Its traditions still exert a power over little enlightened minds, over men so uneducated that they have not learned to break their oaths; and the various organizations might be turned to formidable account even yet if any rough-hewn man of genius arose to make use of them, for his instruments would be, for the most part, almost blind.
— from The Thirteen by Honoré de Balzac

Suddenly long white pencils of light evolve majestically out of the night's blackness, chasing away the shadows.
— from 'Neath Verdun, August-October, 1914 by Maurice Genevoix

[770] The obscure poem of Lycophrôn enumerates many of these dispersed and expatriated heroes, whose conquest of Troy was indeed a Kadmeian victory (according to the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the sufferings of the victor were little inferior to those of the vanquished.
— from History of Greece, Volume 01 (of 12) by George Grote

This rock is a very perilous one, lying eleven miles off the coast of Forfarshire, and, if tradition may be trusted, the first attempt to rob it of some of its awful power was made by an ancient abbot, who hung a bell over it, so that the winds and waves should cause it to ring, and thus warn mariners who were in danger.
— from Grace Darling, Heroine of the Farne Islands by Marianne Farningham

These two existences, which had heretofore traveled the pathway of life, each moving on in an independent course, passing through the various experiences of life and never once dreaming of what the end would really be, had emerged upon the common but ever blessed pathway of life to blend together into a single union the thought and intents of each other's hearts, wills, and affections, and thence plunge into the great land of utility.
— from News Writing The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories by M. Lyle (Matthew Lyle) Spencer