The old lady was in a state of great grandeur just then, for she was sitting at the top of the table in the brocaded gown, with her newly-married granddaughter on one side, and Mr. Pickwick on the other, to do the carving.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

They were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess for such a shrine, although, making poetry of the pretty name of Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her "Lily" because her form was as fragile and her cheek almost as pale.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

was that of a Romping Girl, and whenever I talked to her with any Turn of Fondness, she would immediately snatch off my Perriwig, try it upon herself in the Glass, clap her Arms a Kimbow, draw my Sword, and make Passes on the Wall, take off my Cravat, and seize it to make some other Use of the Lace, or run into some other unaccountable Rompishness, till the Time I had appointed to pass away with her was over.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

By the mixture of obsolete words, it possesses an air of solemnity well adapted to abstruse researches; at the same time that by the frequent resolution of diphthongs, it instils into the Latin the sonorous and melodious powers of the Greek language.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

Here's a career opening for her, as you might say; and— Mrs. Pearce opens the door and awaits orders. HIGGINS.
— from Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw

As we were not to proceed upon our journey until the afternoon, I walked out, after breakfast the next morning, to look about me; and was duly shown a model prison on the solitary system, just erected, and as yet without an inmate; the trunk of an old tree to which Harris, the first settler here (afterwards buried under it), was tied by hostile Indians, with his funeral pile about him, when he was saved by the timely appearance of a friendly party on the opposite shore of the river; the local legislature (for there was another of those bodies here again, in full debate); and the other curiosities of the town.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

Government, State, and Municipal property, on the other hand, is to be ceded to France without any credit being given for it.
— from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes

In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago are thousands of millionaires, some of them running through three or four generations of fortune; and yet, in all their ranks, there is seldom a man possessed of the higher intellectual qualities that flower in literature, eloquence, or statesmanship.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

Whereupon the sober and moderate part of the Jews thought it proper to have recourse to their governors again, while the seditious part, and such as were in the fervor of their youth, were vehemently inflamed to fight.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

My windows looked out across a dreary, interminable plain, an ocean of grass, of wheat and of oats, without a clump of trees or any rising ground, a striking and melancholy picture of the life which they must be leading in that house.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

Still, as my philosopher of the cemetery remarked, there are worse places—far worse, Assouan and Aden, for example; so let not the gallant gentleman repine whom Fate has assigned to a round of duty in Sutlersville.
— from Romantic Spain: A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) by John Augustus O'Shea

Before proceeding to the history of the downfall of Greece, and her subjugation by a foreign power--a result that soon followed the events just narrated--we turn aside to notice the affairs of the Sicilian Greeks, as more especially presented in the history of Syracuse, in all respects the strongest and most prominent of the Sicilian cities.
— from Mosaics of Grecian History by Robert Pierpont Wilson

To all on board he was to mademoiselle a stranger, and, moreover, perfectly oblivious to her very existence.
— from Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe by William Le Queux

All this was pleasant, but this was nothing compared with the shouting of the populace when the carriage drew up, behind Mr. Pott’s chariot, which chariot itself drew up at Mr. Pott’s door, which door itself opened, and displayed the great Pott accoutred as a Russian officer of justice, with a tremendous knout in his hand—tastefully typical of the stern and mighty power of the Eatanswill Gazette , and the fearful lashings it bestowed on public offenders.
— from The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, v. 1 (of 2) by Charles Dickens

What I reported was taken down by a stenographer and made part of the official records, but I did not give them my story in narrative form.
— from Outwitting the Hun: My Escape from a German Prison Camp by Pat O'Brien

So he begs her, for the love that he bears her Highness, to try and amend her ways and recant her errors, and do penitence in this Lenten season for her fault, after the example of the great apostle St. Paul, who was converted to the Christian faith, and became an elect son and mighty preacher of the gospel, bringing many to righteousness and enjoying the high favour of our Lord God.
— from Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 by Julia Cartwright

This, as I have endeavored to point out in the following pages, our American universities do not now afford, nor are they likely to afford it until the social and the educational systems are more perfectly organized than they have ever been, or seem likely to be, under the dominance of German ideals.
— from An American at Oxford by John Corbin

And he brought Aaron's sons, and Moses put of the blood upon the tip of their right ear, and upon the thumbs of their right hands, and upon the great toes of their right feet; and Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar round about."
— from Notes on the Book of Leviticus by Charles Henry Mackintosh