In the year 1449, the English in Normandy, deprived of their great general, the Duke of Bedford, broke the truce with the French king, and took possession of a small town belonging to the Duke of Brittany.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

It was much to ponder over, and sufficed to entertain her for more than a year without becoming stale.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

An ether, absolutely dense, would put an infinitely more effectual stop to the progress of a star than would an ether of adamant or of iron.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

Spirt , or SPURT , “to put on a SPIRT ,” to make an increased exertion for a brief space, to attain one’s end; a nervous effort.
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and selling them—the last was the hardest of all—I might add eating, for I did taste.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Next, following the guidance of Nature, I shall treat of the framework and the kinds of wood used in it, showing how they may be procured of a sort that will not give way as time goes on.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio

He was immediately declared consul for the ensuing year, and the day of his inauguration resembled the pomp of a second triumph: his curule chair was borne aloft on the shoulders of captive Vandals; and the spoils of war, gold cups, and rich girdles, were profusely scattered among the populace.
— 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 the one having the greater power of action should tend to exclude the other from the consciousness.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

I don't like the way they smoke, and drink spirits, and marry late; or the way they are careless and indifferent to the point of allowing students to go hungry in their midst, and not paying their debts into "The Students' Aid Society."
— from The Bet, and other stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The word Haw-ho-noo was originally applied to America by the Iroquois Indians, and signifies the country upheld on the back of a turtle ; and my reasons for employing it on the present occasion are simply these—a portion of the volume is devoted to the traditionary lore of the Aborigines, and the whole has reference to my native land.
— from Haw-Ho-Noo; Or, Records of a Tourist by Charles Lanman

There is also the conscious realization that an action is being carried out which is forbidden to each individual and which can only be justified through the participation of all, so that no one is allowed to exclude himself from the killing and the feast.
— from Totem and Taboo Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics by Sigmund Freud

She confessed to Alice how she had employed and excited Robert Harding to act the part of a spy, to dodge the steps and watch the actions of her faithless husband, and of the unhappy object of his fatal passion.
— from Ellen Middleton—A Tale by Georgiana Fullerton

Had the call to think poetry, dream poetry, write poetry, plunge himself into poetry, come to him as part of a set task, had he been compelled, in the mood or out of the mood, to take up poetry as an occupation, he would have turned from it as the sea-loving swimmer turns from a stagnant pool.
— from In Good Company Some personal recollections of Swinburne, Lord Roberts, Watts-Dunton, Oscar Wilde Edward Whymper, S. J. Stone, Stephen Phillips by Coulson Kernahan

He was flung into prison, was treated with barbarous {194} rigors such as might have seemed in keeping with some story of Siberia; he was put through the hurried process of a sham trial in which the very forms of law were disregarded, and he was sentenced to death.
— from A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV by Justin H. (Justin Huntly) McCarthy

He very politely pointed out a seat to her, “If you will kindly sit down I will attend to you in a moment.”
— from Original Short Stories — Volume 11 by Guy de Maupassant

The gas itself, I was told at the front, was almost pure chloral fumes; but in the hospitals here they informed me that there were 171 indications of the presence of a small trace of bromine, though it has proved somewhat difficult to make an exact analysis.
— from The Russian Campaign, April to August, 1915 Being the Second Volume of "Field Notes from the Russian Front" by Stanley Washburn

If they do not kill me to-morrow, it will only be put off a short time.
— from The Strand Magazine, Vol. 01, January 1891 An Illustrated Monthly by Various

Shakespeare has drawn no more vivid picture of a single temperament.
— from The Adventures of Ulysses the Wanderer by Guy Thorne

yet, ought I, by anticipating the legal period of a sale, to destroy all my fond hopes?
— from The Poor Gentleman by Hendrik Conscience