All the stories, at least, on which they are built, pre-existed in the chronicles, ballads, or translations of contemporary or preceding English writers.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Might not some surprise also be expressed, that those who reproach the Southern States with the barbarous policy of considering as property a part of their human brethren, should themselves contend, that the government to which all the States are to be parties, ought to consider this unfortunate race more completely in the unnatural light of property, than the very laws of which they complain?
— from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton

It was once said that a man was never properly drunk until he could not lie down without holding, could not see a hole through a LADDER , or went to the pump to light his pipe.
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

[54] Critics, who are most ready to bring this charge of pedantry and unintelligibility, are the most apt to overlook the important fact, that, besides the language of words, there is a language of spirits—(sermo interior)—and that the former is only the vehicle of the latter.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

[Pg 705] The simplest and most radical sort of passage from war to peace is victory—a quite unique phenomenon in life, of which there are, to be sure, countless individual forms and measures, which, however, have no resemblance to any of the otherwise mentioned forms which may occur between persons.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

As for my fair cousins, though my absence may not be long enough to render it necessary, I shall now take the liberty of wishing them health and happiness, not excepting my cousin Elizabeth."
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

His best known works are his Cathemerina , a series of poems on the Christian’s day and life, of which the most graceful and pathetic is the Funeral Hymn , e.g. Iam maesta quiesce querella, Lacrimas suspendite matres, Nullus sua pignora plangat, Mors haec reparatio vitae est, and his Peristephanon ( περὶ στεφάνων liber ) in praise of Christian martyrs.
— from Helps to Latin Translation at Sight by Edmund Luce

These girls all dress in dark colors like the ladies, only with the difference prescribed by the profession, such as the low neck in the back and the full length of the kimona on the floor like a wave around her.
— from Letters from China and Japan by Harriet Alice Chipman Dewey

After the one hundred and eightieth day no further mark was seen; that last one was the faintest, as the first the deepest.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

“You are very welcome,” he muttered, blushing till the tears came into his eyes, and not knowing how to lie or what to say.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Surelie I long to heare your owne opinion of this: For they are like old wiues trattles about the fire.
— from Daemonologie. by King of England James I

In order to discover whether the same leaflet twisted permanently in the same direction, black threads were tied to 20 leaves, the terminal leaflets of which twisted so that their upper surfaces faced west, and 14 white threads to leaflets which twisted to the east.
— from The Power of Movement in Plants by Darwin, Francis, Sir

I rode under the shadows of five earthworks, and saw lines of white tents sweeping to the horizon.
— from Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War by George Alfred Townsend

For she, when ask'd of his behaviour, Had spoken greatly in his favour; And swore, like royal F——'s [1] wife, She ne'er was thrum'd so in her life; On which the Lycians gave him stone And ground to build a house upon, With a good orchard full of fruit, And a brave field of wheat to boot.
— from A Burlesque Translation of Homer by Bridges, Thomas, active 1759-1775

The children, on the other hand, kept quiet, and clung to their mothers, as all children do in exciting times; the mothers grinned and laughed and chattered, "as becomes the gentler sex" in the savage state; while the men, all smoking short clay pipes, (one of their customs borrowed from civilization,) looked on with that air of stolid indifference peculiar to the male barbarian.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics by Various

Birge retired along the line of works to the open ground beyond Meadow Brook, where Shunk joined him.
— from History of the Nineteenth Army Corps by Richard B. (Richard Biddle) Irwin

Three small seed-pods, which here grew close together, formed the marks that I had myself taken to note the place, and these the wasp seemed also to have taken as its guide, for it flew directly down to them, and ran inside; but the small leaf on which the fragment of caterpillar lay not being directly connected with any on the outside, it again missed it, and again got far away from the object of its search.
— from Animal Intelligence The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV. by George John Romanes

Their military resistance crushed, his duties ended; and he had then only to fold his arms and look on while their villages were burned, their children butchered, and their women violated."
— from The White Slaves of England by John C. Cobden