The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of the service: Fancy is capricious—Wit must not be searched for—and Pleasantry (good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was an empire to be laid at her feet.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

She was a perfect linguist, a first-rate artist, wrote poetry, and composed music; to the study of the latter she professed to be entirely devoted, following it with an indefatigable perseverance, assisted by a schoolfellow,—a young woman without fortune whose talent promised to develop into remarkable powers as a singer.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

I ran past, tugging out my watch, found I had ten minutes still to spare, and then I was going downhill into familiar surroundings.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

" "All included," returned Phileas Fogg, continuing to play despite the discussion.
— from Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

Cum 5 illi renitentes pactos dicerent sese, negat eam pactionem ratam esse, quae, postquam ipse dictator creatus esset, iniussu suo ab inferioris iuris magistratu facta esset, denuntiatque Gallis, ut se ad proelium expediant . . .
— from Helps to Latin Translation at Sight by Edmund Luce

I must premise that about 170 or 180 drops had been my ordinary allowance for many months; occasionally I had run up as high as 500, and once nearly to 700; in repeated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone as low as 100 drops; but had found it impossible to stand it beyond the fourth day—which, by the way, I have always found more difficult to get over than any of the preceding three.
— from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

Among some of these races the prohibition and its consequences hold good only for the period of mourning while in others it remains permanent; but in all cases it seems to diminish with the lapse of time after the death.
— from Totem and Taboo Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics by Sigmund Freud

None that I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness which he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory, or the transports of the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the fired city.[1] His voice had the dissonance, and at times the inspiriting effect of the trumpet.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

As this body is now constituted, the lords spiritual are two archbishops, twenty-four bishops, and four Irish representative prelates.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

It is now empty and deserted, and seems only filled with sadness, its groves recalling days gone by, when succeeding Daimyos entertained their friends in regal pomp, and the sound of revelry broke the silence of the woods;
— from The flowers and gardens of Japan by Florence Du Cane

On the whole, however, in spite of the contrary suggestion of irresponsible religious preachments and manifestations, the generality of the negroes everywhere realized, like the whites, that virtue was to be acquired by consistent self-control in the performance of duty rather man by the alternation of spasmodic reforms and relapses.
— from American Negro Slavery A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

"You don't suppose," she said, as if it might be an interesting even if regrettable possibility, [Pg 177] "that I —that our affair—had anything to do with it?"
— from The Lovely Lady by Mary Hunter Austin

Putting these facts together, and substituting for the points of the compass the terms “cold” and “warm,” the appropriateness of the words on the scale of this barometer is readily perceived.
— from A Treatise on Meteorological Instruments Explanatory of Their Scientific Principles, Method of Construction, and Practical Utility by Enrico Angelo Lodovico Negretti

Terrapene ornata is here considered to be the most specialized member of the genus by virtue of its reduced phalangeal formula, lightened, relatively loosely articulated shell, reduced plastron, and lightly built skull, which completely lacks quadratojugal bones ( Fig. 2 ); most of these specializations seem to be associated with adaptation for terrestrial existence in open habitats.
— from Natural History of the Ornate Box Turtle, Terrapene ornata ornata Agassiz by John M. Legler

It is to be noted that it was only in increased accuracy of flight that the rifled gun had a superiority over the smooth-bore; no increase in ranging power was possessed by it.
— from The Evolution of Naval Armament by Frederick Leslie Robertson

Islamic Revival Party [Muhiddin KABIRI]; Party of Economic Reform or PER [Olimzon BOBOYEV]; People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan or PDPT [Emomali RAHMON]; Social Democratic Party or SDPT [Rahmatullo ZOYIROV]; Socialist Party or SPT [Mirhuseyn NARZIYEV]; Tajik Communist Party or CPT [Shodi SHABDOLOV]
— from The 2008 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

It is their custom, when hunting in rocky places, to place hide shoes on the horse’s fore feet as a safeguard against sharp stones.
— from At Home with the Patagonians A Year's Wanderings over Untrodden Ground from the Straits of Magellan to the Rio Negro by George C. Musters