In that rank soil, every vice, which power nourishes in the great, or oppression engenders in the mean, thrived and grew up apace.
— 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

What great troubles the husband is to undergo in order to dress his wife: he has to swim in the rapid stream, to throw himself into the deep ocean, engage in battles, to climb mountains, to live in the wilderness, and to go before the mouth of the tiger.
— from Nil Darpan; or, The Indigo Planting Mirror, A Drama. Translated from the Bengali by a Native. by Dinabandhu Mitra

I had dressed, brushed my hair, scented my handkerchief, and taken up my cap, when suddenly the door opened, and facing me in the room stood Katerina Ivanovna.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She wore a hat of singular gracefulness, and abundantly laden with flowers, such as never grew in the rude soil of New England, but which, with all their fanciful luxuriance, had a natural truth that it seemed impossible for the most fertile imagination to have attained without copying from real prototypes.
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

He is said to have taken the child and said to those present, "A king is born to you, O Spartans," and to have laid him down in the royal seat and named him Charilaus, because all men were full of joy admiring his spirit and justice.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

Napoleon’s historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tarútino and Málo-Yaroslávets, and make conjectures as to what would have happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern provinces.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

The presence of certain of those in the room surprised the prince vastly, but the guest whose advent filled him with the greatest wonder—almost amounting to alarm—was Evgenie Pavlovitch.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed it to Natásha.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

There had been an important error in the report sent to the chevalier; it was the daughter who went to the father, not the father who came to the daughter.
— from The Conspirators The Chevalier d'Harmental by Alexandre Dumas

“But if the post-master is a charitable sort of chap, he might be inclined to recommend, say, fifty; you bein’ a castaway sailor in very ’umble circumstances.
— from The Tale of Timber Town by Alfred A. (Alfred Augustus) Grace

His disappearance would explain itself if the rumor spread that he was the W. & S. express robber.
— from Crooked Trails and Straight by William MacLeod Raine

"These insects," says Abbad, quoting from Herrera, "destroyed the yucca or casabe, of which the natives made their bread, and killed the most robust trees by eating into their roots, so that they turned black, and became so infected that the birds would not alight on them.
— from The History of Puerto Rico From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation by R. A. (Rudolph Adams) Van Middeldyk

I have made up my mind not to run, having started in the race spoken of in Hebrews, chap, xii, verses 1, 2.'
— from The Great Acceptance: The Life Story of F. N. Charrington by Guy Thorne

The porte-cochere, so-called, is but a narrow doorway, and is actually situated in the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois.
— from El Dorado: An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness

The old doorman, who had stood at the gate patiently answering questions for twenty years, told the first man who came looking for a lost child, with sudden resentment, that he ought to be locked up for losing her, and, pushing him out in the rain, slammed the door after him.
— from Children of the Tenements by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

Accordingly to the post-house they went; and, with as little delay as circumstances admitted, fresh hacks being procured, accompanied by a postilion, the party again pursued their onward course, encouraged to believe they were still in the right scent.
— from Rookwood by William Harrison Ainsworth