Collective sentiments can just as well become incarnate in persons or formulæ: some formulæ are flags, while there are persons, either real or mythical, who are symbols.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

Persistent explorers ranged over mile upon mile of desolate country in quest of a gigantic waterfall, a marvellous cañon, and a fertile plateau that was said to be inhabited by an aboriginal race of pigmies.
— from The Old Man of the Mountain by Herbert Strang

Our photograph shows the impressive profile of the house, all under one great gable roof, the porch end resting on massive square piers.
— from Colonial Homes in North Carolina by John V. Allcott

We must despair to find paintings exhibiting richer or more varied ornaments, accessaries more beautifully adapted, or more majestic draperies.
— from The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 5 (of 6) From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century by Luigi Lanzi

If made without reducing the thickness of the ends it is a bad joint for electrical work, as it prevents even running of machinery to which it is applied.
— from The Standard Electrical Dictionary A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice of Electrical Engineering by T. O'Conor (Thomas O'Conor) Sloane

In the interior every visitor is to pray eight rikats, or make sixteen prostrations; in every corner of it two rikats: but it may easily be conceived how these prayers are performed, and that while one is bowing down, another walks over him.
— from Travels in Arabia; comprehending an account of those territories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans regard as sacred by John Lewis Burckhardt

After nearly six months of close investment and almost continuous bombardment, the fortress still held at bay an enemy who had proved himself, not only before the defences of Port Arthur, but in many a stricken field beside, to possess fighting qualities rarely equalled and never surpassed in the world's history of warfare—an enemy, too, who possessed every resource of military science, and who had studied in the best military schools.
— from The Japan-Russia War: An Illustrated History of the War in the Far East by Sydney Tyler

I asked, after a pause, during which his pitying eye rested on me drearily.
— from Sea and Shore A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" by Catherine A. (Catherine Ann) Warfield

10 First—if only for a fraction of a second—there is a sense of being checked, or baffled, or even stupefied, or possibly even repelled or menaced, as though something were affecting us which we could not receive, or grasp, or stand up to.
— from Oxford Lectures on Poetry by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley