It is nearly always foggy at Novastoshnah, except when the sun comes out and makes everything look all pearly and rainbow-colored for a little while.
— from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

He left me at midnight, saying that he could not declare himself thoroughly pleased unless I promised to sup with him the next evening with the same guests.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

My mother, being at once highly accomplished, well informed, and fond of employment, took the whole charge of our education on herself, with the exception of Latin—which my father undertook to teach us—so that we never even went to school; and, as there was no society in the neighbourhood, our only intercourse with the world consisted in a stately tea-party, now and then, with the principal farmers and tradespeople of the vicinity (just to avoid being stigmatized as too proud to consort with our neighbours), and an annual visit to our paternal grandfather’s; where himself, our kind grandmamma, a maiden aunt, and two or three elderly ladies and gentlemen, were the only persons we ever saw.
— from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

But great men are some ways to be excused, the meaner sort have no evasion why they should not be counted mad.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

But Firdausi, Cudworth and other authors declare that neither they nor any other nation ever worshiped the sun, but merely an imaginary Deity supposed to reside in the sun.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

Thus Jupiter began: thus the goddess, daughter of Saturn, returned with looks cast down: 'Even because this thy will, great Jupiter, is known to me for thine, have I left, though loth, Turnus alone on earth; nor else wouldst thou see me now, alone on this skyey seat, enduring good and bad; but girt in flame I were standing by their very lines, and dragging the Teucrians into the deadly battle.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

The President was not equipped with this simple and usual artfulness.
— from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes

And on the following November Eve when the síd of Cruachan was again open, ‘the men of Connaught and the black hosts of exile’ under Ailill and Medb plundered it, taking away from it the crown of Briun out of the well.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

the Thanet abutteth, which Ptolomie calleth Toliapis, other Athanatos, bicause serpents are supposed not to liue in the same, howbeit sith it is not enuironed with the sea, it is not to be dealt withall as an Iland in this place, albeit I will not let to borow of my determination, and describe it as I go, bicause it is so fruitfull.
— from Chronicles (1 of 6): The Description of Britaine by William Harrison

In a comic opera, of course, one need not read up for examinations; yet Scribe’s Dame Blanche , bearing to the Monastery and Guy Mannering much the same relation as Thackeray’s Rebecca and Rowena to Ivanhoe , should not have opened with a rustic Scots couple hard up for a godfather to their child, nor ended with the sale of an estate that carried with it a peerage and a seat in Parliament.
— from Bonnie Scotland Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope Moncrieff by A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope) Moncrieff

o the rest, who declared each according to his opinion, the vazír noticing each with the same word.
— from Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers by W. A. (William Alexander) Clouston

Since, as a boy, he had attended the Christmas festivities of the Old Church Sunday-school at Parthenon, and got highly colored candy in a net bag, his holidays had been celebrated by buying himself plum pudding at lonely Christmas dinners at large cheap restaurants, where there was no one to wish him "Merry Christmas" except his waiter, whom he would quite probably never see again, nor ever wish to see.
— from Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man by Sinclair Lewis

The WATER SNAKE is much like the Rattle Snake in shape and size, but is not endowed with the same venomous powers, being quite harmless.
— from Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768 by Jonathan Carver

There is no evidence whatever that such a person exercised any such influence on Paul.(2)
— from Supernatural Religion, Vol. 3 (of 3) An Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation by Walter Richard Cassels

They have climbed upon the dizzy heights of thought, and out on their verge; and there they stand, hesitating and shivering, like naked men on Alpine precipices, with no eagle wings to spread and soar away towards the Eternal Truth; and not daring to take the awful plunge before them.
— from Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer by Jesse Henry Jones

These latter processes belong to agriculture and not to geography, and, therefore, are not embraced within the scope of the present subject.
— from Man and Nature; Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action by George P. (George Perkins) Marsh