"And indeed what prevents our asserting that people in prison under sentence of death are not punished till their heads are cut off, or that the person who has taken hemlock, and walks about till he feels it is getting into his legs, suffers not at all till he is deprived of sensation by the freezing and curdling of his blood, if we consider the last moment of punishment all the punishment, and ignore all the intermediate sufferings and fears and anxiety and remorse, the 343 destiny of every guilty wretch?
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

If the chicken picks up some of the grains, they regard it as a most favourable omen; but, if not, their hearts are filled with dread of the continued anger of the goddess.
— from Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston

We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him."
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

At five minutes before eleven I perceived unequivocal signs of the mesmeric influence.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

Therefore, I was not only odd-boy about the forge, but if any neighbor happened to want an extra boy to frighten birds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, I was favored with the employment.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

that as regards the proper regulation of resentment, Common Sense can only be saved from inconsistency or hopeless vagueness by adopting the ‘interest of society’ as the ultimate standard: and in the same way we cannot definitely distinguish Courage from Foolhardiness except by a reference to the probable tendency of the daring act to promote the wellbeing of the agent or of others, or to some definite rule of duty prescribed under some other notion.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Dr. Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of Overbury.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

It had a prosperous look, and we saw not a trace of the old timbered houses with projecting upper stories of which Dr. Johnson writes.
— from Our Journey to the Hebrides by Joseph Pennell

[113] BUT I shall no longer detain my Reader from his expected entertainment, in a brief account of the Tryals, which have passed upon some of the Malefactors, lately Executed at Salem , for the Witchcrafts whereof they stood 60 convicted.
— from The Witchcraft Delusion in New England: Its Rise, Progress, and Termination (Vol. 3 of 3) by Robert Calef

It was an odd creature perched upon stilts; one of those persons called the stilt-walkers.
— from John Enderby by Gilbert Parker

Consequently, I should be under no obligation to undertake the cause of the poor university scholar of the Malade Imaginaire , and defend his famous reply: " Opium facit dormire quia est in eo virtus dormitiva " ("opium puts people to sleep because it has the sleep-producing virtue or property").
— from Mysterious Psychic Forces An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants by Camille Flammarion

After disposing of our bit of deerskin we huddled down on the floor with our heads pillowed upon sticks of wood, as was our custom, for a sixth night, after discussing again the probable fate of the Eskimos.
— from The Long Labrador Trail by Dillon Wallace

I dare say I'll manage to pull up sooner or later, but every interest in which I am heavily involved has been more or less affected by the condition of the country.
— from The Builders by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Suddenly, he darted forward and picked up something off the ground.
— from Fenn Masterson's Discovery; or, The Darewell Chums on a Cruise by Allen Chapman