But we would emerge from our shelter, for the rain was playing a game, now, among the branches, and, even when it was almost dry again underfoot, a stray drop or two, lingering in the hollow of a leaf, would run down and hang glistening from the point of it until suddenly it splashed plump upon our upturned faces from the whole height of the tree.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

The skill of Iago was extraordinary, but so was his good fortune.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

The Nicene and Athanasian creeds are held as the Catholic faith, without which none can be saved; and both Papists and Protestants must now sustain and return the anathemas of the Greeks, who deny the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, as well as from the Father.
— 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

For the first time I felt that, with Evelyn Howard, something indefinable had gone from the atmosphere.
— from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

We should all have liked her a great deal better; and papa and mamma always think it was her great friend Lady Russell's doing, that she did not.
— from Persuasion by Jane Austen

And I must add one other condition: the tyrant must be fortunate, and his good fortune must consist in his having the co-operation of a great legislator.
— from Laws by Plato

And all the higher class of statesmen have in them something of that idealism which Pericles is said to have gathered from the teaching of Anaxagoras.
— from The Republic by Plato

The Count’s prick was quite as long, or nearly so, as mine, and even thicker close to the roots, but tapered up to a small pointed knob, so that for the enculage he had greater facility, than my huge-knobbed affair, whose head was as thick as any part of it.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

A sharp pebble flew by her, grazing forehead and cheek, and drawing a blinding sheet of light before her eyes.
— from Mrs. Gaskell by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

He grows fat in a trice, and his curs keep pace with him—for they too greedily devour the locusts.
— from Odd People: Being a Popular Description of Singular Races of Man by Mayne Reid

Eyes draw eyes, and the young lady returns his glance for a second.
— from Miss Dividends: A Novel by Archibald Clavering Gunter

Hegel, G. F. W., xvi .
— from Materials and Methods of Fiction With an Introduction by Brander Matthews by Clayton Meeker Hamilton

His guest felt a surge of derision at this man who thought he had a compact with God to rule the world for his benefit.
— from Ridgway of Montana (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) by William MacLeod Raine

What is true of peoples and races also holds good for individuals.
— from The Monist, Vol. 1, 1890-1891 by Various

Not much is known of this man except that he was the writer of a single hymn, but it is a hymn that has gained for him the thanks of posterity.
— from The Story of Our Hymns by Ernest Edwin Ryden

A sod covers his gentle form, and he knows no pain.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

One or two men of letters, beginning with a poet, than whom only Shakespeare had a more splendid genius, and ending with a writer of prose whose view of life has affected profoundly the generation of which Philip was a member, had gone forth from its gates to achieve fame; it had produced one or two eminent lawyers, but eminent lawyers are common, and one or two soldiers of distinction; but during the three centuries since its separation from the monastic order it had trained especially men of the church, bishops, deans, canons, and above all country clergymen: there were boys in the school whose fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, had been educated there and had all been rectors of parishes in the diocese of Tercanbury; and they came to it with their minds made up already to be ordained.
— from Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

But it is only absence that makes the heart grow fond of Blossom.
— from Windfalls by A. G. (Alfred George) Gardiner