She laughed, and asked if it was often in its present state of stiffness.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

We shall be as Gods in knowledge, was and must have been the first temptation: and the coexistence of great intellectual lordship with guilt has never been adequately represented without exciting the strongest interest, and for this reason, that in this bad and heterogeneous co-ordination we can contemplate the intellect of man more exclusively as a separate self-subsistence, than in its proper state of subordination to his own conscience, or to the will of an infinitely superior being.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It's well if I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to adorn my maiden speech in Parliament six or seven years hence.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

Towards the close of 1815 a man, a stranger, had established himself in the town, and had been inspired with the idea of substituting, in this manufacture, gum-lac for resin, and, for bracelets in particular, slides of sheet-iron simply laid together, for slides of soldered sheet-iron.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Adams would rather, as choice, have gone back to the east, if it were only to sleep forever in the trade-winds under the southern stars, wandering over the dark purple ocean, with its purple sense of solitude and void.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

Goethe illustrates that union of the Romantic spirit, in its adventure, its variety, its profound subjectivity of soul, with Hellenism, in its transparency, its rationality, its desire of Beauty—that marriage of Faust and Helena—of which the art of the nineteenth century is the child, the beautiful lad Euphorion, as Goethe conceives him, on the crags, in the "splendour of battle and in harness as for victory," his brows bound with light.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

Some of the pillared halls were, however, left in plain stonework, or simply whitewashed.
— from India Impressions, With some notes of Ceylon during a winter tour, 1906-7. by Walter Crane

Those carried by the Lehr und Wehr Verein were of finer texture and larger in size, its principal standard, of silk, being a present from the female revolutionists and gorgeous in the amplitude of its folds.
— from Anarchy and Anarchists A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe; Communism, Socialism, and Nihilism in Doctrine and in Deed; The Chicago Haymarket Conspiracy and the Detection and Trial of the Conspirators by Michael J. Schaack

143 In Hoshangâbâd in the Central Indian plateau, Sûryabhân or “Sun-rays” is a very common name for isolated round-peaked hills, on which the god is supposed to dwell, and among the Kurkus, Dungardeo, the mountain [ 62 ] god, resides on the nearest hill outside the village.
— from The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 1 (of 2) by William Crooke

A gentleman on her left murmured: 'No one can tell us so as well you, Madame, who have torn the poor butterfly in pieces so often sans merci .'
— from Othmar by Ouida

This man who was famous as a wag writes to his friends almost always in perfect seriousness, often sadly.
— from Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life, Especially of its Springs of Action as Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of War by Nathaniel W. (Nathaniel Wright) Stephenson

In 1864, the institution was definitely established upon its present site on St. Denis Street.
— from Montreal, 1535-1914. Vol. 2. Under British Rule, 1760-1914 by William H. (William Henry) Atherton

Have I your leave to speak here in public?” “Speak on,” said Pharaoh sternly.
— from Morning Star by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

The word extravagant , in its primitive signification, only signified to digress from the subject.
— from Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 by Isaac Disraeli

'The true line of conduct in politics,' she once said, 'is always to be ready to rally to the least obnoxious party among your adversaries, even though it is far from representing exactly your own point of view.'
— from Historical and Political Essays by William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Yet in these throes of devilish activity, the Val del Bove would be less insufferable than in its present state of suspension, asleep, but threatening, ready to regurgitate its flame, but for a moment inert.
— from Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete Series I, II, and III by John Addington Symonds