systel|| 171 lomenôn diastellesthai ta katô.
— from Galen: On the Natural Faculties by Galen

And therefore when we ascribe to God a Will, it is not to be understood, as that of Man, for a Rationall Appetite; but as the Power, by which he effecteth every thing.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

These letters had been procured by great rewards by Antipater's friends; but Antipater himself wrote to his father about them, and laid the heaviest things to their charge; yet did he entirely excuse them of any guilt, and said they were but young men, and so imputed their words to their youth.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

He especially emphasized the renewal of the blood in the lungs, and expressed a hope that we should some day succeed in isolating the permanent element in the atmosphere—the pneuma , as he calls it—which is taken into the blood in respiration.
— from The Riddle of the Universe at the close of the nineteenth century by Ernst Haeckel

He found himself gazing into her eyes; eyes that were twin balls of fire left to burn in a place that had been devastated by flames.
— from The Scarecrow, and Other Stories by G. Ranger (Gwendolyn Ranger) Wormser

An uncle died and left nearly his entire estate to the brother."
— from The Rover Boys on a Tour; or, Last Days at Brill College by Edward Stratemeyer

Why it did remind him he could hardly have explained, except that the clock had a very curious individuality for him.
— from Winnie Childs, the Shop Girl by A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson

"It was in consideration of a possible prejudice that may have crept into your mind against the party I represent and which may have even extended to me personally that I begged the privilege from His Majesty of addressing you before his august wishes had been communicated to you," pursued Miridoff.
— from The Amateur Diplomat: A Novel by Thomas B. (Thomas Bertram) Costain

These people must have much the same impression of us that the peasants of Gaul had when Attila, chief of the army, passed with his escort, except that they are less frightened.
— from The Last Days of Pekin by Pierre Loti

Ma foi , you have educated elbows!' "'That's true, I should not play the cymbals else.' "'Cymbals!
— from Madcap by George Gibbs

In the “ Confluence ” (Multakath), and the “ treasures of the Fetwas ” (Khasanetol Fetavi), even the repentance of the Mulhad, or the impious, is rejected as entirely invalid and impossible, if they have ever exercised the office of Dai, or missionary; and their execution commanded as legal, even though they become converts and wish to abjure their errors; because perjury itself was one of their maxims, and no recovery could be expected from libertine atheists.
— from The History of the Assassins, Derived from Oriental Sources by Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph, Freiherr von

The most skilled artisans, the wealthiest merchants, the bravest sailors and soldiers, the most eminent scholars and scientists went by thousands to Germany, Holland, England, enriching those lands in money and morals beyond computation.
— from A Year in Europe by Walter W. (Walter William) Moore

Here was a gulf to be crossed; but already he could feel that he had made a beginning, and that must have been a proud hour when he devoted his earliest earnings to the repayment of the charitable foundation in which he had received the rudiments of knowledge.
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 16 by Robert Louis Stevenson