The writers, whose awkward satire is praise, describe him as an itinerant pedler, who drove an ass with some paltry merchandise to the country fairs; and foolishly relate that he met on the road some Jewish fortune-tellers, who promised him the Roman empire, on condition that he should abolish the worship of idols.
— 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

From that moment, in the hope that Swann would catch sight of her, the Princess could do nothing but (like a tame white mouse when a lump of sugar is put down before its nose and then taken away) turn her face, in which were crowded a thousand signs of intimate connivance, none of them with the least relevance to the sentiment underlying Chopin's music, in the direction where Swann was, and, if he moved, divert accordingly the course of her magnetic smile.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

tom. i. p. 318, 420, 554;) their vague belief is probably derived from the Greeks.
— 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

In proper dignity. Aless.(haughtily)
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

Thenceforward we were enshrouded in patchy darkness, so that we could not have seen an object at twenty paces from the ship.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

What should the injured parties do when the guilty run into their own punishment?
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

SYN: Indolent, slothful, lazy, sluggish, heavy, inactive, passive, dormant.
— from A Complete Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms or, Synonyms and Words of Opposite Meaning by Samuel Fallows

Gesture, thus defined, is profoundly different from action.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson

“MR. BASSETT—I retire from a correspondence which appears to be useless, and might, if prolonged, draw some bitter remark from me, as it has from you.
— from A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day by Charles Reade

When they have passed Cowley, some very tempting fences are met with; and Mr. Bouncer and Mr. Larkyns, being unable to resist their fascinations, put their horses at them, and leap in and out of the road in an insane Vandycking kind of way; while an excited agriculturist, whose smock-frock heaves with indignation, pours down denunciations on their heads.
— from The Further Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Under-Graduate Being a Continuation of "The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman" by Cuthbert Bede

Creeping with care to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambesi.
— from A Book of Discovery The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole by M. B. (Margaret Bertha) Synge

From the compactness of the streams and fragments, it is probable that, with the exception of some districts in Northern Chile, the eruptions took place in profoundly deep water.
— from Coral Reefs; Volcanic Islands; South American Geology — Complete by Charles Darwin

When the college was small, it had its share of victory; but almost from the year when it began to outgrow its rivals, its prowess declined.
— from An American at Oxford by John Corbin

No conversation is possible, declares the President, either on peace or on an armistice until preliminary guarantees shall have been furnished.
— from Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him by Joseph P. (Joseph Patrick) Tumulty

Having a leisure moment one day, when a bicycle was being cleaned beneath the tree, the inquisitive pair dropped down, the female actually lighting upon the handle-bar to see how the dusting was done.
— from A Watcher in The Woods by Dallas Lore Sharp

Nostradamus, born in Provence, died in July, 1566, aged sixty-eight.
— from Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 101, October 4, 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various

This "triangular trade" disturbed the British West India planters, who, being largely non-residents and very influential in London, induced Parliament, in 1733, to pass an Act imposing prohibitory duties on all sugar and molasses of foreign growth.
— from The Wars Between England and America by Theodore Clarke Smith

A sheer perpendicular board wall, some twelve or fifteen feet high, shrouded in pitchy darkness and apparently within earshot of a police spy, did not daunt Bessy Bell.
— from The Day of the Beast by Zane Grey