Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness which, for a very short time, had the power of creating any return.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

From Nice to Jerusalem, the western countries of Asia were a scene of foreign and domestic hostility; and the shepherds of Palestine, who held a precarious sway on a doubtful frontier, had neither leisure nor capacity to await the slow profits of commercial and religious freedom.
— 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

When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a problem of carelessness and recklessness.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Some days after—though what day it was I really forget, but one day in the week assuredly—I had just seated myself, at the piano of course; and Ritter, the worthy Holzbeisser, was sitting beside me.
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

We are met here to-day for the purpose of choosing a representative in the room of our late—’ Here the mayor was interrupted by a voice in the crowd.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

The Old World (Europe and Asia) is the region of the poetry of concrete and real things,—the past, the esthetic, palaces, etiquette, the literature of war and love, the mythological gods, and the myths anyhow.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

At present the five chief component peoples of China are represented in the striped national flag (from the top downward) by red (Manchus), yellow (Chinese), blue (Mongolians), white (Mohammedans), and black (Tibetans).
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

Love, the common passion, in which chance and sensation take place of choice and reason, is in some degree, felt by the mass of mankind; for it is not necessary to speak, at present, of the emotions that rise above or sink below love.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

The mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of those stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy ignorance the colonies of the Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage and Rome: the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in oblivion; and the history of the world before Mahomet was reduced to a short legend of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the Persian kings.
— 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

And such is doubtless the opinion of the great majority of people of culture and refinement, especially those of a jovial or mercurial temperament.
— from Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery by Robert Means Lawrence

Nature denied Tolstoy the power of constructing a Rudin or a Bazarov.
— from Turgenev: A Study by Edward Garnett

Republicanism is a mockery and a lie if it can assume to administer this government in the name of freedom, and yet sanction, as this act will, the disfranchisement of a large, if not the largest, part of the loyal population of the rebel States on the pretext of color and race."
— from History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States by William Horatio Barnes

Where do you lift four thousand pounds of car aimed right at you?
— from Vigorish by John Berryman

Hepburn performed his mission with a party of cavalry, and reported that although the castle was dilapidated it was a place of strength, and that it could be held by a resolute garrison; whereupon Munro with 500 men of his regiment was ordered to occupy it.
— from The Lion of the North: A Tale of the Times of Gustavus Adolphus by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

To be welcome in the society of persons of the better sort, who are always persons of culture and refinement, we must ourselves be persons of culture and refinement, i.e. , we must know and practise the usages that obtain in refined society, and have some acquaintance with letters and art.
— from The Mentor A little book for the guidance of such men and boys as would appear to advantage in the society of persons of the better sort by Alfred Ayres

Next civil suit,—demand on the wife's part Of separation from the husband's bed On plea of cruelty and risk to life— Claims restitution of the dowry paid, Immunity from paying any more: This second, the Vicegerent has to judge.
— from The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning Cambridge Edition by Robert Browning

And nothing could be more fitting than that an accomplishment which dims the glory of all previous martial deeds, which marks the highest point of courage and resolution reached by Britain in all her wars, should have been carried through by British, Irish, and Colonial troops, representatives of the whole empire under the guidance and protecting guard, of the British fleet.
— from Winning a Cause: World War Stories by John G. (John Gilbert) Thompson

Near the edge of the Plateau the rainfall averages 16 inches in the province of Chihlí, and rather more in Shansí and Shantung, where moisture is attracted by the mountains.
— from The Middle Kingdom, Volume 1 (of 2) A Survey of the Geography, Government, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese Empire and its Inhabitants by S. Wells (Samuel Wells) Williams

We have perfectly good evidence of the law of "unitary response to multiple stimuli" from the physiological study of reflex action; and we have perfectly good anatomical evidence of the convergence and divergence of neural paths of connection, as required by the law of combination.
— from Psychology: A Study Of Mental Life by Robert Sessions Woodworth