Perpetual fretting at length threw Madame Moritz into a decline, which at first increased her irritability, but she is now at peace for ever.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The king's message was, that he required the Icelanders to adopt the laws which he had set in Norway, also to pay him thane-tax and nose-tax (1); namely, a penny for every nose, and the penny at the rate of ten pennies
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

§ v. This is not a pretext for evading the subject, but merely a request for lenient judgement, that our discourse, looking as it were for a haven and place of refuge, may rise to the difficulty with greater confidence basing itself on probability.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

In China the dragon, except as noted below, is not a power for evil, but a beneficent being producing rain and representing the fecundating principle in nature.
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

He names a price for every office paid; He saith, our warres thrive ill, because delai'd; That offices are entail'd, and that there are Perpetuities of them, lasting as farre 125 As the last day; And that great officers, Doe with the Pirates share, and Dunkirkers.
— from The Poems of John Donne, Volume 1 (of 2) Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts by John Donne

By now the sun was up and she saw before her a splendid building, and gathered below the building all the Senate of Rome in their robes, and many knights on horses, and nobles, and princes from every country with their retinues—a very wonderful and gallant sight.
— from Pearl-Maiden: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

Grey then moved northwards, and provisions for eight days were prepared for a raid against O’Reilly, to be used otherwise by the Deputy in case O’Reilly should make timely submission.
— from Ireland under the Tudors, with a Succinct Account of the Earlier History. Vol. 1 (of 3) by Richard Bagwell

The mark is that of Abraham Wolfgang, which name is not a pseudonym for Elzevir.
— from Books and Bookmen by Andrew Lang

And, unhappily, there seems to be very nearly a public for each; unhappily the deeply bitten prejudices of men, the secretive hopes of women, control to an amazing degree their opinions of the one medium--the written story--that should be kept superior to all pettiness as a resource solely of alleviation.
— from Hugh Walpole: An Appreciation by Joseph Hergesheimer

There were no awkward pauses, for, excepting one or two slips of tongue, Haney rose to the occasion.
— from Money Magic: A Novel by Hamlin Garland

Nests are placed from eight to 70 feet high (averaging 24 feet) in forks, crotches, and on horizontal limbs of elm, maple, osage orange, cottonwood, and ash.
— from The Breeding Birds of Kansas by Richard F. Johnston

Miss Jean took up her work and threaded her needle, and prepared for enjoyment, for to work and be read to, or hear music played to you was one of her beatitudes; but by-and-by the table-cover fell upon her knees again, and she turned her face towards the musician in a growing ecstacy of attention.
— from It was a Lover and His Lass by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Neatness "A place for everything and everything in place" should be the real key to find things in your trunk.
— from Camping For Boys by H. W. (Henry William) Gibson

The size of the cylinders, 5 by 7 inches, was adopted not only because the Curtiss and the Hall-Scott Companies, the largest producers of aviation engines in the United States, had had experience with engines of this size, but also because a new and promising French engine, the Lorraine-Dietrich, had just made its appearance in experimental form, and it was an engine approximately of that size.
— from America's Munitions 1917-1918 by Benedict Crowell

[Granted, none better.] ‘It is true he was not actuated by an envious hatred of greatness’—[so that to stigmatise servility and corruption does not always proceed from envy and a love of mischief]—‘he was not at all likely, had he lived in our time, to be an orator in Spa-fields or the editor of a seditious Sunday newspaper’—[To have delivered Mr. Coleridge’s Conciones ad Populum , or to have written Mr. Southey’s Wat
— from The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12) by William Hazlitt