They had left two men in the boat, who, as I found afterwards, having drunk a little too much brandy, fell asleep; however, one of them waking a little sooner than the other and finding the boat too fast aground for him to stir it, hallooed out for the rest, who were straggling about: upon which they all soon came to the boat: but it was past all their strength to launch her, the boat being very heavy, and the shore on that side being a soft oozy sand, almost like a quicksand.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

The church of Rome is sustained by apostolical succession; but apostolical succession is not an institution complete in itself; it is a part of a whole; if it be not part of a whole it has no foundation.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

In the afternoon to the Temple, my brother’s, the Wardrobe, to Mr. Moore, and other places, called at about small businesses, and so at night home to my office and then to supper and to bed.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

“I wrote Mark that for literary effect I thought there should be a species of forgery, though of course there was no effort to actually deceive a scholar.
— from 1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors by Mark Twain

The island is situated at the mouth of the Canton River, and is separated by about sixty miles from the Portuguese town of Macao, on the opposite coast.
— from Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

It was expected that this force would be increased by Dutch ships, but a squadron under Lord Howe drove the latter back to their ports.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

So she hastened to and fro in a great parade of business-like activity, and, as she went, she would sing blithely and stop and smile to herself, and break into singing again, and call merrily to her dog, a rotund, slate-colored bundle of hair that waddled after her, and answered, if he were given time to get within earshot, to the name of Mop.
— from A Change of Air by Anthony Hope

He knew, on the contrary, how insignificant he was and how insignificant every one is in this world where beings, agitated like grains in a van, are mixed and separated by a shake of the rustic or of the god.
— from The Red Lily — Volume 03 by Anatole France

She was about seventeen, but a short, roly-poly type, with curly rumpled hair and gray eyes that never seemed to keep from mirth.
— from Kit of Greenacre Farm by Izola L. (Izola Louise) Forrester

The adjoining Bath Room is lined white marble: the principal bath, which is sixteen feet long, ten feet wide, and six feet deep, is supplied with salt water from the sea, by a succession of pipes, and other machinery.
— from Florizel's Folly by John Ashton

And right through it should be a shady path of Filberts or Cobnuts arching overhead and yielding a bountiful autumn harvest.
— from Colour in the flower garden by Gertrude Jekyll

But, when he found the boys at play And saw them dabbling in their clay, He stood behind a stall to lurk, And mark the progress of their work; With true delight observed them all Raking up mud to build a wall.
— from The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1 by Jonathan Swift

Hotspur's picture of this “popinjay” with pouncet-box in hand, and “perfumed like a milliner,” is splendid self-revelation: “he made me mad, To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet, And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman.”
— from The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story by Frank Harris