Now, as these negotiations with the Court Theatre lasted a very long time, and involved a large number of contributions from me, I often got into the most extraordinary fixes simply owing to the fact that I was now once more a prisoner in my room, and had been so for some time, and therefore knew nothing of what was going on in Paris.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

Not on my account!" Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity most—the bruises or the dirt.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

The chief thing in his eyes was not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor manures, nor special plows, but that most important agent by which nitrogen, oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective—the peasant laborer.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Being in need of money, and preferring to get rid of my carriage than of anything else, I announced it for sale at the price of three hundred and fifty Roman crowns.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Line 108 has special reference to the tortures inflicted upon the natives of Mexico and Peru by the avaricious Spanish conquerors.
— from The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems by Alexander Pope

The Island is a pleasant Intermixture of Hill and Valley; the Hills spread with Palms, Coco-Nuts, and Cotton-Trees, with Numbers of Monkeys and Parrots among them; the Valleys with fruitful Plantations of Yamms, Kulalu, Papas , Variety of Sallating, Ananas , or Pine-Apples, Guavas, Plantanes, Bonanas, Manyocos , and Indian Corn; with Fowls, Guinea Hens, Muscovy Ducks, Goats, Hogs, Turkies, and wild Beefs, with each a little Village of Negroes, who, under the Direction of their several Masters, manage the Cultivation, and exchange or sell them for Money, much after the same Rates with the People of St. Thome .
— from A General History of the Pyrates: from their first rise and settlement in the island of Providence, to the present time by Daniel Defoe

It was a pauper who lay there; no one made a pretence of mourning for him; he had neither friends nor kindred—there was no one to follow him to the grave.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

The need of making a particular word the subject of the sentence will often, as in these examples, determine which voice is to be used.
— from The Elements of Style by William Strunk

But there is something so benign and healing in the general voice of humanity that, maugre all our regulations to prevent it, the simple name of man applied properly, never fails to work a salutary effect.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

The author of Tout Bas and of Presque, like any other person, could have arranged his meditations in dialogues, order his sentiments into chapters divided at random, insinuate through pseudo-living characters a bit of gesticulating life and have them express, by the act of kneeling on the flag-stones of some familiar church, the virtue of an unrecognized creed: in short, write "the novel of mysticism" and popularize the practice of mental prayer for the "literary journals.
— from The Book of Masks by Remy de Gourmont

Herbert, will you think me a miserably weak wretch if I tell you that that night was a night of mental and physical horrors?
— from Capitola the Madcap by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

—The abolition of 36 the monarchy and the establishment of the republic witnessed the distribution of the powers of government formerly exercised by the king among a number of magistrates and public officers.
— from The Trial of Jesus from a Lawyer's Standpoint, Vol. 2 (of 2) The Roman Trial by Walter M. (Walter Marion) Chandler

It denied woman not only mental and physical, but moral equality with man, and besmirched the very fountain and purpose of her being with a shameful stain.
— from The Secret Life: Being the Book of a Heretic by Elizabeth Bisland

but I may catch the prayers; it is worth trying for, however; and as I used to think nothing of making a push, for the sake of getting an hour to gamble, I need not grudge to take a little pains extraordinary to serve God.
— from The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, and Other Tales by Hannah More

It was indeed a night of meditation and prayer and we missed you all so much.
— from The Unfolding Destiny of the British Bahá'í Community : the Messages from the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith to the Bahá'ís of the British Isles by Effendi Shoghi

“Louis XIV. came very near marrying the niece of Mazarin, a parvenu.”
— from Ursula by Honoré de Balzac

The oldest machine in existence, p. 43—The relation of muscle to machinery, p. 44—How muscular energy is applied, p. 44—The two types of muscles, p. 45—How the nerve-telegraph controls the muscles, p. 47—The nature of muscular action, p. 49 —Applications of muscular energy, p. 52—The development of the knife and saw, p. 53—The wheel and axle, p. 55—Modified levers, p. 57—Domesticated animals, p. 59—Early application of horse-power, p. 60—The horse-power as the standard of the world's work, p. 61.
— from Every-day Science: Volume 6. The Conquest of Nature by Edward Huntington Williams

It proved, on examination, that every twig had on the leeward side a dense row of miniature fronds or fern-leaves executed in snow, with a sharply defined central nerve, or midrib, and perfect ramification, tapering to a point, and varying in length from half an inch to three inches.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 52, February, 1862 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various