With his downward course the tower of the church rose into the evening sky in a manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no living person in the twilighted town seemed to notice him, still less to expect him.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

For my own part, I looked on Mr. Jack Maldon as a modern Sindbad, and pictured him the bosom friend of all the Rajahs in the East, sitting under canopies, smoking curly golden pipes—a mile long, if they could be straightened out.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

What is there remarkable in the epitaph? SOCRATES:
— from Phaedrus by Plato

Like the magi of old, several hundred students gazed in devotional awe at the daily miracle, the early solar fire rite in the eastern sky.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

“I say, all on ye,” he said retreating a pace or two back, “look at me,—look at me,—look me right in the eye,— straight , now!” said he, stamping his foot at every pause.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The channel is conducted a little above the city of Bubastis by Patumos the Arabian city, and runs into the Erythraian Sea: and it is dug first along those parts of the plain of Egypt which lie towards Arabia, just above which run the mountains which extend opposite Memphis, where are the stone-quarries,—along the base of these mountains the channel is conducted from West to East for a great way; and after that it is directed towards a break in the hills and tends from these mountains towards the noon-day and the South Wind to the Arabian gulf.
— from An Account of Egypt by Herodotus

43 Without disparagement to his fame, they might have owned, that he was finally oppressed by the Ottoman powers: in his extreme danger he applied to Pope Pius the Second for a refuge in the ecclesiastical state; and his resources were almost exhausted, since Scanderbeg died a fugitive at Lissus, on the Venetian territory.
— 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

Near to Cremorne Gardens, on the opposite side of the road, is the extensive Show Establishment belonging to John Weeks and Co., Horticultural Builders and Hot-Water Apparatus Manufacturers, Engineers, and Iron Founders.
— from Chelsea, in the Olden & Present Times by George Bryan

Of course, all the rainbows in the Eastern states are planted there.
— from The Young Alaskans in the Rockies by Emerson Hough

When I inquired the contents of the kettle, both took refuge in the exasperating silence that is the last weapon of their race.
— from Vagabonding down the Andes Being the Narrative of a Journey, Chiefly Afoot, from Panama to Buenos Aires by Harry Alverson Franck

[498] , but the point to be noticed is, that orientation, in the fuller sense, was recognized in the early sixteenth century, and that even in the fourteenth, a true alinement was observed, though the altar was placed at the wrong end.
— from Byways in British Archaeology by Walter Johnson

They come to understand my finer moods and deeper secrets of beauty; the elusive loveliness which I leave behind me to lure on my true friends through the late autumn, they find and follow with the eye and heart of love; the rare and splendid aspects in which I often discover my presence in midwinter they enjoy all the more because I have withdrawn myself from the gaze of the crowd; and the first faint touches of colour and soft breathings of life, which announce my return in the early spring, they greet with the deep joy of true lovers.
— from Under the Trees and Elsewhere by Hamilton Wright Mabie

He had lacked the necessary courage to remain at Falaise, and yet he already regretted having left it, repeating that he would be utterly ruined if the enemy should burn his house.
— from The Downfall (La Débâcle): A Story of the Horrors of War by Émile Zola

I asked him to call for my bag at the other house, on his way to the harbour, and he departed reassured, not, however, without remarking ironically that ever since she saw that American cavalier Madame Léonore was not easy in her mind about me.
— from The Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes by Joseph Conrad

I will say at once, in order to clear away some mystery, that the young woman herself was no doubt honestly mistaken, although somewhat rash in the evidence she gave as to the identity of her undoer.
— from Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City Detective by Andrew Forrester

Men who marry don't rise in the ecclesiastical states.
— from A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 2 (of 2) by Thomas Adolphus Trollope