I held in my hand a morsel of real solid joy: not a dream, not an image of the brain, not one of those shadowy chances imagination pictures, and on which humanity starves but cannot live; not a mess of that manna I drearily eulogized awhile ago—which, indeed, at first melts on the lips with an unspeakable and preternatural sweetness, but which, in the end, our souls full surely loathe; longing deliriously for natural and earth-grown food, wildly praying Heaven's Spirits to reclaim their own spirit-dew and essence—an aliment divine, but for mortals deadly.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

we have three days provision only in store and that of the most inferior dryed Elk a little tainted.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

we have three days provisions only in Store and that of the most inferior dried Elk a little tainted.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

It was a shark of huge size, moving in diagonally, eyes ablaze, jaws wide open!
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

When the bickerings of the great disturbed the kingdom of France, and the Coadjutor of Paris took a dagger in his pocket to the Parliament, these things did not prevent the people of France from prospering and multiplying in dignity, ease and freedom.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

But now it is different; I have lost all that bound me to life, death smiles and invites me to repose; I die after my own manner, I die exhausted and broken-spirited, as I fall asleep when I have paced three thousand times round my cell,—that is thirty thousand steps, or about ten leagues.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind’s ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature’s incorrupted benefaction.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

I was very poor at the time, that is the fact; and entre nous, the Rosemont of the French Opera, an indifferent dancer, but a charming figure and ankle, was ruining me in diamonds, equipages, and furniture bills, added to which I had a run of ill-luck at play, and was forced to meet my losses by the most shameful sacrifices to the money-lenders, by pawning part of Lady Lyndon’s diamonds (that graceless little Rosemont wheedled me out of some of them), and by a thousand other schemes for raising money.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

I think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit—it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

"Maybe I did exaggerate a trifle," Costigan interrupted him, "but the more helpless he thinks we are the better for us.
— from Triplanetary by E. E. (Edward Elmer) Smith

Governor Ting took up the matter in dead earnest and held many private interviews with Tsang Kwoh Fan as well as with the other members of the Commission.
— from My Life in China and America by Wing Yung

The religious tradition in which he was reared was that of Puritanism, but of a Puritanism which, retaining its moral intensity and metaphysical abstraction, had minimized its doctrinal expression and become Unitarian.
— from Interpretations of Poetry and Religion by George Santayana

On the weather side of the island was a coral reef of two miles in diameter, enclosing a shallow lagoon.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. by Various

‘Come along o’ me, young man,’ interposed Dick Evans, as promptly divining the wayfarer’s habitudes.
— from Babes in the Bush by Rolf Boldrewood

These two small maids had been accustomed, from infancy, to utter frankness with one another, and with perfect amiability the guest replied: "Maybe I do eat a little too much.
— from Dorothy by Evelyn Raymond

The writing finished, "Wash B" himself took me in hand, and for another month drilled me in delivery, enunciation and gesture.
— from My Life by Josiah Flynt

This argument is so conclusive for the date of Second Isaiah, that it may be well to state it a little more in detail, even at the risk of anticipating some of the exposition of the text.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 2 (of 2) by George Adam Smith