— Summer's indeed a very dangerous season, And so is spring about the end of May; The sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason; But whatsoe'er the cause is, one may say, And stand convicted of more truth than treason, That there are months which nature grows more merry in,— March has its hares, and May must have its heroine.
— from Don Juan by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

Such a sentence could only mean “ I am determined to be glad to do this.”
— from An Advanced English Grammar with Exercises by George Lyman Kittredge

“I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times.
— from The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

I realized, then, what a creepy, dull, inanimate horror this land had been to me all these years, and how I had been in such a stifled condition of mind as to have grown used to it almost beyond the power to notice it.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

He had never before seen the prince in such a strange condition of mind, and could not have imagined the possibility of it.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am not afraid of any man or ghost; but as I saw that sight my knees fell a-trembling violently under me, and such a sickness came over me, that I was fain to sink down on the grass by a tree against which I leaned, and lost almost all consciousness for a minute or two: then I gathered myself up, and, advancing towards the couple on the walk, loosened the blade of
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

The descriptive name splatch fir, is from the prominences of the rugged bark not being in longitudinal ridges or flutes, but in detached flat oblong lumps, such as soft clay or mud takes when cast with force upon a wall.
— from On Naval Timber and Arboriculture With Critical Notes on Authors who have Recently Treated the Subject of Planting by Patrick Matthew

[11] He was not of such a stupid and servile cast of mind, as to quote the opinions of poets or orators, of historians and philosophers, as those of judges, from whose decision there was no appeal.
— from A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations by Mackintosh, James, Sir

I have often walked between the impending promontory's craggy cliff; I have sometimes trod the vast spaces of the lonely desert, and penetrated the inmost recesses of the dreary cavern; but never beheld Nature lowering with so dreadful a form; never felt impressions of such awe striking cold on my heart, as under this roof; every thing seemed to participate in grief for their deceased lord.
— from Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales by W. B. Cramp

For all time the week that followed remained a blurred and vague memory to him—a memory of hurried and half-eaten meals of chuck steak and strong coffee, of much tobacco-smoke, of feverish snatches at the fresh air by night, of unsettled sleep and an aching anxiety to be once more at work.
— from The Silver Poppy by Arthur Stringer

And now on all sides what clear showers and sparkling coruscations of melody!—what a broad, blue sky above!—what a fair, green earth below!—how warm and odorous this radiating space, made resonant with the ring of sweet bird-harmonies!—wild thrills of ecstasy and lover-like tenderness—snatches of song caught up from the flower-filled meadows and set to float in echoing liberty through the azure dome of heaven!—and in all and above all, the light and heat and lustre of the unclouded sun!—Here there was no dreaming possible, . .
— from Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self by Marie Corelli