Taken by itself, I admit, it would bear no indubitable mark of Shakespeare's authorship, not even in the phrase 'the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire,' which Coleridge thought Shakespeare might have added to an interpolation of 'the players.'
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

Swift spins the glowing wheel; And now they stoop, and now erect in air Seem borne through space and towering to the sky: No stop, no stay; the dun sand whirls aloft; They reek with foam-flakes and pursuing breath; So sweet is fame, so prized the victor's palm.
— from The Georgics by Virgil

To the geometrician this is absurd, and the four shares are not equal in area unless they consist of two pieces each.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

Of feeling little more can be said than that the idea of bodily pain, in all the modes and degrees of labor, pain, anguish, torment, is productive of the sublime; and nothing else in this sense can produce it.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing around him a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the words “better late than never” and heard them repeated several times by others, people clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he felt at once that he had entered into his proper position in the province—that of a universal favorite: a very pleasant position, and intoxicatingly so after his long privations.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Ay, and one was nigh to being slain by the hot-pot to be eaten of those brutes, thy children, and had not the others fought gallantly they too had been slain, and not even I could have called back the life which had been loosed from the body.
— from She by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

500 pp., super-royal 8vo, 20 Full-page and 70 smaller Engravings, cloth extra, 25 s. A New Edition is being issued in Half-crown parts, with fifty additional portraits, cloth, gilt edges, 31 s. 6
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

They kindled the flame, though they could not regulate it; and such as now enjoy its temperate warmth should have sympathy for the errors of those to whom they owe a boon so inestimable;—nor should this sympathy be the less, that so many perished in the conflagration, which, at the commencement, they had fanned too rashly.
— from Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume I. by Walter Scott

It is unnecessary to give detailed descriptions of robins, bluebirds, and song-sparrows, as nearly everyone is familiar with them; but some of the other early comers may be more easily recognized if some field impressions of them be given.
— from Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904 by New York State College of Agriculture

The northeastern and southwestern sides are nearly equal in length, but between the southeastern and the northwestern sides there is a difference of 12 feet, and this notwithstanding that the room at the western end of the southeastern row has been set out 3 feet beyond the wall line of the southwestern side.
— from Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 179-262 by Cosmos Mindeleff

That is spite: since you are sent away, nobody else is to profit by it.
— from Hard Cash by Charles Reade

Sam, although not experienced in long excursions, knew enough of the labor of rowing, not to expend his strength at starting.
— from I've Been Thinking; or, the Secret of Success by A. S. (Azel Stevens) Roe

That hut stood apart, not enclosed; it was a tavern.
— from The Witch, and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

It had not required a member of either House to stand a new election if he accepted Ministerial office.
— from An Autobiography by Catherine Helen Spence

The merchants dine and sup seldom before twelve at noon, and six at night, especially in London.
— from Elizabethan England From 'A Description of England,' by William Harrison by William Harrison

Few nations have equaled it in important discoveries and inventions; none has excelled it in commerce, navigation, learning and science,—or set as noble examples in the promotion of education, and public charities; and none in proportion to its extent has expended more money and labor upon public works.
— from Hans Brinker; Or, The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge

To Mr. and Mrs. Pettyjohn have been born two children: Hester S., who is the wife of Howard Holliday, is a graduate of the University of Idaho and for a number of years before her marriage engaged in teaching; and Margaret, a graduate of the Walla Walla high school and now engaged in the study of music at Whitman College.
— from Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2 Embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties by William Denison Lyman