the valley much as yesterday only reather wider; I think it 12 Miles wide, tho the plains near the mountains rise higher and are more broken with some scattering pine near the mountain.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

Trust me, and your own reason, that the loss of Osiris was not so regrettable to Isis, nor did Venus so deplore the death of Adonis, nor yet did Hercules so bewail the straying of Hylas, nor was the rapt of Polyxena more throbbingly resented and condoled by Priamus and Hecuba, than this aforesaid accident would be sympathetically bemoaned, grievous, ruthful, and anxious to the woefully desolate and disconsolate parents.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Several officers of the guard and the municipality now arrived, and on my father's asking what was the matter, a young officer replied, 'Well, since you will know, it is the head of Madame de Lamballe that they want to show you.'
— from Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete by Various

O God, help me!" A yell of rage was the only response to his wild pleadings, for a dozen hands had seized the rope, which had been thrown over one of the large projecting branches.
— from The Frontiersman: A Tale of the Yukon by H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

"On what plea, then, have you dared to take upon yourself to put an end to an engagement which was made at your own pressing request,—which was, of course, made at your own request?
— from The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

The last few days have unsettled you a little because you have found yourself in a new world, minus all your old responsibilities and trials, and the experience has made you feel younger, robbed you of some of your hold on yourself.
— from Senator North by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

"What Radicals and Republicans are in an ancient state, commonplace and ignoble furniture is in a fine old mansion; and your old remnants in the lumber-room were like men of refined education and ancient descent, who have been thrust out of their natural place in society to make room for vulgar parvenus ."
— from Wenderholme: A Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

I shall not deny that Dr. Reasono had taken a very different view of himself and his acts, as well as of me and my acts, from those I had all along entertained myself; and yet, on reflection, it is so common to consider ourselves in lights very different from those in which we are viewed by others that I could not, on the whole, complain as much of his representations as I had at first thought it might become me to do.
— from The Monikins by James Fenimore Cooper

And when we are punished by her, whether with imprisonment or stripes, the punishment is to be endured in silence; and if she sends us to wounds or death in battle, thither we follow as is right; neither may anyone yield or retreat or leave his rank, but whether in battle or in a court of law, or in any other place, he must do what his city and his country order him; or he must change their view of what is just; and if he may do no violence to his father or mother, much less may he do violence to his country."
— from Practical Ethics by William De Witt Hyde

(Shom Pen one inch less); nose wide and flat; eyes rather obliquely set; cheekbones prominent; features flat, though less so than in the normal Malayan; complexion mostly a yellowish or reddish brown (Shom Pen dull brown); hair a dark rusty brown, rarely quite black, straight, though not seldom wavy and even ringletty, but Shom Pen generally quite straight.
— from Man, Past and Present by A. H. (Augustus Henry) Keane