The arrows used for this purpose are usually longer and heavier than the ordinary ones, having carved wooden heads and being artistically painted.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

Yet here I am, and here I will remain; to this place an unfortunate love, and my cruel relations, have condemned me.
— from Letters of Abelard and Heloise To which is prefix'd a particular account of their lives, amours, and misfortunes by Héloïse

Cato says that the profits of agriculture are particularly pious or just ( maximeque pius quaestus ), and according to Varro the old Romans "called the same earth Mother and Ceres, and thought that they who cultivated it led a pious and useful life, and that they alone were left of the race of King Saturn.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

“We were talking rather loud; the people around us looked at us in surprise.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

What I gathered from that old man was this: That at one time countless unrequited passions and unsatisfied longings and lurid flames of wild blazing pleasure raged within that palace, and that the curse of all the heart-aches and blasted hopes had made its every stone thirsty and hungry, eager to swallow up like a famished ogress any living man who might chance to approach.
— from The Hungry Stones, and Other Stories by Rabindranath Tagore

It seems, in fact, as though there existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies, which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Both productive and unproductive labourers, and those who do not labour at all, are all equally maintained by the annual produce of the land and labour of the country.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Had I used half as much prudence to have looked into my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have done and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thriving circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its common hazards, to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular misfortunes to myself.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

For more than twenty years we have led peaceful and useful lives, and we hoped that our past was forever buried.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

She informed her that she lived on the country, and ought to work for her living honestly, instead of passing a useless life, and eating the bread of idleness in the shape of tithes.
— from Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

Such simple truth of purpose, and unaffected love, and confidence in her Lord, as dwelt in her dear departing spirit, I have seldom seen, and those who knew her intimately will not think I say too much.
— from Journal of a Residence at Bagdad During the Years 1830 and 1831 by Anthony Norris Groves

Bow paddles are usually longer and narrower in the blade than stern paddles ( Fig. 101 ).
— from Boat-Building and Boating by Daniel Carter Beard

The bicycles had been put away under lock and key, and the crowd gradually dispersed.
— from Across Asia on a Bicycle The Journey of Two American Students from Constantinople to Peking by Thomas Gaskell Allen

From his personal accounts we read that the good Dominie found his life among the 'wilden' as full of peril and unceasing labor as that of his flock; for he undertook not only the guidance of his own people, but the enlightenment and conversion of the Indians.
— from Ocean to Ocean on Horseback Being the Story of a Tour in the Saddle from the Atlantic to the Pacific; with Especial Reference to the Early History and Development of Cities and Towns Along the Route; and Regions Traversed Beyond the Mississippi; Together with Incidents, Anecdotes and Adventures of the Journey by Willard W. Glazier

Bennett Tyler , who was still a Trustee, although he had resigned his position as president, a man of commanding dignity of presence, an unrivaled logician, and one of the best pulpit orators it has ever been the good fortune of the writer to listen to.
— from The History of Dartmouth College by Baxter Perry Smith

Perhaps some future bride is even now waiting for you, with dim presentiments and undefined longings, at the Serpent's Bath."
— from Hyperion by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow