The last page bore a MS. note in Latin to the effect that the volume had been read in the Chaldaean Desert by Georgius Strachanus, Milnensis, Scotus , who long remained unidentified, not to say mythical, in Yule's mind.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

She must have had good blood in her veins, for never was any duchess more perfectly, radically, unaffectedly nonchalante than she: a weak, transient amaze was all she knew of the sensation of wonder.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

In the one case, the net profit to the credit of reason, acquired through long ages of experiment and of insecurity, is applied usefully to the most remote ends, and the harvest, which is as large, as rich and as complete as possible, is reaped and garnered: in the other case, on the contrary, the harvest is blighted in a single night That which stood there, ære perennius, the imperium Romanum, the most magnificent form of organisation, under difficult conditions, that has ever been achieved, and compared with which everything that preceded, and everything which followed it, is mere patchwork, gimcrackery, and dilettantism,—those holy anarchists made it their "piety," to destroy "the world"—that is to say, the imperium Romanum, until no two stones were left standing one on the other,—until even the Teutons and other clodhoppers were able to become master of it The Christian and the anarchist are both decadents; they are both incapable of acting in any other way than disintegratingly, poisonously and witheringly,
— from The Twilight of the Idols; or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer. The Antichrist Complete Works, Volume Sixteen by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

While every man endeavours then to understand in the Holy Scriptures, the same as the writer understood, what hurt is it, if a man understand what Thou, the light of all true-speaking minds, dost show him to be true, although he whom he reads, understood not this, seeing he also understood a Truth, though not this truth?
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

The town was rising up now, the sea had dropped out of sight behind it, and people down below were stirring.
— from The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

But the next morning when he awoke he felt rather vexed with her, and decided that she was rather unreasonable, not to say capricious.
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

‘“Lor, Sir!” said the widow—as well she might; Tom’s mode of commencing the conversation being rather unusual, not to say startling; the fact of his never having set eyes upon her before the previous night being taken into consideration.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

"But a special message was received from the Imperial, urgently requesting us not to shut o
— from Majesty: A Novel by Louis Couperus

It was so Ulysses felt: How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use.
— from The Quest of the Simple Life by W. J. (William James) Dawson

Our room up near the sky was festooned with dim photographs of immense family tombstones—a perfect graveyard of them, which proved that the relations of Mrs. Christison, our worthy landlady, would have some trouble in getting to bed in anything like time if by chance they should be caught wandering abroad at cock-crow.
— from Bog-Myrtle and Peat Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895 by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

For, besides its great wealth above the other cities, its situation upon the river Usk, near the Severn sea, was most pleasant and fit for so great a solemnity.
— from The Age of Chivalry by Thomas Bulfinch

He hadn’t imagined such familiar closeness with a woman really unknown, nor that, sweeping away all the formalities that might have grown up between them, she should call him Gavan and make it natural for him to call her Eppie.
— from The Shadow of Life by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Enchanted to be able to serve her, the poor woman immediately said, that she could no where be better than in that very house: and when its mistress made various objections; first, that she had not a room unoccupied; next, that she had no spare bed; and then, that her husband would be angry; the zealous Dame Fairfield obviated them all.
— from The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 4 of 5) by Fanny Burney

Since then so great a page 190 p. 190 change has been effected in the mode of reducing the ore, that several tons of the Lancashire mine yet remain unused near the spot where the Flaxley furnace stood, the Forest ore readily yielding to the treatment it now receives in the blast furnaces of the district.
— from The Forest of Dean: An Historical and Descriptive Account by H. G. (Henry George) Nicholls

In the afternoon I set out up the rocks behind camp; they were very rotten, and I got into considerable difficulties, especially at one point, where, my foothold having disappeared, I dangled for some time by my fingers [91] in imminent expectation of returning to camp in a rather undignified, not to say disorderly, manner.
— from With Sack and Stock in Alaska by Horatio George Broke

A gift from God, if neglected, or unworthily used, is in time withdrawn; the testimony of the truth will not remain with one who, having received, uses not the sacred gift in the cause of individual and general advancement.
— from Gospel Doctrine: Selections from the Sermons and Writings of Joseph F. Smith by Joseph F. (Joseph Fielding) Smith