Responses which we may call sexual in view of results to which they may ultimately lead are thus often quite independent, and exist before they are drawn into the vortex of a complete and actually generative act.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

I believe they are just made up long after the occasion, just for the sake of the fun, or perhaps because some one is pleased with himself to have found a rhyme.
— from The Wizard's Son, Vol. 1 (of 3) by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Then followed from every point towards the north, an extending edge of a broad solid black sheet which rose with the regularity of a curtain, and began to send down a wind upon us which made us look anxiously to our ball-room bowlines.
— from Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American frigate by Nathaniel Parker Willis

The brevity of the time was still considered by the minority, and justly, as a mockery upon legislation; and their opinions to that effect were freely expressed.
— from Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850 by Thomas Hart Benton