It was during this period, he learned from the answers she made to the inquisitive quaker, that her sole dependence was upon a relation, to whom she had a letter, and that she was a perfect stranger in the great city; circumstances on which he soon formed the project of her ruin.
— from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. (Tobias) Smollett

The indolent parent of high rank may, it is true, extort a show of respect from his child, and females on the continent are particularly subject to the views of their families, who never think of consulting their inclination, or providing for the comfort of the poor victims of their pride.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own.
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Conscious of his own virtue, say the philosophers, the sage elevates himself above every accident of life; and securely placed in the temple of wisdom, looks down on inferior mortals engaged in pursuit of honours, riches, reputation, and every frivolous enjoyment.
— from An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume

Thus, for reasons touching on distaste, regret, and shame commingled, he put off his return from day to day, and would have decided to put it off altogether if he could have found anywhere else the ready-made establishment which existed for him there.
— from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

And I wonder the more at this, because Posidonius, a pupil of his, records that Panaetius was still alive thirty years after he published those three books.
— from De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero

The rest of the army, broken and put to flight in this way without being seriously pursued or hurried, retired to the high ground and there took up its position.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

The king of the Vandals supported, by threats and solicitations, the fair pretensions of his Roman ally; and assigned, as one of the motives of the war, the refusal of the senate and people to acknowledge their lawful prince, and the unworthy preference which they had given to a stranger.
— 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

For the ease of the reader I have, with Miss Sullivan's consent, made the extracts run together continuously and supplied words of connection and the resulting necessary changes in syntax, and Miss Sullivan has made slight changes in the phrasing of her reports and also of her letters, which were carelessly written.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

PREPARATIONS OF Highly recommended by the Medical Profession As Wine in Bottles at 3s., 5s. & 9s.
— from John Bull's Womankind (Les Filles de John Bull) by Max O'Rell

When a husband has been away at sea, the prospect of his return makes the wife sing at her work, and take more pains or rather pleasure with it, because his eye is to see it.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Paul to the Colossians and Philemon by Alexander Maclaren

During my stay, he gave me singular proofs of his regard: he himself conducted me around the city, and to the palace of the viceroy; and more than once paid me a visit at my lodgings.
— from An Introduction to the Prose and Poetical Works of John Milton Comprising All the Autobiographic Passages in His Works, the More Explicit Presentations of His Ideas of True Liberty. by John Milton

I fancied that he was romancing, that he was playing the hypochondriac as part of his rôle of middle-age, and I thought it a pity.
— from Nights: Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

The truth seems to be that the Council's Resolution had impaled the Government on the horns of a very awkward dilemma, completely turning the tables on Ministers, whose design had been to compel the Belfast Unionists either to adopt, on the one hand, an attitude of apparent intolerance which would put them in the wrong in the eyes of the British public, or, on the other, to submit to the flagrant misrepresentation of their whole position which would be the outcome of a Nationalist meeting in the Ulster Hall presided over by the President of the illusory "Ulster Liberal Association," and with Lord Randolph Churchill's son as the protagonist of Home Rule.
— from Ulster's Stand For Union by Ronald McNeill

Nancy, who had been elected Form President on her return, took the difficulty to Miss Marlowe and she came out of the study with a beaming face.
— from Judy of York Hill by Ethel Hume Bennett

"Well, Mr. Wilton," he said to that young officer, proud of his responsibilities, "you keep a good lookout.
— from For Love of Country: A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution by Cyrus Townsend Brady

“Well, Mr Varne, at that rate there’s a new line in front of you, and no mistake, and it ought to be a paying one,” he rejoined.
— from The Heath Hover Mystery by Bertram Mitford