“What must I do to attain such sublimity?”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

Such are the Heroick Part of Soldiers who are qualified for Leaders: As to the rest whom I before spoke of, I know not how it is, but they arrive at a certain Habit of being void of Thought, insomuch that on occasion of the most imminent Danger they are still in the same Indifference.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

For some while he stood before me in downright terror, and seemed unable to understand.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This night late I had notice that Dekins, the merchant, is dead this afternoon suddenly, for grief that his daughter, my Morena, who has long been ill, is given over by the Doctors.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The ideal is frightful to behold, thus lost in the depths, small, isolated, imperceptible, brilliant, but surrounded by those great, black menaces, monstrously heaped around it; yet no more in danger than a star in the maw of the clouds.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Bridget, in the prettiest manner imaginable, declared that as soon as she could set Dido at work the store-rooms should be closely examined, and thoroughly cleaned.
— from The Crater; Or, Vulcan's Peak: A Tale of the Pacific by James Fenimore Cooper

Father is dead seven years, mother is dead three, and since her death I have kept house for Harold.'
— from Celibates by George Moore

No matter how diffidently or how respectfully Magdalen might presume on her master’s example, and on her master’s evident liking for her, the old man instantly discovered the advance she was making from her proper position, and instantly put her back in it again, with a quaint good humor which inflicted no pain, but with a blunt straightforwardness of purpose which permitted no escape.
— from No Name by Wilkie Collins

Here, among many other achievements, Herbst has made the most important discovery that all salts of lithium effect radical changes in development.
— from The Science and Philosophy of the Organism by Hans Driesch

The big guns, mounted in double turrets, are so disposed that all can be fired on either broadside, whilst eight can be trained astern and six ahead.
— from The Fleets at War by Archibald Hurd

This metal is destined to annihilate space even beyond the dream of philosopher or poet.
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 531, March 6, 1886 by Various

It is not so generally known that South Carolina did her part, as well as Massachusetts, in destroying teas and stamped paper.
— from The Life of Francis Marion by William Gilmore Simms