These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when the western emigrants’ horses only show their erected ears, while their hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Justinian trembled: and those who had only seen the emperor in his old age, were pleased to suppose, that he had lost the alacrity and vigor of his youth.
— 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

Heathcliff had never been heard of since the evening of the thunder-storm; and, one day, I had the misfortune, when she had provoked me exceedingly, to lay the blame of his disappearance on her: where indeed it belonged, as she well knew.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Their victorious hordes had spread from the Volga to the Danube; but the public force was exhausted by the discord of independent chieftains; their valor was idly consumed in obscure and predatory excursions; and they often degraded their national dignity, by condescending, for the hopes of spoil, to enlist under the banners of their fugitive enemies.
— 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

[3] At this period kings were in the habit of sending to each [Pg xlvi] other problems to solve, on condition that certain tributes should be paid, according as the questions were answered well or ill, on the one side or the other; and in this sort of game Lycerus, by the assistance of Æsop, rendered himself especially illustrious, whether as proposer or answerer.
— from The Fables of La Fontaine Translated into English Verse by Walter Thornbury and Illustrated by Gustave Doré by Jean de La Fontaine

Not happiness, but something higher: one sees this even in the frivolous classes, with their "point of honor" and the like.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

In the moments of familiarity, in the hour of sickness, the emperor was desirous to level the distance between them and pressed his friend to accept the diadem and purple.
— 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

There be monuments in this church,—of Robert Liliarde, or Hiliarde, esquire; Margaret, daughter to the Lady Audley, wife to Sir Thomas Audley; William Grevill, esquire, and Margaret his wife; one of the heirs of William Spershut, esquire; Dame Katherine, wife to John Stoke, alderman; Robert Merfin, esquire; William Undall, esquire; Lord Ospay Ferar; Sir George Brewes, knight; John Browne; Lady Brandon, wife to Sir Thomas Brandon; William, Lord Scales; William, Earl Warren; Dame Maude, wife to Sir John Peach; Lewknor; Dame Margaret Elrington, one of the heirs of Sir Thomas Elrington; John Bowden, esquire; Robert St. Magil; John Sandhurst; John Gower; John Duncell, merchant-tailor, 1516; John Sturton, esquire; Robert Rouse; Thomas Tong, first [365] Norroy, and after Clarenceaux king of arms; William Wickham, translated from the see of Lincoln to the bishopric of Winchester in the month of March, 1595, deceased the 11th of June next following, and was buried here; Thomas Cure, esquire, saddler to King Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, deceased the 24th of May, 1598, etc.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

But the poet had only seen the effects of civil or domestic slavery, nor could he foretell that the second moiety of manhood must be annihilated by the spiritual despotism which shackles not only the actions, but even the thoughts, of the prostrate votary.
— 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

“And to whom—if such my fate—to whom do I owe this?” said Rebecca “surely only to him, who, for a most selfish and brutal cause, dragged me hither, and who now, for some unknown purpose of his own, strives to exaggerate the wretched fate to which he exposed me.”
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

Christophe was accustomed to the towns of the new German Empire, that were both very old and very young, towns in which there is expressed a new birth of pride: and he was unpleasantly surprised by the shabby streets, the muddy roads, the hustling people, the confused traffic—vehicles of every sort and shape: venerable horse omnibuses, steam trams, electric trams, all sorts of trams—booths on the pavements, merry-go-rounds of wooden horses (or monsters and gargoyles) in the squares that were choked up with statues of gentlemen in frock-coats: all sorts of relics of a town of the Middle Ages endowed with the privilege of universal suffrage, but quite incapable of breaking free from its old vagabond existence.
— from Jean-Christophe in Paris: The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House by Romain Rolland

Winckelmann, indeed, observes that the head of Scipio the elder, in the Palazzo Rospigliosi, executed in basalt of a deep green, is very beautiful.
— from Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman by Alexander Walker

He dared, he renounced, everything in this world, in the hope of securing that eternity in the next, which had so suddenly been revealed to him.
— from The Last Days of Pompeii by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

The latter was also upon the eve of starting, as I could tell by the movements of her people, by the red fires seen in her furnaces, and the hissing of steam, that every now and then screamed sharply from the direction of her boilers.
— from The Quadroon: Adventures in the Far West by Mayne Reid

In all those states where the opposition was sufficiently formidable to inspire a hope of success, the effort was made to fill the legislature with the declared enemies of the government, and thus to commit it, in its infancy, to the custody of its foes.
— from The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 Commander in Chief of the American Forces During the War which Established the Independence of his Country and First President of the United States by John Marshall

poverty in all its horrors—and no hope of saving the expiring mother!" "Oh! how frightful must have been her agony, if the thought of her daughter was present!"
— from Mysteries of Paris — Volume 03 by Eugène Sue

It is said that some half century or more ago, when they were visited at Lisbon by the then Duke of Northumberland, they told his Grace the story of having carried their keys with them through all their changes of fortune and abode, and that they were still in hopes of seeing their English home again.
— from Rivers of Great Britain. The Thames, from Source to Sea. Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial by Various

Under the shining helmet of steel, the earnest face looked clear-cut as cameo.
— from The Adventure of Princess Sylvia by A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson

He was even a kind of favourite with them, and upon the division of a common, or the holding of a black-fishing or poaching court, or any similar occasion when they conceived themselves oppressed by the gentry, they were in the habit of saying to each other, 'Ah, if Ellangowan, honest man, had his ain that his forbears had afore him, he wadna see the puir folk trodden down this gait.'
— from Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Complete by Walter Scott