We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

But no moralist who takes Excellence as an ultimate end has ever approved of such sacrifice, at least so far as Moral Excellence is concerned; no one has ever directed an individual to promote the virtue of others except in so far as this promotion is compatible with, or rather involved in, the complete realisation of Virtue in himself.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

Indeed, there was no systematic farming; they ploughed and sowed a little simply from habit, and in reality did nothing and lived in idleness.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"No, cousin; I think Mr. Murray saw me at Riversdale," Bertie said, a little shyly, for a pair of keen dark eyes were fixed on his face.
— from Little Folks (September 1884) A Magazine for the Young by Various

He ran to his own room, not knowing what he was doing, flung himself, dressed as he was, face downwards on his bed, wrapped himself convulsively, head and all, in the sheet, and lay so for two hours—incapable of sleep, incapable of thought, with a load on his heart and blank, immovable despair in his soul.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The starlight was good enough for that story, a light so faint and remote that it cannot resolve shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

A reef, visible only at low water, shoots from it a considerable distance into the sea, and another ledge of the same aspect, lies still farther seaward; consequently the course of a careful pilot, is to hold his way free through the channel between them.
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 395, October 24, 1829 by Various

This substance, universally found in plants that grub in the soil and literally sweat for their daily bread, acts also as a moderator of respiration by its absorptive influence on light, and hence allows the elimination of carbon dioxide to go on in the cells which contain it.
— from Wild Flowers An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors by Neltje Blanchan

375 I was never tired, however, at every halt of regarding this bustling movement, quite exceptional and unknown in our western cities, even the most commercial, such as London, San Francisco, or New York.
— from From Paris to Pekin over Siberian Snows A Narrative of a Journey by Sledge over the Snows of European Russia and Siberia, by Caravan Through Mongolia, Across the Gobi Desert and the Great Wall, and by Mule Palanquin Through China to Pekin by Victor Meignan

But pleasant as all these things are—the green fields and the blue sky, the ripple of bright water, and the changeable glories of a landscape in mid-summer; or the upturned countenances of men, looking for signs in the heavens, when they have ships at sea—or wives and children getting ready for a drive—or new hats and no umbrellas—or houses afire, which may not happen to be over-insured—a pleasanter thing by far it is to sit by the same window, when the summer is over, and the clouds have lost their transparency, and go wandering heavily athwart the sky, and the green leaves are no more, and the songs of the water are changed, and the very birds have departed, and watch by the hour together whatever may happen to be overlooked by all the rest of the world; the bushels of dry leaves that eddy and whirl about your large empty squares, or huddle together in heaps at every sheltered corner, as if to get away from the wind; the changed livery of the shops—the golden tissues of summer, the delicately-tinted shawls, and gossamer ribbons, and flaunting muslins, woven of nobody knows what—whether of "mist and moonlight mingling fitfully," or of sunset shadows overshot with gold, giving way to gorgeous velvet, and fur, and sumptuous drapery glowing and burning with the tints of autumn, and, like distant fires seen through a fall of snow in mid-winter, full of comfort and warmth; and all the other preparations of double-windows and heavy curtains, and newly invented stoves, that find their own fuel for the season and leave something for next year; and porticoes that come and go with the cold weather, [262] blocking up your path and besetting your eyes at every turn, with signs and hints of "dreadful preparation."
— from Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 by Various

My hand's stiddy as a rock, even though my shootin' shoulder's a leetle stiff from that Crow arrer."
— from The Covered Wagon by Emerson Hough

Gerald turned towards the chauffeur by whose side he was seated a little stiffly, for his limbs were numbed with the cold and exhaustion.
— from The Vanished Messenger by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

And perhaps I spoke a little sharp, for she turned very red, and then she looked at me with her big eyes without speaking, as if I was a painted image of one of the blessed saints.
— from Vestigia. Vol. II. by George Fleming

“But why did you go and live in such a lonely spot, father?” said Nic.
— from First in the Field: A Story of New South Wales by George Manville Fenn

Beneath the giant trees whose lower branches begin to spread at least sixty feet above the earth, the exuberant undergrowth runs riot.
— from 'Neath Verdun, August-October, 1914 by Maurice Genevoix

'I hope King Ferdinand has at last had the prudence to moderate his terms of adjustment with the Sicilians, at least so far as to afford a chance of their acceptance.
— from Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a Memoir by Biddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness