“Not at all,” cried d’Artagnan, who was anxious the matter should be accomplished; “on the contrary, I think it very easy.
— from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

For the jewel or brooch which in his cap he carried, he had in a cake of gold, weighing three score and eight marks, a fair piece enamelled, wherein was portrayed a man’s body with two heads, looking towards one another, four arms, four feet, two arses, such as Plato, in Symposio, says was the mystical beginning of man’s nature; and about it was written in Ionic letters, Agame ou zetei ta eautes, or rather, Aner kai gune zugada anthrotos idiaitata, that is, Vir et mulier junctim propriissime homo.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

We may say that besides suggesting abstractly all ordinary passions, music creates a new realm of form far more subtly impassioned than is vulgar experience.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

So confident was I before firing had ceased on the 6th that the next day would bring victory to our arms if we could only take the initiative, that I visited each division commander in person before any reinforcements had reached the field.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

Two bright nebulae afterwards appeared beneath it: and about two o’clock it broke up into fragments, the coruscations becoming more frequent and irregular till it vanished entirely.
— from Peter the Whaler by William Henry Giles Kingston

He feigned an indifference to its very existence.
— from The Courage of Marge O'Doone by James Oliver Curwood

There was no lack of bowers, giant shrubberies, and water-courses running canal-wise through the park, but they all fell into straight lines; every path was ruled by a ruler, the eye could follow it to its very end.
— from The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times by Alfred Biese

And in these is verie excellent pasture for sheepe and horses, but not for other horned beasts which lacke their vpper téeth by nature (whose substance is conuerted into the nourishment of their hornes) and therefore cannot bite so low.
— from Chronicles (1 of 6): The Description of Britaine by William Harrison

I think it very evident from the contents of this letter, that the major had not imparted to his mother the most singular circumstances attending his conversion; and indeed there was something so peculiar in them, that I do not wonder he was always cautious in speaking of them, and especially that he was at first much on the reserve.
— from The Life of Col. James Gardiner Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 by Philip Doddridge

I need not follow it through its various editions, its successive volumes, its amplifications, wherein at last the original design, the vindication of Turner, swelled into an enunciation and illustration of the true principles of landscape art.
— from Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches by Justin McCarthy