his mind was above all transitory things; that he rose superior to all that is subject to change; that he used to think of nothing but what was heavenly; that, whilst detained by the body, he broke through the bonds of the flesh by contemplation; and that he even loved death, which is a penalty to almost all men, as the entrance into life, and the reward of his labours.
— from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Bede, the Venerable, Saint

The night the dancer and her ballet came The Desk assigned me to my nightly run Of hotels, clubs, and undertakers' shops; I was so green I had not learned The art of using telephones To make it seem That I was hot upon the trail of news While loafing otherwhere.
— from The Broadway Anthology by Murdock Pemberton

‘Now, to avoid determining any thing with regard to these opinions, I have used the term of nervous power ; but as this is a little ambiguous, I choose to express it by nervous fluid ; not that I suppose, with Dr. Boerhaave, that the brain is an excretory, and that a fluid is secreted from it: I mean nothing more than that there is a condition of the nerves which fits them for the communication of motion .
— from History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3 by Henry Thomas Buckle

What consciousness of his superlative seaman-like qualities, what perfect and just self-reliance he must have possessed, to have undertaken the task of navigating a ship completely across the Atlantic with such means at his disposal!
— from Our Sailors: Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign by William Henry Giles Kingston

I know no reason why the law of the Romans should be superior to the laws of the Hindoos, unless the theory of Natural Law had given it a type of excellence different from the usual one.
— from Ancient Law: Its Connection to the History of Early Society by Maine, Henry Sumner, Sir

How long he lay thus—body chilled, and brain hard-working through the heavy pressure of a reality as terrible as a nightmare—he never knew; but at length he roused himself up to think of Nest.
— from Round the Sofa; vol. 2 by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

He was such a wonderful lad for dreams—with the most exuberant fancy in the way he used to talk of New York and what he wanted to do back here—to use the backyards and the roofs and turn them into gardens.
— from His Second Wife by Ernest Poole

Visconti suddenly deserted his own subjects, released Alfonso without consulting the Genoese, and supported him upon the throne of Naples.
— from The End of the Middle Ages: Essays and Questions in History by A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

"I mean he used to think of nothing but his own happiness.
— from Anne Severn and the Fieldings by May Sinclair