Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn at a dead loss—for as to sherry, my poor dear mother’s own sherry was in the market then—and ten years afterwards, the caul was put up in a raffle down in our part of the country, to fifty members at half-a-crown a head, the winner to spend five shillings.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

For good, though appearing and allowed ever so great, yet till it has raised desires in our minds, and thereby made us uneasy in its want, it reaches not our wills; we are not within the sphere of its activity, our wills being under the determination only of those uneasinesses which are present to us, which (whilst we have any) are always soliciting, and ready at hand, to give the will its next determination.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

Viewed from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it would have been imposing and stupendous, no doubt; but seen from the wet and rolling decks, it only impressed one giddily and painfully.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

Tell Roderick Dhu I owed him naught, Not tile poor service of a boat, To waft me to yon mountain-side.' Then plunged he in the flashing tide.
— from The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott

In most cases, this powerfully magnifying and reflecting medium is a vertical stratum; at first dense and opaque, it gradually attenuates with increased temperature, till the maximum of heat, which it can no longer resist, drives it off in an ethereal vapour.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

And to think o' your knowing no better, Molly, and been here a-going i' nine months, and not for want o' talking to, neither—and what are you stanning there for, like a jack as is run down, instead o' getting your wheel out?
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

‘One pound per week,’ replied Dick, improving on the terms.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

While all the images and events he had witnessed remained deeply impressed on his memory, he felt a difficulty in persuading him of their truth.
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper

It had been a close, rainy day in October.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Netherlands were fast slipping beyond his control, to be sure, as he engaged in these endless schemes; and ill-disposed people of the day said that the king was like Aesop's dog, lapping the river dry in order to get at the skins floating on the surface.
— from History of the United Netherlands, 1590-99 — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

Miss Anne Hollingsworth Wharton has busied herself to gather up old traditions and old reminiscences, dipping into old letters and diaries, opening wide Colonial doorways, resurrecting Colonial Dames, reshaping the old social and domestic life disdained by historians.
— from Our Philadelphia by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

A skjald in Grundtvig’s conception was thus a man endowed with the gift of receiving direct impressions of life and things, of perceiving especially the deeper and more fundamental truths of existence intuitively instead of intellectually.
— from Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark by J. C. (Jens Christian) Aaberg

32 The greatest calamity which this ruthless despot inflicted on his country was the wholesale destruction of literature which he ordered, in view of keeping his people in ignorance.
— from The Heart of Asia A history of Russian Turkestan and the Central Asian Khanates from the earliest times by Ross, E. Denison (Edward Denison), Sir

To do this, there must be a people called of God, instructed by revelation direct, in order to know where, when and how to erect, in keeping with divine approval, such a sacred edifice.
— from Cowley's Talks on Doctrine by Matthias F. Cowley

The present publication is intended to supply a recognised deficiency in our literature—a library edition of the Essays of Montaigne.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

The organization of the two communities, when they were about to be amalgamated, may be conceived to have been substantially similar; and in solving the problem of union they would have to choose between the alternatives of retaining duplicate institutions or of abolishing one set of these and extending the other to the whole united community.
— from The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) by Theodor Mommsen

Rodvard drew it off slowly, not knowing what to say, but the Countess Aiella spared him the trouble.
— from The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt

In order to correct the defect of his first lamp, he accordingly proceeded to alter it so as to admit the air to the flame by several tubes of reduced diameter instead of by a single tube.
— from The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Railway Locomotive by Samuel Smiles