The great inequality in manner of living, the extreme idleness of some, and the excessive labour of others, the easiness of exciting and gratifying our sensual appetites, the too exquisite foods of the wealthy which overheat and fill them with indigestion, and, on the other hand, the unwholesome food of the poor, often, bad as it is, insufficient for their needs, which induces them, when opportunity offers, to eat voraciously and overcharge their stomachs; all these, together with sitting up late, and excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, mental exhaustion, the innumerable pains and anxieties inseparable from every condition of life, by which the mind of man is incessantly tormented; these are too fatal proofs that the greater part of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided them nearly all by adhering to that simple, uniform and solitary manner of life which nature prescribed.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I attacked the rear ship and stood along the English line as far as the sixth.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

A military tribune, Aulus Manlius, commanded the latter; those who were sent against the Etrurians, Lucius Æmilius commanded.
— from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy

I looked up at the church first and then at the windows then down and our eyes met I felt something go through me like all needles my eyes were dancing I remember after when I looked at myself in the glass hardly recognised myself the change he was attractive to a girl in spite of his being a little bald intelligent looking disappointed and gay at the same time he was like Thomas in the shadow of Ashlydyat I had a splendid skin from the sun and the excitement like a rose I didnt get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been nice on account of her
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

She was not ignorant of the Latin tongue, but possessed in equal perfection the Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

There was a sharp snick as the electric light was turned on.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

But still the trouble was there and was so agonizing that even long afterwards Alyosha thought of that sorrowful day as one of the bitterest and most fatal days of his life.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The two parts into which the country was thus divided, were designated severally as the “Engla lagu” and the “Dena lagu.”
— from Anglo-Saxon Literature by John Earle

Only the peculiarly pasty color of their skins and their embarrassing lack of antennae distinguished them visibly from the Snaddrath.
— from The Ignoble Savages by Evelyn E. Smith

Describing his approach with his sisters to Witch Hill, he says: "We ... began to ascend a hill which at a distance, by its dark slope and the even line of its summit, resembled a green rampart along the road; ...
— from The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Appendix to Volume XII: Tales, Sketches, and other Papers by Nathaniel Hawthorne with a Biographical Sketch by George Parsons Lathrop Biographical Sketch of Nathaniel Hawthorne by George Parsons Lathrop

It chose as Speaker Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, and revised its rules so as to expedite legislation.
— from The New Nation by Frederic L. (Frederic Logan) Paxson

No gas in streets, and the Electric Light (lately absorbed) gone out.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 105 December 23rd, 1893 by Various

Whether her gentle beauties first allur'd me, Or whether peaceful scenes and rural shades, Or leisure, or the want of other objects, Or solitude, apt to engender love, Engag'd my soul, I know not; but I lov'd her.
— from The Fatal Falsehood: A Tragedy. In Five Acts by Hannah More

He snuffed so much that he kept up a sniffle all the evening, like—" Here Rhoda's sniffle was heard again.
— from The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times by George Alfred Townsend

Most other writers who tell the story depend for their information, either directly or indirectly, on Herodotus: in later times it was supposed that the Lydian king was preserved from the flames by the use of some talisman such as the Ephesian letters.
— from History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) by G. (Gaston) Maspero

Its precepts represented the requirements of the Christian criterion of Salvation applied to earthly life.
— from The Mediaeval Mind (Volume 1 of 2) A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages by Henry Osborn Taylor