Dunwich, on the coast of Suffolk, once an important town, afterwards partially submerged.
— from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Bede, the Venerable, Saint

Catherine was ashamed to say how pretty she thought it, as the general seemed to think an apology necessary for the flatness of the country, and the size of the village; but in her heart she preferred it to any place she had ever been at, and looked with great admiration at every neat house above the rank of a cottage, and at all the little chandler's shops which they passed.
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

It might be imagined that a political system which destroyed all national individuality, and rendered patriotism in its highest sense scarcely possible, would have reacted unfavourably on the literary character of the age.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

It is possible, therefore, that I may have erred in trifles, and perhaps shall again, but in every matter of importance I can answer that the account is faithfully exact, and with the same veracity the reader may depend I shall be careful to continue it.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Dr. Martineau explains that the chief composite springs are inserted in their approximate place, subject to the variations of which their composition renders them susceptible.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

In another Indian tale a prince, setting forth on his travels, left behind him a barley plant, with instructions that it should be carefully tended and watched; for if it flourished, he would be alive and well, but if it drooped, then some mischance was about to happen to him.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

There were only our two selves of our little company, and to be thus alone with her was not merely like a beginning of intimacy, but also on her part—as though she had come there solely to please me, and in such weather—it seemed to me as touching as if, on one of those days on which she had been invited to a party, she had given it up in order to come to me in the Champs-Elysées; I acquired more confidence in the vitality, in the future of a friendship which could remain so much alive amid the torpor, the solitude, the decay of our surroundings; and while she dropped pellets of snow down my neck, I smiled lovingly at what seemed to me at once a predilection that she shewed for me in thus tolerating me as her travelling companion in this new, this wintry land, and a sort of loyalty to me which she preserved through evil times.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

“The joint family system,” he said, “has descended to us from time immemorial, the Aryan patriarchal system of old still holding sway in India.
— from The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

I told her that "for a consideration"—namely, fifty dollars—I would read her manuscript and give her a judgment upon its merits, after which she might offer it to any publisher she saw fit, and that that was all I could do for her.
— from Recollections of a Varied Life by George Cary Eggleston

Francis H. Allen describes in his notes a song “remarkably like that of the chipping sparrow, but more rapid than is usual with that species, I think, and perhaps shorter, though not so short as the chippy’s early-morning song.
— from Life Histories of North American Wood Warblers, Part One and Part Two by Arthur Cleveland Bent

They have always fires in them, and prefer sleeping in them while on a journey to spending the night on shore.
— from Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone

I do not find that there are any descriptions in the ancient poets so beautiful as those they draw of nymphs in their pastoral dresses and exercises.
— from The Tatler, Volume 4 by Steele, Richard, Sir

I remember once I attended a creditors' meeting of the American Stove Company, which had got into trouble, and Price started off from the word go.
— from The Moneychangers by Upton Sinclair

Perhaps she dreamed a little of a make-believe world in which the men were not brutal and bestial, but, like the Henry Falkins of her imagination, individuals who had heard of chivalry and who even in this age preserved something of its spirit and its spark.
— from The Code of the Mountains by Charles Neville Buck

—I turned a pretty sentence enough in one of my lectures about finding poppies springing up amidst the corn; as if it had been foreseen by nature that wherever there should be hunger that asked for food, there would be pain that needed relief,—and many years afterwards.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Surat, which only since the transfer of Gujarát to the Mughal empire had risen to hold a place among its chief centres of trade, was, in a.d. 1664, when taken by Shiváji, rich enough to supply him with plunder in treasure and precious stones worth a million sterling 35 ; and at that time Cambay is said to have been beyond comparison greater than Surat, and Áhmedábád much richer and more populous than either.
— from History of Gujarát Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Volume I, Part I. by James M. Campbell

His voice was high and harsh in the almost painful silence which followed the stoppage of the engines.
— from The Clue of the Twisted Candle by Edgar Wallace