Three shelves of unpainted wood stood against the wall, facing the door, and each shelf was compactly filled with well-bound books, and on the top rested a dozen magazines and papers.
— from The Boy Patrol on Guard by Edward Sylvester Ellis

This is really a delicate matter, and perhaps it is brutal to allude to it at all.
— from Backlog Studies by Charles Dudley Warner

Human conduct does not lend itself to analysis as readily as do mathematical and physical phenomena.
— from Sound Military Decision by Naval War College (U.S.)

I lay ill in a hut there once for three months, and never had a doctor near me; a woman just physicked me with roots, and did me a power of good.
— from The White Hecatomb, and Other Stories by W. C. (William Charles) Scully

First, there was Grenier, away in the North, robbing a dead man and plotting desolation to some girl.
— from The King of Diamonds: A Tale of Mystery and Adventure by Louis Tracy

The mischievous depreciation of matter (and the consequent disdain of materialism) and its antithesis to "spirit" is partly due to the use of such phrases as "raw" and "dead" matter, and partly to the deep-rooted mysticism we have inherited from barbaric ancestors, and find it hard to shake off.
— from The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy by Ernst Haeckel

Sternly and resolutely he cuts away the veins and arteries of the Rebellion itself, as he tears up railroads and demolishes mills and public buildings.
— from Our Standard-Bearer; Or, The Life of General Uysses S. Grant by Oliver Optic

Looking at the marquis, surrounded by men who were bold enough, fanatical enough, and sufficiently long-headed as to the future to give battle to a victorious Republic in the hope of restoring a dead monarchy, a proscribed religion, fugitive princes, and lost privileges, “He,” thought she, “has no less an aim than the others; clinging to those fragments, he wants to make a future from the past.”
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

In the present volume, the great Archbishop of England presents himself in that which is his special character and vocation, to wit, as the defender of the rights and doctrines maintained and promulgated by Pius IX.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873 A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science by Various