The Cherokees went further; they created a written language; established a permanent form of government; and as everything proceeds rapidly in the New World, before they had all of them clothes, they set up a newspaper.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

Burns, still only in his twenty-seventh year, is no longer even a ploughman; he is flying to the West Indies to escape disgrace and a jail.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

About eight at night, we entered the court-yard of this handsome, large, old, and lonely mansion, that looks made for solitude and mischief, as I thought, by its appearance, with all its brown nodding horrors of lofty elms and pines about it: and here, said I to myself, I fear, is to be the scene of my ruin, unless God protect me, who is all-sufficient!
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

Almost any one, falling into a river, will be enabled to float, if he suffer the specific gravity of the water fairly to be adduced in comparison with his own—that is to say, if he suffer his whole person to be immersed, with as little exception as possible.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

"And to say that you love me without loving the medical man in me, is the same sort of thing as to say that you like eating a peach but don't like its flavor.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

he murmured; “the eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are perfect.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

Studia literarum et animi perturbationes fugiat, et quantum potest jucunde vivat.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

“What did she do with it afterwards?” “Well, sir, she slipped it into a long envelope, and put it inside a sort of purple box that was standing on the desk.”
— from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

No sooner was Lauretta silent than Filomena, by the queen's commandment, began thus: "Lovesome ladies, even as pity is in us commended, so also is cruelty rigorously avenged by Divine justice; the which that I may prove to you and so engage you altogether to purge yourselves therefrom, it pleaseth me tell you a story no less pitiful than delectable.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

II. one illustration, line engraved and printed separately.
— from Excursions in Victorian Bibliography by Michael Sadleir

Left early a poor orphan, I have found the kindest and tenderest of mothers, and I have vowed never to leave her—never.
— from The History of Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray

Pleased with an opportunity of showing the serdar that no body but himself could control his servants, he at once assented to my proposal; and forthwith began to give me instructions concerning what I should say to the grand vizier touching the late expedition, and particularly in what light I was to place his own individual prowess.
— from The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by James Justinian Morier

I walk about with little Ernest, and practice baby songs, besides helping Lisa to fuss about house, and darned a most unnatural and unfatherly hole in papa’s socks this morning.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 5, November 1850 by Various

Now the peasants turned against the nobles, burning down the largest estates and plunging the country into anarchy.
— from A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3) by Edwin Emerson

The cod-liver oil of the curriers, if clear, is less expensive, and probably better than either of them.
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume I by Richard Vine Tuson