"'Why, what other duty, Astafy Ivanovitch?' "'You lost soul'—I was in such a rage, I called him that—'if you could but learn tailoring work!
— from Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Natásha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing from one to another, grew stronger and reached its climax when they all came out into the frost and got into the sleighs, talking, calling to one another, laughing, and shouting.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

“For having searched and ransacked in certain places, in Paris as well as elsewhere, for money said to be there concealed; but nothing hath been found: forty-five livres parisis.”
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

These numerous expeditions, scattered over half a continent, were exposed to so many unforeseeable accidents and misfortunes, that the government, in order to render support and retain its control, would necessarily have to be in regular communication.
— from Vitus Bering: the Discoverer of Bering Strait by Peter Lauridsen

Seeing him strengthening the Carthaginian influence in Spain, and rendering it continually more formidable, the Romans were anxious to interfere in the politics of that country.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

Pell-mell, with slow steps, and reciting in chorus their sacred songs, they walked round the Caaba—it is a walk of three-quarters of an hour.
— from On Love by Stendhal

But all my care and pains were unavailing, for my master made the discovery that I was not a man, and harboured the same base designs as my servant; and as fortune does not always supply a remedy in cases of difficulty, and I had no precipice or ravine at hand down which to fling the master and cure his passion, as I had in the servant's case, I thought it a lesser evil to leave him and again conceal myself among these crags, than make trial of my strength and argument with him.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

The only safeguard against Revolution in Central Europe is indeed the fact that, even to the minds of men who are desperate, Revolution offers no prospect of improvement whatever.
— from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes

thou, mighty Mavors, who wieldest all warfare in lordship beneath thy sway; and on the Springs and Rivers I call, and the Dread of high heaven, and the divinities of the blue seas: if haply victory fall to Turnus the Ausonian, the vanquished make covenant to withdraw to Evander's city; Iülus shall quit the soil; nor ever hereafter shall the Aeneadae return in arms to renew warfare, or attack this realm with the sword.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

How simple and rustic, in comparison with these, would seem the dog-roses which, in a few weeks' time, would be climbing the same hillside path in the heat of the sun, dressed in the smooth silk of their blushing pink bodices, which would be undone and scattered by the first breath of wind.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

When the Bishop came to the Popes presence, he declared vnto him; what great commodities did rise out of England to the See of Rome ; that the Inuesting of Prelats had bene an ancient right to the crowne of that Realme; that as the King was by nature liberall, so was 291 he stout and resolute in courage, that it should be a great dishonour to him, who in power exceeded any of his ancesters, if hee should not maintaine the dignities which they held; that for this cause the Pope should doe well to preferre to his consideration, what preiudice might follow to his Estate, if hee should remit nothing of the seuerities of those Canons which had bene lately made.
— from The Lives of the III. Normans, Kings of England: William the First, William the Second, Henrie the First by Hayward, John, Sir

And so as regards intellectual culture, I am far from denying utility in this large sense as the end of Education, when I lay it down, that the culture of the intellect is a good in itself and its own end; I do not exclude from the idea of intellectual culture what it cannot but be, from the very nature of things; I only deny that we must be able to point out, before we have any right to call it useful, some art, or business, or profession, or trade, or work, as resulting from it, and as its real and complete end.
— from The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin by John Henry Newman

It had been agreed among them that with certain important changes, it would make an admirable vehicle for Paula's return to the operatic stage, and being a small affair from the producer's point of view, involving only one interior set, would be practicable for production during the summer at Ravinia in case the project for Paula's singing there went through.
— from Mary Wollaston by Henry Kitchell Webster

In the course of this development the faculty of inhibition grows stronger and more efficient and obeys the behests of the understanding more and more swiftly, surely and reliably; it can reach a pitch of invincibility against which all the revolts of instinct, all the storms of passion, are powerless.
— from Morals and the Evolution of Man by Max Simon Nordau

This last-named gentleman seems to be in touch with spirits as rapid in composition as Robert W. Chambers.
— from The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction by Dorothy Scarborough

Having given the proper length to the cord, it proceeds to weave its elegant bag, placing itself in the centre and spinning rings of silk at regular intervals, connecting them at the same time by means of cross threads; so that the whole, when finished, forms a loose web, with quadrangular meshes of nearly equal size throughout.
— from The Naturalist on the River Amazons by Henry Walter Bates

They added, that if I did not immediately have recourse to such a regimen, I could receive no benefit from it in a few months, and that in a few more I must resign myself to death.
— from Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life Wherein is demonstrated, by his own Example, the Method of Preserving Health to Extreme Old Age by Luigi Cornaro