I was prepared to face a monotonous, laborious life, of semi-starvation, filth, and rough surroundings, always overshadowed with the thought of finding a job and a living.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The history of the church of Jerusalem affords a lively proof of the necessity of those precautions, and of the deep impression which the Jewish religion had made on the minds of its sectaries.
— 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

And in this connection it may be noted that, just as a life devoted to outward activity will distract and divert a man from study, and also deprive him of that quiet concentration of mind which is necessary for such work; so, on the other hand, a long course of thought will make him more or less unfit for the noisy pursuits of real life.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer

Apart from the one fundamental nastiness the luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it so many other nastinesses in the form of doubts and questions, adds to the one question so many unsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort of fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of the contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand solemnly about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their healthy sides ache.
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Mosto, who is on the whole a faithful transcriber, has sacancos as the Patagonian equivalent of a li testiculi ; om jani for a li sui , the correct forms of the latter being jani and a li sui oui ; and tcrechai for the equivalent of “red cloth.”
— from The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century by Antonio Pigafetta

A prince shall not be lacking out of Judah, and a leader from his thighs, until the things come that are laid up for him; and He shall be the expectation of the nations.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

A javelin, and a long broad sword, were their principal weapons of offence.
— 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

Of course, as we have seen, he was quite a simple man; indeed he might have passed for a boy again if he had been able to take his baldness off; but he had also a noble sense of justice and a lion's courage to do what seemed right to him; and having thought the matter out with anxious care after the flight of the children, he went down on all fours and crawled into the kennel.
— from Peter Pan by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

The judge apparently summed up for a conviction; but the jury, after a long deliberation, returned a verdict of acquittal.
— from A supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns. by Edwin Chadwick

Mere sexual excitement, a wild, fierce, furious rush of passion, is not only not sexual vigor, but in its inverse ratio; and a genuine insane fervor caused by weakness; just as a like nervous excitability indicates weak nerves instead of strong.
— from Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics by B. G. (Benjamin Grant) Jefferis

And I will venture to say to those philanthropists who are eternally preaching "of the masses," and "to the masses," that here "masses" can be found—concrete "masses," not yet individualized: as ready to jump after a leader as a flock of sheep after a bell-wether; only that at every interval of five or ten miles between place and place in Nova Scotia, they are apt to jump in contrary directions.
— from Acadia or, A Month with the Blue Noses by Frederic S. (Frederic Swartwout) Cozzens

“Well, we may as well start again, and make for shore as a dirigible balloon,” said Jerry, after a little pause, in which they all breathed more freely.
— from The Motor Boys Under the Sea; or, From Airship to Submarine by Clarence Young

Joshua abated a little of his enthusiasm.
— from Joshua Marvel by B. L. (Benjamin Leopold) Farjeon

About a month after the victory obtained by the English over the invincible armada, Leicester was seized with a fever on a journey, and, after lingering for a few days, died, leaving Essex, as it were, in his place.
— from Queen Elizabeth Makers of History by Jacob Abbott

Says dad, says he: “You Johnnies are a lot of confidence men, who live only to rope in rich American girls, so you can marry them and have their dads lift the mortgages on your ancestral estates, and put on tin roofs in place of the mortgages, 'cause a mortgage will not shed rain, and you get their money and spend it on other women.”
— from Peck's Bad Boy Abroad Being a Humorous Description of the Bad Boy and His Dad in Their Journeys Through Foreign Lands - 1904 by George W. (George Wilbur) Peck

Experience and theory alike forbid us to deny that effect of a free constitution; a sense of justice and a love of liberty equally deter us from lamenting it.
— from Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron