And, besides, it was obviously not said of design, but slipped out in the heat of conversation, so that he tried afterwards to correct himself and smooth it over, but all the same it did strike me as somewhat rude, and I said so afterwards to Dounia.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

On this side lord Aeneas, fount of the Roman race, ablaze in starlike shield and celestial arms, and close by Ascanius, second hope of mighty Rome, issue from the camp; and the priest, in spotless raiment, hath brought the young of a bristly sow and an unshorn sheep of two years old, and set his beasts by the blazing altars.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

[Applied to actions] foolish, unwise, injudicious, improper, unreasonable, without reason, ridiculous, absurd, idiotic, silly, stupid, asinine; ill-imagined, ill-advised, ill-judged, ill-devised; mal entendu[Fr]; inconsistent, irrational, unphilosophical[obs3]; extravagant &c (nonsensical) 497; sleeveless, idle; pointless, useless &c. 645; inexpedient &c. 647; frivolous &c. (trivial) 643.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

I reflected as I stole softly away, lest they should discover me and be ashamed, that, after all, it was only love which could set people upon immeasurable heights in each other's eyes, and stimulate them to real improvement and to live up to each other's ideals.
— from The Jamesons by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

On this subject Mr. Henry Blackburn says, with an authority based upon the experience of reducing, to various scales, some thousands of drawings: "As to the amount of reduction that a drawing will bear in reproduction, it cannot be sufficiently widely known that in spite of rules laid down there is no rule about it." Same size as original.
— from A Handbook of Illustration by A. Horsley (Alfred Horsley) Hinton

I watched her close last night when you first came into the room, and I saw such a red flush break over her throat and cheeks, like a wave surging upwards, as I never saw before on any woman’s face⁠—⁠though long ago . . . myself . . .
— from Linnet: A Romance by Grant Allen

If we add to these the Roman armies in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, the whole number of the Roman forces, even apart from the garrison service in the fortresses of Lower Italy which was provided for by the colonists occupying them, may be estimated at not less than 200,000 men, of whom one-third were newly enrolled for this year, and about one-half were Roman citizens.
— from The History of Rome, Book III From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States by Theodor Mommsen

Indeed the fight had been quite earnest, for each party knew that it was but a prelude to another and more serious fight, and looked upon the result as in some sense an omen.
— from A Yellow God: An Idol of Africa by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

Out of good-will to you they would repeat all I should say, and you would be lost with the Assembly.
— from Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Complete Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the Queen by Mme. (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette) Campan

An epoch has commenced, inaugurating the systematic conquest of the European continent by the organized body of the “apostles of Bahá’u’lláh,” destined to unfold its potentialities in the course of succeeding centuries, and bidding fair to eclipse the radiance of those past ages which have successfully witnessed the introduction of the Christian Faith into the continent’s northern climes, the efflorescence of Islamic culture that shed such radiance along its southern shores, and the rise of the Reformation in its very heart.
— from Citadel of Faith by Effendi Shoghi

As water never rises above its source, so a great nation should have a great founder, and the figure of Washington is sublime enough to be the oriflamme of a people's empire bounded only by the oceans which wash the land that he loved.
— from The Land We Live In The Story of Our Country by Henry Mann