" "Come, come, come!" said M. Verdurin, "How on earth do you know that there's 'nothing in it'?
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Now the Exaggerator is thought to have a tendency to lay claim to things reflecting credit on him, both when they do not belong to him at all and also in greater degree than that in which they really do: whereas the Reserved man, on the contrary, denies those which really belong to him or else depreciates them, while the mean character being a Plain-matter-of-fact person is Truthful in life and word, admitting the existence of what does really belong to him and making it neither greater nor less than the truth.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

(3) With this temperament and this sensibility we find, lastly, in the Hamlet of earlier days, as of later, intellectual genius.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The bride stands on her husband's right and her bridesmaids are either grouped beyond her or else divided, half on her side and half on the side of the groom, forming a crescent with bride and groom in the center.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

“What queen?” “Madame Henrietta of England, daughter of Henry IV.”
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

Methought this staff, mine office-badge in court, Was broke in twain; by whom I have forgot, But, as I think, it was by th' Cardinal; And on the pieces of the broken wand Were plac'd the heads of Edmund Duke of Somerset
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

The youth of Augustin had been stained by the vices and errors which he so ingenuously confesses; but from the moment of his conversion to that of his death, the manners of the bishop of Hippo were pure and austere: and the most conspicuous of his virtues was an ardent zeal against heretics of every denomination; the Manichaeans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians, against whom he waged a perpetual controversy.
— 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 had on evening dress, a moustache, a chrysanthemum, and a look of ennui, all of which he kept carefully under his eye.
— from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane

Upon that one of the toilers in the service of Themis—a zealot who had offered her such heartfelt sacrifice that his coat had burst at the elbows and lacked a lining—escorted our friends (even as Virgil had once escorted Dante) to the apartment of the Presence.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

The fact is, however, that the division of labour in science, like the division of labour in society, and like the "physiological division of labour" in individual organisms, has been not only a specialization of functions, but a continuous helping of each division by all the others, and of all by each.
— from Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions by Herbert Spencer

It is impossible not to be struck with the life and history of this people—a history of endless defeat and persecution, a life of the closest unity and steadfastness.
— from Life and Travel in India Being Recollections of a Journey Before the Days of Railroads by Anna Harriette Leonowens

" "During that conversation, the last which Gen'l Darrington held on earth, did he not tell you he was oppressed by an awful presentiment connected with his granddaughter?" "His words were: 'Somehow I am unable to get rid of the strange, disagreeable presentiment that girl let behind her as a farewell legacy.
— from At the Mercy of Tiberius by Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans

How on earth did you expect me to remember?”
— from The Judgment of Eve by May Sinclair

Ryder locked the letters up very carefully in the drawer on the left-hand side of his desk, muttering to himself rather than speaking to Shirley: "How on earth did they get among my other papers?"
— from The Lion and the Mouse; a Story of an American Life by Arthur Hornblow

How on earth did you fellows find this out?"
— from The Scouts of Seal Island by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman

Campuzano's hand, or Ernest Dalton's heart-blood—at least this is the story I have heard; she, in all her rich southern foreign loveliness, plays a becomingly passive part, and is wooed, they say, first by one and then by the other.
— from The Doctor's Daughter by Vera

The nest is accordingly finished, the eggs are laid, the little ones are born, and next year the harvest of eider down is again collected.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

More than this, he was at the head of the whole internal administration; from time to time different departments of State were created,—marine, post-office, finance,—but the men who stood at the head of each department were not co-ordinate with the Chancellor; they were not his colleagues, but were subordinates to whom he delegated the work.
— from Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire by James Wycliffe Headlam