But just before the snows There came a purple creature That ravished all the hill; And summer hid her forehead, And mockery was still.
— from Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete by Emily Dickinson

By some shades of wisdom and virtue, they may be discriminated from each other; but, except in a single instance, a period of nine reigns, and two hundred and sixty-five years, is occupied, from the elevation of Othman to the death of Soliman, by a rare series of warlike and active princes, who impressed their subjects with obedience and their enemies with terror.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

So the man yielded up both the field and the wife to Booz, who was himself of kin to those that were dead, as alleging that he had a wife already, and children also; so Booz called the senate to witness, and bid the woman to loose his shoe, and spit in his face, according to the law; and when this was done, Booz married Ruth, and they had a son within a year's time.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

2 Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens, Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east—America is provided for in the west, Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator, Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends, Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it does not set for months, Stretch'd in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon and sinks again, Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups, Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

We rode along this hill, and saw where many openings had been begun, but these, proving of little or no value, had been abandoned.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

Gewar, being very learned in divining and an expert in the knowledge of omens, foresaw this; and summoning Hother, told him, when Gelder should join battle with him, to receive his spears with patience, and not let his own fly until he saw the enemy's missiles exhausted; and further, to bring up the curved scythes wherewith the vessels could be rent and the helmets and shields plucked from the soldiers.
— from The Danish History, Books I-IX by Grammaticus Saxo

Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons.
— from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

While he feasted his eyes upon Aglaya, as she talked merrily with Evgenie and Prince N., suddenly the old anglomaniac, who was talking to the dignitary in another corner of the room, apparently telling him a story about something or other—suddenly this gentleman pronounced the name of “Nicolai Andreevitch Pavlicheff” aloud.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

IMG If this disorder arise from an intemperance in religion, and too high a strain of devotion, though it be of a somewhat differing sort, yet it is so near akin to the former, that a great part of mankind apprehend it as a mere madness; especially when persons of that superstitious humour are so pragmatical and singular as to separate and live apart as it were from all the world beside: so as they seem to have experienced what Plato dreams to have happened between some, who, enclosed in a dark cave, did only ruminate on the ideas and abstracted speculations of entities; and one other of their company, who had got abroad into the open light, and at his return tells them what a blind mistake they had lain under; that he had seen the substance of what their dotage of imagination reached only in shadow; that therefore he could not but pity and condole their deluding dreams, while they on the other side no less bewail his frenzy, and turn him out of their society for a lunatic and madman.
— from In Praise of Folly Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts by Desiderius Erasmus

He rode across to Heronsmere as soon as breakfast was over, and it did not require a second glance at Eliot’s haggard face to tell him that Ann was not alone in her intensity of suffering.
— from The Vision of Desire by Margaret Pedler

When they were finished, Sandy scooped the excess snow out from beneath the robe and they had a small lean-to with just enough room in it to shelter two people.
— from Secret Mission to Alaska Sandy Steele Adventures #5 by Robert Leckie

Then Rob was really alarmed to hear a sudden loud cry, and feel his slender hold shaken violently.
— from The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields by John Henry Goldfrap

He could not eat, and never drank, save water or milk; and now between the two Judges, and surrounded by lawyers, with a glass of milk and a plate of honey, petted and lionized for the moment, he gave himself up to sparkling and brilliant answers to the numerous questions and remarks addressed to him, and showed that, whatever draft had been made upon him, he had plenty of resources in reserve.
— from Bart Ridgeley A Story of Northern Ohio by A. G. (Albert Gallatin) Riddle

It was a day of gleams of sunlight, passing showers, and mist that rolled about the hills and swept away, leaving the long slopes in transient brightness, checkered with the green of mosses and the red of withered fern.
— from Carmen's Messenger by Harold Bindloss

Yet she had ridden across the hills, and something sang to me that it was to me she had ridden, though she may have called it coming to her brother.
— from The Portal of Dreams by Charles Neville Buck

Purchases had been promptly removed, and the house already seemed dismantled and bare.
— from Mr. Pat's Little Girl: A Story of the Arden Foresters by Mary Finley Leonard

Each paper was read aloud to her, and she said at the end "Approved."
— from Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey