Each only appears for a few moments, but each represents a whole life, sometimes a whole age, with its conflicts and victories.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

Then the hero laid down his sword, and set himself as a little child to learn to read and write Latin, so that he might lead his people in peace as he had led them in war.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

Dorothea, early troubling her elders with questions about the facts around her, had wrought herself into some independent clearness as to the historical, political reasons why eldest sons had superior rights, and why land should be entailed: those reasons, impressing her with a certain awe, might be weightier than she knew, but here was a question of ties which left them uninfringed.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

He often earnestly commended him to the soldiers, holding him in his arms before their ranks; and would likewise show him to the people in the theatre, setting him upon his lap, or holding him out whilst he was still very young; and was sure to receive their acclamations, and good wishes on his behalf.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

And these sounds he rendered yet more fearful, by banging against each other two or three pieces of rusty armour which lay scattered around the hall.
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

there is a figure of his so-called 'new crown,' the arches of which are composed of oak-leaf sprays with acorns, and the rim adorned with laurel sprays (Fig. 639).
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

Denísov, the esaul , and Pétya rode silently, following the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

We leaned luxuriously against blue plush, gilding glittered wherever gilding could on white walls, waiters rushed about with little shining nickel-plated trays held high above their heads, spurs and swords clanked and clattered, by the middle of the evening not a table was vacant.
— from Nights: Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

The men at the edge of the raft, armed with long sticks, pressed with violence against the shore to send off the frail construction with sufficient impetus to force its way through corpses and ice-floes to the other shore.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

Political stability and the end of the civil war have improved aid flows and economic activity has increased, but underlying weaknesses - a high poverty rate, poor education rates, a weak legal system, and low administrative capacity - risk undermining planned economic reforms.
— from The 2008 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

But at last the sound sense of Germany rebelled, and when Luther saw in Rome poor sufferers from gout and cripples ascending the stairs of the Lateran on their knees, a voice within cried out to him the great 'sola fide' on which our faith is founded.
— from Barbara Blomberg — Volume 05 by Georg Ebers

And with a friendly gesture, the old man stepped into his red dory, and rowed away with long, sturdy strokes.
— from Captain January by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards