Daniel Touchett, to his perception, was a man of genius, and though he himself had no aptitude for the banking mystery he made a point of learning enough of it to measure the great figure his father had played.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James

In the review of a period indifferently supplied with authentic materials, we cannot refuse to illustrate the annals of Honorius, from the invectives, or the panegyrics, of a contemporary writer; but as Claudian appears to have indulged the most ample privilege of a poet and a courtier, some criticism will be requisite to translate the language of fiction or exaggeration, into the truth and simplicity of historic prose.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

The meetings took place at dead of night, when by means of carefully arranged lights, magic mirrors, and possibly of electricity, Schroepfer contrived to produce apparitions which his disciples--under the influence of strong punch--took to be visitors from the other world.
— from Secret Societies And Subversive Movements by Nesta Helen Webster

] to measure a piece or two of timber, which he did most cruelly wrong, and to the King’s losse 12 or 13s.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Each particular profession impresses on its corporate members certain habits of mind and peculiarities of character in which they resemble each other and also distinguish themselves from the rest.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson

He certainly gave me a piece of very startling news.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad

A moment after Manon came in under the pretext of shewing me a piece of lace I had torn away in my attempts of the day before, and of asking me if she should mend it.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to.
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

I have never published, nor even shown, either of these two letters, not liking to make a parade of such little triumphs; but the originals are in my collections.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I presume, said Yorick, smiling,—it must be owing to this,—(for let logicians say what they will, it is not to be accounted for sufficiently from the bare use of the ten predicaments)—That the famous Vincent Quirino, amongst the many other astonishing feats of his childhood, of which the Cardinal Bembo has given the world so exact a story,—should be able to paste up in the public schools at Rome, so early as in the eighth year of his age, no less than four thousand five hundred and fifty different theses, upon the most abstruse points of the most abstruse theology;—and to defend and maintain them in such sort, as to cramp and dumbfound his opponents.—What is that, cried my father, to what is told us of Alphonsus Tostatus, who, almost in his nurse's arms, learned all the sciences and liberal arts without being taught any one of them?—What shall we say of the great Piereskius?—That's the very man, cried my uncle Toby, I once told you of, brother Shandy, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from Paris to Shevling, and from Shevling back again, merely to see Stevinus's flying chariot.—He was a very great man!
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

It is as positive a fact as a meteorological, astronomical, philosophical, or chemical observation.
— from Urania by Camille Flammarion

In many a passage of his book he has undeniably spiritualised hopes of Israel founded on the language of the Old Testament in its outward form.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Revelation by William Milligan

That is—I—" trying to laugh, but making a parody of it—"I was always more or less of a coward, Mr. Cleek, but …"
— from Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces by Thomas W. Hanshew

He expired, A.D. 1795, and was succeeded by the third brother, Frederick Eugène, who had been during his youth a canon at Salzburg, but afterward became a general in the Prussian service, married a princess of Brandenburg, and educated his children in the Protestant faith in order to assimilate the religion of the reigning family with that of the people.
— from Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4 by Wolfgang Menzel

A cold roast leg of mutton was then produced;—and heartily discussing that creature comfort , his reverence could not avoid congratulating himself when he observed the mark of the spit , and reflected that there would have been two-and-twenty much wider perforations drilled through his own body had not Captain Murphy made a papist of him.
— from Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3) by Barrington, Jonah, Sir

I came to the conclusion that Fate, which had bestowed on me a physique of more than ordinary size, a sound constitution, and muscles which had filled my study with various kinds of trophies, had not been equally generous in her dispensation of brains.
— from The Lost Ambassador; Or, The Search For The Missing Delora by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

The sage backward glance of the Chorus is quick to discover in present ruin a punishment for past crime; so that the plot becomes in a manner a picture of the resistless laws of moral justice.
— from The Growth of English Drama by Arnold Wynne

Accordingly, in his paper on the skin and lungs, we have seen a very important application of the relations between organs engaged in concurrent functions; we have placed before us the physiological evidences of their being engaged in a common function, and the sympathetic association it rendered necessary; whence he had observed relations of great moment, and pointed out the practical bearing they must have on Consumption.
— from Memoirs of John Abernethy With a View of His Lectures, His Writings, and Character; with Additional Extracts from Original Documents, Now First Published by George Macilwain