I must confess I’ve had to keep my tongue wagging on your behalf; but now I believe they’ve agreed, on condition you hand over the printing press and all the papers, of course.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common-sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

He may be said to have given us the lead in writing patriotic poems and songs.
— from My Reminiscences by Rabindranath Tagore

Porthos had, in fact, been involved in a dispute with the Bishop of Noyon in regard to the Pierrefonds property, which adjoined his own, and weary at length of a legal controversy which was beyond his comprehension, he put an end to it by purchasing Pierrefonds and added that name to his others.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

Much of the work on which Giorgione's immediate fame depended, work done for instantaneous effect, in all probability passed away almost within his own age, like the frescoes on the facade of the fondaco dei Tedeschi at Venice, some crimson traces of which, however, still give a strange additional touch of splendour to the scene of the Rialto.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

There stood one in physical proportions and stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a prodigy.”
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

[Pg 264] Thirdly, If the Colours made by a Prism placed at the entrance of a Beam of Light into a darken'd Room be successively cast on a second Prism placed at a greater distance from the former, in such manner that they are all alike incident upon it, the second Prism may be so inclined to the incident Rays, that those which are of a blue Colour shall be all reflected by it, and yet those of a red Colour pretty copiously transmitted.
— from Opticks Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton

The composite Tantra dogmas fed the fancy and stimulated {196} the imagination, filling them with pictures of life, past, present and future.
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis

This commonwealth's capitol's corridors view, So thronged with a hungry and indolent crew Of clerks, pages, porters and all attaches Whom rascals appoint and the populace pays That a cat cannot slip through the thicket of shins Nor hear its own shriek for the noise of their chins.
— from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

For fully five minutes all present preserved a complete silence—the only sound audible being that of the blackbird’s beak against the wooden floor of the cage as the creature fished for grains of corn.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

Such zeal of proselytism actuates that sect, that its missionaries have penetrated into every nation of the globe, and, in one sense, there is a Popish-plot perpetually carrying on against all states, Protestant, Pagan, and Mahometan."
— from The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 10 by John Dryden

This introduction did not serve the boy so much as might have been expected; there was nothing particular in the letter of the parish priest, and the curate was but a curate—no formidable personage in any church where the good-will of the rector has not been already secured.
— from The Poor Scholar Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of William Carleton, Volume Three by William Carleton

When she had a heap of loose papers piled against the dais she pitched the remainder of the book out of the window, knelt and ignited the crumpled heap.
— from Plague of Pythons by Frederik Pohl

Dennison punched PM, and they swung left.
— from Forward, Children! by Paul Alexander Bartlett

Merely the ordinary billing in front of the picture playhouses and on the display boards, was not enough.
— from Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures; Or, Helping the Dormitory Fund by Alice B. Emerson

In this, though not in his economic teaching in general, Ruskin falls under the sentimental glamour of popular phrases, and loses touch with reality.
— from The Harvest of Ruskin by John W. (John William) Graham

I, No. 17, August 13, 1842, of The Wasp , a Mormon paper published at Nauvoo, Ill., occurs the first, as it is by far the best, of all early accounts of the geyser regions prior to 1870.
— from The Yellowstone National Park: Historical and Descriptive by Hiram Martin Chittenden

Could not some painter give an interview between the gallant captain of Lucas's, with his hat cocked, and his lace, and his face too, a trifle tarnished with drink, and that poet, that philosopher, pale, proud, and poor, his friend and monitor of schooldays, of all days?
— from Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges by William Makepeace Thackeray

{18} LE BONHEUR DE CE MONDE (Copie d’un sonnet composé par Plantin au XVI e siècle.)
— from Bramble Brae by Robert Bridges

(1874-1875) Let no susceptibilities, puritan, protestant, anglican, or other, be startled if we observe that Rome is, and may long be, in some important respects, the centre of the Christian world.
— from The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 2 (of 3) 1859-1880 by John Morley