No event was ever so dignified that it required an artificial attempt at speech making.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

Under the trees upon the hill it is yourselves whom you see walking, full of hopes and dreams, glowing with conscious power, and "nourishing a youth sublime;" and in this familiar temple, which surely has never echoed with eloquence so fervid and inspiring as that of your commencement orations, it is not yonder youths in the galleries who, as they fondly believe, are whispering to yonder maids; it is your younger selves who, in the days that are no more, are murmuring to the fairest mothers and grandmothers of those maids.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

No engineer was ever sleepy or careless when his heart was in a race.
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver, had consisted of a profuse bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else would eat; so there was a great deal of meekness and self-devotion in her voluntarily remaining under Mr. Bumble's heavy accusation.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver had consisted in a profuse bestowal upon him, of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else would eat; so that there was a great deal of meekness and self-devotion in her voluntarily remaining under Mr. Bumble's heavy accusation, of which, to do her justice, she was wholly innocent in thought, word, or deed.
— from Bentley's Miscellany, Volume I by Various

Except in numbers, the armies of the North and the South were upon an equality, and in all the great contests, the numbers engaged were equal substantially.
— from Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 by George S. (George Sewall) Boutwell

The time shall come when, free as seas or wind, Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind, Whole nations enter with each swelling tide, And seas but join the regions they divide; Earth's distant ends our glory shall behold, And the new world launch forth to seek the old.
— from The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 by Alexander Pope

Then my men came and rid the standard of its burden, not easily, while Ealhstan stood with his arm on my shoulder, looking white and scared: for that had been the greatest danger he had seen that day, as he told me, which, indeed, it must have been, for else he had never changed countenance.
— from A Thane of Wessex Being a Story of the Great Viking Raids into Somerset by Charles W. (Charles Watts) Whistler

A very long time ago, when the climate of the 65 whole of Northern Europe was extremely severe, and when great glaciers descended from the mountains into the plains, so that the aspect of the country was somewhat similar to that of Greenland at the present day, arctic plants and animals came down from their northern home, and flourished abundantly.
— from The Story of the Hills: A Book About Mountains for General Readers. by H. N. (Henry Neville) Hutchinson

Farther than feet of chamois fall, Free as the generous air, Strains nobler far than clarion call Wake freedom's welcome, where [Pg 61] Minerva's silver sandals still Are loosed, and not effete; Where echoes still my day-dreams thrill, Woke by her fancied feet.
— from Poems by Mary Baker Eddy

She looked up into the saint's wan face, and fancied that no eyes were ever so piteous, no brow ever so laden with the deep suffering of compassion.
— from Nina Balatka by Anthony Trollope