Poor Lackalls, all betoiled, besoiled, encrusted into dim defacement; into whom nevertheless the breath of the Almighty has breathed a living soul!
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that she can’t look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

But his ruddy embrowned cheek-bones could be plainly seen, and the large and bright blue eyes, that flashed from under the dark shade of the raised visor; and the whole gesture and look of the champion expressed careless gaiety and fearless confidence—a mind which was unapt to apprehend danger, and prompt to defy it when most imminent—yet with whom danger was a familiar thought, as with one whose trade was war and adventure.
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

[The Member for Arcis.] CHOIN (Mademoiselle), good Catholic who built a parsonage on some land at Blangy bought expressly by her in the eighteenth century; the property was acquired later by Rigou.
— from Repertory of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z by Anatole Cerfberr

He told me also how loose the Court is, nobody looking after business, but every man his lust and gain; and how the King is now become besotted upon Mrs. Stewart, that he gets into corners, and will be with her half an houre together kissing her to the observation of all the world; and she now stays by herself and expects it, as my Lady Castlemaine did use to do; to whom the King, he says, is still kind, so as now and then he goes to have a chat with her as he believes; but with no such fondness as he used to do.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

10 Dijérase que la aurora boreal brilla en el punto opuesto de la bóveda celeste....
— from Novelas Cortas by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón

I love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Your hair is darker, and your eyes Touch'd with a somewhat darker hue, And less aerially blue, But ever trembling thro' the dew 4 Of dainty-woeful sympathies.
— from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

It then spreads itself, if I my say so, over the face of the land, and, by being employed in agriculture, is in part restored to the country, at the expense of which, in a great measure, it had originally been accumulated in the town.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

The capital which sends Scotch manufactures to London, and brings back English corn and manufactures to Edinburgh, necessarily replaces, by every such operation, two British capitals, which had both been employed in the agriculture or manufactures of Great Britain.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

I love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably. SERVANT.
— from The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

There was no superfluous flesh about the face—no puffiness; it was thin with the healthy thinness which tells of a busy life, and browned by exposure to wind and sun.
— from That Affair at Elizabeth by Burton Egbert Stevenson

They do not appear to be arranged like a biplane, but each wing is at a ninety-degree angle from its neighboring wing like a helicopter.
— from The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel by Arthur W. Orton

“I love a ballad but even too well; if it be doleful matter, merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and sung lamentably.”
— from XXXII Ballades in Blue China [1885] by Andrew Lang

The prayers were long, and broken by ejaculations from the pews.
— from Tales of the Chesapeake by George Alfred Townsend

“We’ll line the inside of the logs and when the fire shines through, make it look like a big blaze, eh?” asked Jane.
— from The Woodcraft Girls in the City by Lillian Elizabeth Roy

“How it is possible for a woman to love and be bitter, even though her love is not returned, I cannot guess.
— from An Act in a Backwater by E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

A parallel beam passing through a lens becomes conical; but instead of a single cone it is a sheaf or nest of cones, all having the edge of the lens as base, but each having a different vertex.
— from Pioneers of Science by Lodge, Oliver, Sir

It is not more than ten feet high nor six in its greatest length and breadth, but every inch of its irregular surface is composed of dripstone of a bright yellowish-red and colorless crystal; and 32 down the glittering walls trickles clear and almost ice-cold water, to the onyx floor where it is caught and held in a marvelous fluted bowl of its own manufacture.
— from Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills by Luella Agnes Owen