Haste, to his father let the tale be told: Let his high roofs resound with frantic woe, Such as the house of Promachus must know; Let doleful tidings greet his mother's ear, Such as to Promachus' sad spouse we bear, When we victorious shall to Greece return, And the pale matron in our triumphs mourn.
— from The Iliad by Homer

And then—oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to the human face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray, alone, as far as it may choose—while Mme.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

A festival called Pongal is observed by Hindus on the first day of the Tamil month Tai, and derives its name from the fact that rice boiled in milk is offered to propitiate the Sun God.
— from Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston

On reflection since sending my letter by the hands of Lieutenant Dunn, I have concluded that the most important operation toward closing out the rebellion will be to close out Lee and his army.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

By constitutional law, the crown can refuse its assent to any act of Parliament, and can appoint to office and maintain in it any minister, in opposition to the remonstrances of Parliament.
— from Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill

D’Artagnan alone had discovered nothing--he, ordinarily the most inventive of the four; but it must be also said that the very name of Milady paralyzed him.
— from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips, though he looked very steadily at me.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

If these conditions, once discovered, are otherwise at all confirmed, and there are no mistakes in observation, the inference is inevitably certain.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross

more wine, waiter!" cried Sans-Cravate, determined to befuddle himself still more, in order to avoid manifesting his chagrin over his rupture with his mistress.
— from Sans-Cravate; or, The Messengers; Little Streams by Paul de Kock

The appearance of such a man with such a spirit might incline one to think that the world is going backward rather than forward.
— from The Hindered Hand; or, The Reign of the Repressionist by Sutton E. (Sutton Elbert) Griggs

Of course, I did not place too much importance on this conversation, and even did my best to put the bank clerk's mind at rest, he was quite a simple man.
— from The Trial by Franz Kafka

For ten years I have planned to publish in book form what I know about toadstools; each effort to compile my information has shown me how much more I ought to know before going into print.
— from Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc. by Charles McIlvaine

All distracting influences should be absent from the mind, in order to facilitate intense study, for the intellect cannot attend perfectly to two subjects at the same time.
— from The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred and Fifty Thousand by Ray Vaughn Pierce

It is no use to turn away awe-stricken from such details; they are quite in harmony with the main idea of torment.
— from Love's Final Victory Ultimate Universal Salvation on the Basis of Scripture and Reason by Horatio

442 Eating being one of the Indian’s most important occupations, the care of the meat, choice of the parts, and separation of the whole depending upon him, the station becomes at once of consequence and requires a determined man.
— from Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch by Edwin Thompson Denig

Some insisted that the government brought forward the proposed measure in order to shift the responsibility for the mutiny to other shoulders.
— from The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan, 1856-7-8 by George Dodd

For the purpose of determining the transition temperature, a number of methods have been employed, and the most important of these will be briefly described here.
— from The Phase Rule and Its Applications by Alexander Findlay

On May-day, the evergreens which had decked the cottage and the church, the castle and the cloister, gave way to garlands of such flowers as 102 the mellowing influences of the season had already called into their existence of beauty and perfume; troops of morris-dancers paraded the public way with their fantastic dresses, glittering blades, and intricate evolutions; feasting and wassail, without which even pleasure itself was then deemed incomplete, prevailed on every side; in the crowded city, or in the secluded valley; in the hut of the serf, or in the turreted keep of his warlike lord; in the gloom of the convent, or in the glitter of the court, the same feelings were excited, the same animation glowed in every countenance, the same triumphant demonstrations of joy hailed the glad harbinger of sunshine and of summer.
— from The Knights of England, France, and Scotland by Henry William Herbert