As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the shelves and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where authors, like mummies, are piously entombed and left to blacken and moulder in dusty oblivion.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

No regard for food, 76 no regard for repose, can draw him away thence; but, lying along upon the overshadowed grass, he gazes upon the fallacious image with unsatiated eyes, and by his own sight he himself is undone.
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid

Since legislators are unable to obviate such dangerous collisions as occur between the two sovereignties which coexist in the federal system, their first object must be, not only to dissuade the confederate States from warfare, but to encourage such institutions as may promote the maintenance of peace.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

Luckily, the rebels had left the larger and unwieldy trunks on the ground, which served as a good cover for the skirmish-line, which crept behind these logs, and from them kept the artillerists from loading and firing their guns accurately.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

In the first, the swimmer approaches the drowning person from the back, passes the left arm under the other's left arm, across in front of the chest, and firmly grasps the right arm, either by the biceps or below the elbow, giving him control.
— from Boy Scouts Handbook The First Edition, 1911 by Boy Scouts of America

There he encountered heavy storms, and drove long about upon the ocean; but when summer was coming to an end he landed again in Iceland in Breidafjord.
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

The gums of both the lower and upper teeth of some of our men swelled, so that they could not eat under any circumstances and therefore died.
— 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

for I mean no hurt to him, but only find that these Lords are upon their own purgation, and it is necessary I should be so in behalf of the office.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

O you and me at last, and us two only.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

The effect of this little affair upon the other prisoners was, as it were, electric: they hastened to give assurances of their desire for the like distinction, but at the same time expressed no envy of Sidney Williams’s success.
— from Two Voyages to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land by Thomas Reid

His people are industrious and obedient, as much so, to say the least, as under the old system.
— from The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4 by American Anti-Slavery Society

I was really glad when we rumbled into a tunnel, piercing for a long distance through a hill; and, emerging on the other side, we found ourselves in a comparatively level and uninteresting tract of country, which lasted till we reached Southampton.
— from Passages from the English Notebooks, Complete by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Guarnacci, not knowing, did not notice that moment of silence, or the low and uncertain tone of her voice.
— from The Saint by Antonio Fogazzaro

She translated Jean Grave's "Moribund Society and Anarchy" from the French, and left an unfinished translation of Louise Michel's work on the Paris Commune.
— from Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre by Voltairine De Cleyre

A deathly physical faintness was creeping over me; a sensation like the beginning of long-denied sleep which rolls at last like an unconquerable tide, obliterating everything, through the exhausted frame, was invading my whole body.
— from Five Nights: A Novel by Victoria Cross

"Perhaps I ought not to presume to meddle with matters pertaining to astronomy at all, in such a presence as this, I who have made it the business of my life to delve only among the riches of the extinct languages and unearth the opulence of their ancient lore; but still, as unacquainted as I am with the noble science of astronomy, I beg with deference and humility to suggest that inasmuch as the last of these wonderful apparitions proceeded in exactly the opposite direction from that pursued by the first, which you decide to be the Vernal Equinox, and greatly resembled it in all particulars, is it not possible, nay certain, that this last is the Autumnal Equi—" "O-o-o!"
— from Sketches New and Old, Part 3. by Mark Twain

A like message being at the same time communicated to the upper house, their lordships voted a very loyal address upon the occasion; and when the article of supply, which it produced among the commons, fell under their inspection, they unanimously agreed to it, by way of a clause of appropriation.
— from The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II. by T. (Tobias) Smollett

So, with drooping head, Gurth of the red hair turned him about, and plunging into the green, was gone; then Beltane looked awhile upon the others that stood shifting on their feet, and with never a word betwixt them.
— from Beltane the Smith by Jeffery Farnol