“Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!” said a ragged and submissive man, “it is a child.”
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Let this grisly beginning be none other to you than is to wayfarers a rugged and steep mountain, beyond which is situate a most fair and delightful plain, which latter cometh so much the pleasanter to them as the greater was the hardship of the ascent and the descent; for, like as dolour occupieth the extreme of gladness, even so are miseries determined by imminent joyance.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

It is curious enough that the mountain clans of Albania, and other Greeks, have the same distinguishing termination, and the Mainote of Greece and the Mairot of Rajputana alike signify mountaineer , or ‘of the mountain,’ maina in Albanian; mairu or meru in Sanskrit.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

but to understand this, which is a puff at the fire of Diana ’s temple—you must read Longinus —read away—if you are not a jot the wiser by reading him the first time over—never fear—read him again— Avicenna and Licetus read Aristotle ’s metaphysicks forty times through 211 a-piece, and never understood a single word.—But mark the consequence— Avicenna turned out a desperate writer at all kinds of writing—for he wrote books de omni scribili ; and for Licetus (Fortunio) though all the world knows he was born a fœtus,* of no more than five inches and a half in length, yet he grew to that astonishing height in literature, as to write a book with a title as long as himself——the learned know I mean his Gonopsychanthropologia, upon the origin of the human soul.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

And whosoever knows that the votive offerings in the medallions, that is, the sculptures in half-relief, and likewise the prisoners, and the large groups, and the columns, and the mouldings, and the other ornaments, whether made before or from spoils, are excellently wrought, knows also that the works which were made to fill up by the sculptors of that time are of the rudest, as also are certain small groups with little figures in marble below the medallions, and the lowest base wherein there are certain victories, and certain rivers between the arches at the sides, which are very rude and so made that it can be believed most surely that by that time the art of sculpture had begun to lose something of the good.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

We had cars enough to transport all of General Ord's command, which was to go by rail to Burnsville, a point on the road about seven miles west of Iuka.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

She p. 252 had sent Mr Mulliner down to desire that there might be a footstool put to the warmest seat in the room, as she meant to come, and knew that their chairs were very high.
— from Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Now I was ragged, wanting to sell Dora matches, six bundles for a halfpenny; now I was at the office in a nightgown and boots, remonstrated with by Mr. Spenlow on appearing before the clients in that airy attire; now I was hungrily picking up the crumbs that fell from old Tiffey’s daily biscuit, regularly eaten when St. Paul’s struck one; now I was hopelessly endeavouring to get a licence to marry Dora, having nothing but one of Uriah Heep’s gloves to offer in exchange, which the whole Commons rejected; and still, more or less conscious of my own room, I was always tossing about like a distressed ship in a sea of bed-clothes.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Providence, however, soon sent me a coadjutor in rather a singular manner.
— from The Bible in Spain, Vol. 2 [of 2] Or, the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula by George Borrow

In 1840 an abolition ticket for the presidency was nominated, but it received a support much smaller than had been currently predicted.
— from The Brothers' War by John C. (John Calvin) Reed

In both Baltimore and Philadelphia, railroads are spending millions increasing their trackage for the traffic they expect to feed down to the coast cities for Panama steamers.
— from The Canadian Commonwealth by Agnes C. Laut

While an animal merely, and for a time even after he had attained to a rude and savage manhood, a life of selfish passion and marauding was justifiable, since only thus could the survival of the fittest be secured and the advancement of the race attained.[125] It is fair to say that there are various shades of the theory here presented—
— from Oriental Religions and Christianity A Course of Lectures Delivered on the Ely Foundation Before the Students of Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1891 by Frank F. (Frank Field) Ellinwood

No one offered to help her with difficult lessons; no one invited her to be a companion in the daily crocodile; no one made room for her when she entered a room; on the contrary, she was avoided as if her very presence were infectious, and when she spoke a silence fell over the room, and several moments elapsed before a cold, stern voice would vouchsafe a monosyllabic answer.
— from Pixie O'Shaughnessy by Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.

An indulgence in this habit of rubbing and scrubbing was indeed accountable for much dilapidation; for that silent little Ghoorka man, Ben Abdi, had rubbed and scrubbed many things not intended by an ingenious camp-furnisher for such treatment.
— from From One Generation to Another by Henry Seton Merriman

The royal wants rapidly necessitated new sources of revenue, and so money was raised from personal property, or "movables."
— from Cassell's History of England, Vol. 1 (of 8) From the Roman Invasion to the Wars of the Roses by Anonymous

In the midst of his best American, George drops into Briticism after Briticism, some of them quite as unintelligible to the average American reader as so many Gallicisms.
— from The American Language A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States by H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken

“But, to speak simple sooth, methinks I heard but fables,” continued Don Rafaele; “and such maids have never been.”
— from Hildebrand; or, The Days of Queen Elizabeth, An Historic Romance, Vol. 3 of 3 by Anonymous

Misfortunes happen in all Families: The Theft of this Romp and so much Mony, was no great matter to our Estate.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir