Very naturally I began to wonder at all things, some for being so like and some for being so unlike the things in England—Dutch women with large umbrella hats shooting out half a yard before them, with a prodigal plumpness of petticoat behind—the women of Hamburg with caps plaited on the caul with silver, or gold, or both, bordered round with stiffened lace, which stood out before their eyes, but not lower, so that the eyes sparkled through it—the Hanoverian with the fore part of the head bare, then a stiff lace standing up like a wall perpendicular on the cap, and the cap behind tailed with an enormous quantity of ribbon which lies or tosses on the back:
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

From those walls, a shower of darts was incessantly poured on the heads of the assailants; but they were most dangerously annoyed by a fiery composition of sulphur and bitumen, which in Colchos might with some propriety be named the oil of Medea.
— 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

Bread must never be held flat on the palm of the hand and buttered in the air.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

He was the elder brother of the celebrated physician of that name.—B.] was voted out of the House for sitting any more this Parliament, and that Salloway was voted out likewise and sent to the Tower, during the pleasure of the House.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The anger of our governess was fully roused, and raising her in her arms, she carried her forcibly to the horse, placed her on it, held her firmly with one hand while she put the noose round her with the other, which, when drawn, secured her body; other nooses secured each ankle to rings in the floor, keeping her legs apart by the projection of the horse, and also forcing the knees to bend a little, by which the most complete exposure of the bottom, and, in fact, of all her private parts too, was obtained.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

Such tapwana , in which the magical action is expressed as a verb, while in the list of words we have mentioned the various parts of a garden or of fishing nets, or weapons or parts of the human body, are to be found in all classes of magic.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

“You will please deposit the boxes, fifty in number, which form the consignment, in the partially ruined building forming part of the house and marked ‘A’ on rough diagram enclosed.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

Turning, I pushed my way out of the crowding Beast People and went on alone up the slope towards the higher part of the headland.
— from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

But ignoring that pain will not prevent its having existed; it must remain for ever to trouble God's omniscience and be a part of that hell which the creation too truly involves.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

It is humor or fun such as one expects, let us say, from the peasants of Thomas Hardy, outside of Hardy's books.
— from 1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors by Mark Twain

Pass over the hose."
— from The Wreck of the Titan or, Futility by Morgan Robertson

[12] The old French garden as Maître Lenotre laid it out in Louis XIV.'s time at Versailles, St Germain, and St Cloud, was architectural in design, and directly connected, like Pliny's, with various parts of the house, by open halls, pavilions, and colonnades.
— from The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times by Alfred Biese

July 4.—Barnum’s circus was in town to-day and if Grandmother had not seen the pictures on the hand bills I think she would have let us go.
— from Village Life in America 1852-1872, Including the Period of the American Civil War As Told in the Diary of a School-Girl by Caroline Cowles Richards

p. 211 ) that Higgins, in enumerating his services to the Government, especially mentions the expense he had incurred in entertaining priests, and other persons of the higher class, for the purpose of obtaining intelligence.
— from Secret Service Under Pitt by William J. (William John) Fitz-Patrick

With well-feigned earnestness and sorrow, I exaggerated my pecuniary embarrassments, and pointed out to him the necessity of his providing for himself, suggesting, with tears in my eyes, that he must adopt some servile trade or calling, as his melancholy deficiencies precluded the possibility of his success in any other line.
— from The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales by Francis A. (Francis Alexander) Durivage

"That's Ossian Popham, principal prop of the House of Carey!"
— from Mother Carey's Chickens by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

The files of our Foreign Office papers yield touching proof of the hopes which the Cabinet cherished, even after Vienna was in Napoleon's hands.
— from The Life of Napoleon I (Complete) by J. Holland (John Holland) Rose

The most noted cases in which Mr. Arthur appeared in his early career as a lawyer, were the Lemmon slave case, and the suit of Lizzie Jennings, a fugitive slave, whose liberty he secured, and a colored lady, a superintendent of a Sunday-School for colored children, who was ejected from a Fourth Avenue horse-car, after her fare had been accepted by the conductor, because a white passenger objected to her presence.
— from Hidden Treasures; Or, Why Some Succeed While Others Fail by Harry A. Lewis

The question raised here several times by the brethren, and hereafter alluded to by the defendants in the case, concerning the illegality of the Council attempting then to try David Whitmer, John Whitmer, and William W. Phelps, constituting the local Presidency of the Church in Missouri, grew out of a misapprehension of a council provided for in the revelations of God for the trial of a President of the High Priesthood, who is also of the Presidency of the whole Church.
— from History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 3 by Smith, Joseph, Jr.

We are interested in these, for the purposes of this article, only as they made him known to Elizabeth Barrett, a young invalid in England, who at once felt the power of the high genius which had appeared in the literary world.
— from Home Life of Great Authors by Hattie Tyng Griswold