Now red and glorious, and now gray and dim, Now sad as summer, barren in its heat? One seems to see at once rush through the night The smoke and turmoil from a burning site Of some great town in fiery grasp complete.
— from Poems by Victor Hugo

They also teach that men ought to live simply, using only plain food in moderate quantities, wearing nothing but a cloak, and despising riches, and glory, and nobleness of birth; accordingly some of them feed upon nothing beyond herbs and cold water, living in any shelter that they can find, or in tubs as Diogenes did; for he used to say that it was the peculiar property of the Gods to want nothing, and that, therefore, when a man wished for nothing he was like the Gods.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

Mr. Waterhouse has remarked that, when a member belonging to one group of animals exhibits an affinity to a quite distinct group, this affinity in most cases is general and not special: thus, according to Mr. Waterhouse, of all Rodents, the bizcacha is most nearly related to Marsupials; but in the points in which it approaches this order, its relations are general, and not to any one marsupial species more than to another.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

Colonel Sutter put a mill on the little stream in that farm and one day his little girl brought some wet sand from the raceway of the mill into the house and placed it before the fire to dry, and as that sand was falling through the little girl's fingers a visitor saw the first shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered in California; and the man who wanted the gold had sold this ranch and gone away, never to return.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

Never on earthly anvil Did such rare armor gleam; And never did such gallant steeds Drink of an earthly stream.
— from Lays of Ancient Rome by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron

It had, indeed, in a superlative degree, the two principal ingredients which serve to recommend all great and noble designs of this nature; for it required an immoderate expense to execute, and a vast length of time to bring it to any sort of perfection.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

On the day following Sir Matthew Hope reappeared at Gardencourt, and now took a less encouraging view of the old man, who had grown worse in the twenty-four hours.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James

But, on the other hand, just because laughter aims at correcting, it is expedient that the correction should reach as great a number of persons as possible.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson

He pronounced his former friend "a very dangerous man, altogether hated of the people and the States;"—"a lewd sinner, nursled in revolutions; a most covetous, bribing fellow, caring for nothing but to bear the sway and grow rich;"—"a man who had played many parts, both lewd and audacious;"—"a very knave, a traitor to his country;"—"the most ungrateful wretch alive, a hater of the Queen and of all the English; a most unthankful man to her Majesty; a practiser to make himself rich and great, and nobody else;"—"among all villains the greatest;"— "a bolsterer of all papists and ill men, a dissembler, a devil, an atheist," a "most naughty man, and a most notorious drunkard in the worst degree."
— from History of the United Netherlands, 1586d by John Lothrop Motley

I might lead you, in order to behold an exemplification of the truth in our text, not only to beds of sickness, where the pallid countenance, the cold sweat, and throbbing breast, indicate death’s near approach—to the haunts of the debauched, or the chambers of the luxurious, where sin reigns, and death triumphs with a long train of diseases both of body and mind, the sad recompense of a life spent in sin and vanity—to the dungeon’s doleful cells, where criminals drag the galling chain, and expect, with horror and remorse, the hour that is to fix them to the gibbet, and make an ignominious death the wages of their iniquity—to the church-yard, that repository of the promiscuous dead, where the crumbled bodies of the rich and great are not distinguishable from the dust of the earth; or to the charnel-house, crowded with the dry and ghastly relics of thousands, who were once flushed with health, and bloomed with beauty, like their present gay survivors, who hardly ever spend a serious thought on death, and live p. 181 as if they had made a covenant with the grave—to the historic pages of the annalist and the poet, recounting the horrors of the tented field, and telling over the tens of thousands that have been cut off in the midst of their sanguinary and ambitious schemes—I say, I might not only lead you to these several scenes, as declarative of the truth before us; but I might urge, as its most tremendous completion, the state of those, who are now receiving the final wages of sin in that lake, which burns, and shall to all eternity burn, with inextinguishable flames.
— from Sermons by the late Rev. Richard de Courcy by Richard De Courcy

Should we not say that it requires a great affection not to break away in the face of such strong attractions; if we lose them once we lose them for ever, that it is certain, and from friends they become our enemies; thus we lose not only the beaver but the colony, and absolutely no more cattle, no more grains, no more fishing.
— from Pathfinders of the West Being the Thrilling Story of the Adventures of the Men Who Discovered the Great Northwest: Radisson, La Vérendrye, Lewis and Clark by Agnes C. Laut

Information readers are good and necessary in their place in geography, history, and natural science; but they are not good enough to take the place of classics in reading lessons.
— from Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics In the Grades of the Common School by Charles A. (Charles Alexander) McMurry

He pronounced his former friend "a very dangerous man, altogether hated of the people and the States;"—"a lewd sinner, nursled in revolutions; a most covetous, bribing fellow, caring for nothing but to bear the sway and grow rich;"—"a man who had played many parts, both lewd and audacious;"—"a very knave, a traitor to his country;"—"the most ungrateful wretch alive, a hater of the Queen and of all the English; a most unthankful man to her Majesty; a practiser to make himself rich and great, and nobody else;"—"among all villains the greatest;"—"a bolsterer of all papists and ill men, a dissembler, a devil, an atheist," a "most naughty man, and a most notorious drunkard in the worst degree."
— from History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce — Complete (1584-1609) by John Lothrop Motley

“Euphan walks according to her lights, Madam,” responded Mrs. Elspat; “but if ye ask my opinion, I would say that Miss Ross needit spiritual physic, and no temporal: the bitter herbs o’ repentance and grace, and no camomile and wormwood—though I hold with Euphan doubtless that the last are of service in their place.”
— from Merkland; or, Self Sacrifice by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Leather cases for rifles and guns are not good as they deteriorate.
— from A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State by Marcus Roberts Phipps Dorman

Through this wild gorge, toward noon of a soft but breezy spring day in the year of grace 1494, coming from the northwest, rode a gay, a numerous, and a brilliant party; too few, indeed, to constitute an army, but too many and too well armed to fear the attack of any party of banditti less in number than those great mercenary bands whose leisure in those days was seldom long enough to rob on their own account, so great was the demand for their services, in the same way, among the princes of the land.
— from Leonora D'Orco: A Historical Romance by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

She did not understand this new move, she had been bewildered ever since that early dawn, on Sunday, when the old woman and the eunuch had rushed her into the limousine, driven her swiftly through the empty streets to a landing place on the river beyond the bridge, and hurried her on board this little boat, an old dahabiyeh reconstructed and given a new engine.
— from The Palace of Darkened Windows by Mary Hastings Bradley

It crossed his mind that probably she had risen and got away noiselessly, for very shame at looking him in the face, after such absurd behavior.
— from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic