An’ th’ cottage all smelt o’ nice, clean hot bakin’ an’ there was a good fire, an’ they just shouted for joy.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

A dagger terminated the crimes of Domitian; but the prudence of Nerva confirmed his acts, which, in the joy of their deliverance, had been rescinded by an indignant senate.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub Thus answered:—"Leader of those armies bright Which, but th' Omnipotent, none could have foiled!
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

But in eternity there is no such thing as when, before, or after; hence it follows solely from the perfection of God, that God never can decree, or never could have decreed anything but what is; that God did not exist before his decrees, and would not exist without them.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door.
— from The Tragedy of King Lear by William Shakespeare

And sometimes, while the old nurse cons Her book, they steal across the square, And launch their paper navies where Huge Triton writhes in greenish bronze.
— from Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

A day being appointed for confirming a great number of new converts, he ordered them to assemble in a new open plain, near the river Bourde.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

Is it "created by the slow action of natural causes?" How comes it to belong, then, to the rudest aboriginal equally with the most civilized and cultivated?
— 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

The true form of human society cannot be determined until the following question has been solved:— Property not being our natural condition, how did it gain a foothold?
— from What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government by P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph) Proudhon

These views are met with only among nations of a more matured civilization, to whom, by philosophic culture, the necessity of a knowledge of natural causes has become apparent; and even among these, only individual and specially gifted natures can be expected to have recognized the origin of the world of phenomena, as well as its course of development, as the necessary consequences of mechanical, naturally active causes.
— from The History of Creation, Vol. 1 (of 2) Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes by Ernst Haeckel

Millicent Leslie stood out on the terrace of the old North Country hall, where, the year before, she had first met her husband.
— from Thurston of Orchard Valley by Harold Bindloss

Horace Greeley in referring to the co-incidence, said there was as much probability of a bushel of type flung into the street arranging themselves so as to print the Declaration of Independence, as there was of Jefferson and Adams expiring on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of that instrument; and yet one alternative of the contingency happened and the other never can happen.
— from Thomas Jefferson, a Character Sketch by Edward Sylvester Ellis

Two other noteworthy cases have to be recorded, but they shall form the subject of the ensuing chapters.
— from Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life by Catherine Cooper Hopley

Since they resolved to obey Instruction carried by majority last Thursday, Prince Arthur shakes his head; Edward Stanhope shows this is quite another pair of sleeves; whilst Joseph , back bronzed from breezy Bahamas, bluntly says he will oppose new Clause Henry Fowler has promised to bring in.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, December 2, 1893 by Various

He said it reminded him of an obscure lady who took it into her head to converse on European affairs with an accomplished French gentleman, and railed on Napoleon, calling him the curse of mankind, a murderer and monster.
— from The Second War with England, Vol. 1 of 2 by Joel Tyler Headley

Ond ni chydsyniai hi a’i gais ar un cyfrif; ond bod braiđ yn bendrist oherwyđ iđo wybod ei henw.
— from Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Volume 1 of 2) by Rhys, John, Sir

Ol' Nick Cragg, his father afore him, sold a lot of it, they say, and when he died he left half his ready money an' all his land to Hezekiah—thet's Ol' Swallertail—an' the other half o' his money to his second son, Peter."
— from Mary Louise in the Country by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

Take for example this:— 'One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me (Lady B.) so indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a determined calmness, that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him.
— from Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy by Harriet Beecher Stowe