They went at it in real earnest for a longer time than I expected, but when the mighty crisis came, it was with an energy, and passionate struggles worthy of the strength and substance of the two love wrestlers.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

It was a still, warm, almost sultry evening, like all those monotonous evenings in July which, when once they have set in, go on for a week, a fortnight, or sometimes longer, in regular unbroken succession, and are suddenly cut short by a violent thunderstorm and a lavish downpour of rain that refreshes everything for a long time.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

All were for a day, and are long dead and gone; some scarce remembered even for a little after death; some turned to fables; some faded even from the memory of tales.
— from The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus A new rendering based on the Foulis translation of 1742 by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

Nothing out of the common had happened, to the knowledge of the landlord and landlady downstairs, until within the last five minutes—when they had seen the three foreigners, accompanied by their respectable English friend, all leave the house together, walking quietly in the direction of the Strand.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

"And I don't think you would wish to leave me just yet, Rosa, even for a lover?"
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

But the bad days are not many, if only there be rain enough, for a little is worse than none.
— from Don Orsino by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford

I believe my boat is rather exceptional, from a lady's point of view.
— from All along the River: A Novel by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

“I dare say the ice would be right enough for a little while, but the air feels milder, and there is danger of a thaw.”
— from Wee Wifie by Rosa Nouchette Carey

Another glance at the girl, and the fascinated, bewildered Max resolved to risk everything for a little more of her society.
— from The Wharf by the Docks: A Novel by Florence Warden

Everyone expected that the “gentleman of the old school” would go also, but one evening Abner Payne, whose business is “real estate, fire and life insurance, justice of the peace, and houses to let and for sale,” rushed into the post office to announce that the Major had leased the “Gorham place,” furnished, and intended to make East Harniss his home.
— from The Depot Master by Joseph Crosby Lincoln

They who have not regard enough for another life, are led to salvation by the consideration and duties of this." —"But there is enough upon a subject in which the conversion of the Count de Grammont has engaged me: I believe it to be sincere and honest.
— from Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete by Various

Ere he had been many minutes in his rooms, emissaries from a London tailor and bootmaker waited him with the cards and compliments of their employers, Messrs. Regnier and Tull; the best articles in his modest wardrobe were laid out by Gumbo, and the finest linen with which his thrifty Virginian mother had provided him.
— from The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray

"We are led," says Humboldt, "by analogy to infer, that as the fixed stars universally have not merely an apparent, but a real motion of their own, so their surfaces or luminous atmospheres are generally subject to those changes (in their "light process") which recur, in the great majority, in extremely long, and therefore unmeasured, and probably undeterminable periods, or which, in a few, recur without being periodical, as it were, by a sudden revolution, either for a longer or a shorter time."
— from Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity by Robert Patterson