In the French originals of these romances the lines were a definite length, the meter exact, and rimes and assonances were both used to give melody.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

There must exist a right against the servient owner before there is a right against anybody else.
— from The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes

This theory is that ‘mediumship’, telepathy, hallucinations, or the voluntary and involuntary exercise of any so-called ‘psychical’ faculties on the part of men and women, with the resulting phenomena, can be explained as due to abnormal and hence—according to its point of view—diseased states of the human organism, or to some derangement of bodily functions, leading to delusions resembling those of insanity, which by a sort of hypnosis telepathically induced may even affect researchers and lead them into erroneous conclusions.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

And thus the land-owners, despite their marvellous efforts, are really a transient class, continually being depleted by those who fall back into the class of renters or metayers, and augmented by newcomers from the masses.
— from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

Each tree, Loaden with fairest fruit that hung to the eye Tempting, stirred in me sudden appetite To pluck and eat; whereat I waked, and found Before mine eyes all real, as the dream Had lively shadowed: Here had new begun
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

If we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall would certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as the city.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

They were not in the least afraid of us, and conversed with as much ease and readiness as European ladies.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

My sister is in the garden plucking the dead roses; my brother is reading his two papers, la Presse and les Débats , within six steps of her; for wherever you see Madame Herbault, you have only to look within a circle of four yards and you will find M. Emmanuel, and ‘reciprocally,’ as they say at the Polytechnic School.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this venerable witch-lady had heard Mr. Dimmesdale's outcry, and interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the clamour of the fiends and night-hags, with whom she was well known to make excursions in the forest.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an 'engaged' on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read one book isn't enough.
— from Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster

We must, therefore, picture to ourselves a fertile plain occupying the whole of the Bristol Channel, and supporting herds of reindeer, horses, and bisons, many elephants and rhinoceroses, and now and then being traversed by a stray hippopotamus, which would afford abundant prey to the lions, bears, and hyænas inhabiting all the accessible caves, as well as to their great enemy and destroyer man.
— from Cave Hunting Researches on the evidence of caves respecting the early inhabitants of Europe by William Boyd Dawkins

Dr. Nonentity, I am told, writes indexes to perfection, makes essays, and reviews any work with a single day’s warning.—Goldsmith, A Citizen of the World , xxix.
— from Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol. 3 A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

It keeps on going 'round and 'round in my 'ead, and 'round and 'round.
— from Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

At the moment when the good temper and gentleness of Louis XVI. began to gain upon his ministers, when Dumouriez was softened by the { 108} royal kindness, when minds experienced a relaxation, and honest people, worn out by so many political shocks, were sincerely desirous of repose, it was she who nourished discord, made the Gironde irreconcilable, inspired the subversive pamphlets of Louvet, embittered her husband's heart, and invented the provocations against which the conscience of the unfortunate monarch rebelled.
— from Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty by Imbert de Saint-Amand

The third fire kindled was more extreme, and reached at last the barrels of gunpowder.
— from Robin Tremayne A Story of the Marian Persecution by Emily Sarah Holt

But those days went by; and then there was that time when a noisy fellow got up on my head, where he kept his place with difficulty, and spouted ever so much eloquence about rights and liberty and constitution.
— from Seven Little People and their Friends by Horace Elisha Scudder

I pretended to be taking on at a great rate about his death, but I was more excited about running away, than I was about that, and before daylight the next morning I proved it, for I was on my way to Canada.
— from Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself by Henry Bibb

In a word, he is the champion of Realism as opposed to Nominalism, and maintains, for example, that Man exists as really and es 128 sentially as any individual man, and that Humanity is not a mere name or intellectual abstraction, but just as much an entity as a building composed of so many stones.
— from Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885 by Various

Milton says: “‘Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev’n, or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of Nature’s works, to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
— from Knowledge for the Time A Manual of Reading, Reference, and Conversation on Subjects of Living Interest, Useful Curiosity, and Amusing Research by John Timbs