t round and up, and round and up and round and up, until I could not help surmising, with the sagacious Pompey, upon whose supporting arm I leaned in all the confidence of early affection—I could not help surmising that the upper end of the continuous spiral ladder had been accidentally, or perhaps designedly, removed.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

Suppose a person loves the South as I love it—as a great school of recovery for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills, as a boundless solar profusion and effulgence which o'erspreads a sovereign existence believing in itself—well, such a person will learn to be somewhat on his guard against German music, because, in injuring his taste anew, it will also injure his health anew.
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

190 The church still continued to increase its outward splendor as it lost its internal purity; and, in the reign of Diocletian, the palace, the courts of justice, and even the army, concealed a multitude of Christians, who endeavored to reconcile the interests of the present with those of a future life.
— 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

And so over the thrice-tangled skein of phaenominal [Pg xxiii] existence a simplifying and integrating light is shed, showing that the πᾱν is but the reflection of the ἕν , under the forms of our faculty of perception, namely, Time, Space, and Causality—forms, which necessarily imply plurality and change, on which, again, in the last resort the Welt-Schmerz depends.
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer

“I am quite cured, and yet my arm swells as soon as I let it swing loose.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

And somehow as I looked I felt that the evil dream was all over.
— from Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker

If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search.
— from The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

“As sure as I live I speak the truth,” said the servant.
— from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

I think rather, replied my uncle Toby, that 'tis we who sink an inch lower.—If I meet but a woman with child—I do it.—'Tis a heavy tax upon that half of our fellow-creatures, brother Shandy, said my uncle Toby—'Tis a piteous burden upon 'em, continued he, shaking his head—Yes, yes, 'tis a painful thing—said my father, shaking his head too—but certainly since shaking of heads came into fashion, never did two heads shake together, in concert, from two such different springs.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

It was my sister, and I loved it with a human affection; for, alas!—hast thou not suspected it?—there was an awful doom.
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Just because it’s small and soft, and I love it.”
— from Twos and Threes by G. B. (Gladys Bronwyn) Stern

Do not forget that espionage in the Chamber, in the streets, and in letters is pushed to the utmost lengths....
— from Memoirs of the Duchesse de Dino (Afterwards Duchesse de Talleyrand et de Sagan), 1831-1835 by Dino, Dorothée, duchesse de

What he had failed to specify was that the dining-car had been left, by divers defections at the junctions passed, the last car in our train, and that it was now straining at its leash in wild leaps and bounds.
— from Imaginary Interviews by William Dean Howells

“This street,” said he, “is the Siarrin, and its like is not to be found in Tangier; observe how broad it is, even half the breadth of the soc itself; here are the shops of the most considerable merchants, where are sold precious articles of all kinds.
— from The Bible in Spain Or, the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman, in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula by George Borrow

It was without event and one may safely abandon it, leaving its relation to Harris himself, if he be yet alive and should the spirit him so move.
— from The Black Lion Inn by Alfred Henry Lewis

It is part of the doctrine of sympathies, and I learned it out of my Herbal, as I can show you."
— from Sidonia, the Sorceress : the Supposed Destroyer of the Whole Reigning Ducal House of Pomerania — Volume 1 by Wilhelm Meinhold

It was an immense, natural formation of stone, and as the girls stood there, they could almost see the circle of chiefs sitting around it, listening in stolid mistrust to the parleyings of their white brothers.
— from The Polly Page Ranch Club by Izola L. (Izola Louise) Forrester

I shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

As soon as it loses its grey colouring the flowering tops are cut off, and the Pea and Clematis, already brought near, are trained over.
— from Colour in the flower garden by Gertrude Jekyll

I then wished to shoot, and the man presented me the bow, and I took an arrow from the sheath and shot, and it struck on a stone and I lost it.
— from Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange Events by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould