Harmonical Progression, Permutations and Combinations, and Elliptic Functions have sufficient mysteries for me!' Mrs. Witham kindly undertook to see after his commissions, and he went himself to look for the old woman who had been recommended to him.
— from Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker

What I have to inform you, comes, I own, a little out of its due course;—for it should have been told a hundred and fifty pages ago, but that I foresaw then 'twould come in pat hereafter, and be of more advantage here than elsewhere.—Writers had need look before them, to keep up the spirit and connection of what they have in hand.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

While Mr Brass, with his eye curiously twisted into the keyhole, uttered these sounds as a means of attracting the lodger’s attention, and while Miss Brass plied the hand-bell, Mr Swiveller put his stool close against the wall by the side of the door, and mounting on the top and standing bolt upright, so that if the lodger did make a rush, he would most probably pass him in its onward fury, began a violent battery with the ruler upon the upper panels of the door.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger Chillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim his own.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Poet here informs us, that during the Golden Age, a perpetual spring reigned on the earth, and that the division of the year into seasons was not known until the Silver Age.
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid

One perhaps after shipwreck got safe to shore; another recovered when he had been run through by an enemy; one, when all his fellow-soldiers were killed upon the spot, as cunningly perhaps as cowardly, made his escape from the field; another, while he was a hanging, the rope broke, and so he saved his neck, and renewed his licence for practising his old trade of thieving; another broke gaol, and got loose; a patient, against his physician's will, recovered of a dangerous fever; another drank poison, which putting him into a violent looseness, did his body more good than hurt, to the great grief of his wife, who hoped upon this occasion to have become a joyful widow; another had his waggon overturned, and yet none of his horses lamed; another had caught a grievous fall, and yet recovered from the bruise; another had been tampering with his neighbour's wife, and escaped very narrowly from being caught by the enraged cuckold in the very act.
— from In Praise of Folly Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts by Desiderius Erasmus

In like manner, is it not injustice, in bodily pleasures, to subdue and keep under the soul, and say that it must therein be dragged along as to some enforced and servile obligation and necessity?
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

How their marriages, for instance, will have that effect has been already shown: and in Eretria, Diagoras destroyed the oligarchy of the knights upon the same account.
— from Politics: A Treatise on Government by Aristotle

per annum besides, that they may keep up the stock, and be kind to any other of their relations, without being beholden to you or me for small matters; and for greater, where needful, you shall always have it in your power to accommodate them; for I shall never question your prudence.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

Leaving to General Gillmore, who was present, and in whose department General Wilson was, to keep up the supplies at Augusta, and to facilitate as far as possible General Wilson's operations inland, I began my return on the 2d of May.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

But now all their resources were exhausted; the miners had no more money to keep up the strike, and hunger was there, threatening them.
— from Germinal by Émile Zola

By stipulation, eighty guns (one-twelfth of your force afloat) is kept upon this service; and, as your naval expenditure amounts to about seven millions a year, this (its twelfth part) will make, in five years, three millions bestowed in watching the coast of Africa, and guarding the freedom of the negro race!
— from Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850 by Thomas Hart Benton

Just keep up the secret, as you value your master's life.
— from The Voice on the Wire by Eustace Hale Ball

In a short time so overpowered was M. d'Orleans by the feeling against him everywhere exhibited, that acting upon very ill- judged advice he spoke to the King upon the subject, and begged to be allowed to surrender himself as a prisoner at the Bastille, until his character was cleared from stain.
— from Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete by Various

The rock afforded but a slender hold: either the fabric might become loosened, or his hand might be unable to keep up the strain, and then——?
— from The Nameless Island: A Story of Some Modern Robinson Crusoes by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman

But he was built of tough fiber, and resolutely refused an invitation to visit the Sutherlandshire glen in which Forbes and his daughter were sedulously nursing to health and strength the dear wife and mother whose nervous system had suffered far more than she permitted to become known under the stress and strain of the kidnaping experience.
— from Number Seventeen by Louis Tracy

The older ladies and the two old gentlemen seemed to have renewed their youth, and kept up the sport a good deal longer than they had intended in the beginning; while the younger ones, and especially the children, were full of mirth and jollity, challenging each other to trials of speed and skill, laughing good-naturedly at little mishaps, and exchanging jests and good humored banter.
— from Christmas with Grandma Elsie by Martha Finley

But the English nation have had another object in view, in fanning this flame of discord among us, by keeping up the slavery agitation.
— from A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, An Essay on Slavery by A. Woodward

This one will keep up the stock and again cover his fields with thistles.
— from A Year in the Fields by John Burroughs

But having asserted that the things commanded in the law were not to be understood literally, and having intimated that their hidden meaning cannot be known until the saints are with Christ, he proceeds in section 17 of this chapter to prove that the literal sense of the law is impossible.
— from The Complete Testimony of the Fathers of the First Three Centuries Concerning the Sabbath and First Day by John Nevins Andrews