Until similar cases are reported, the incident must be regarded merely as interesting and suggestive.
— from Scurvy, Past and Present by Alfred F. Hess

The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

They had now crossed the second court, and reached the hall door, when the soldier, bidding them good night, hastened back to his post; and, while they waited for admittance, Emily considered how she might avoid seeing Montoni, and retire unnoticed to her former apartment, for she shrunk from the thought of encountering either him, or any of his party, at this hour.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

I observed a great number of Lodges on the opposit Side at Some distance below and Several Indians on the opposit bank passing up to where Capt. Lewis was with the Canoes, others I Saw on a knob nearly opposit to me at which place they delayed but a Short time before they returned to their Lodges as fast as they could run, I was fearfull that those people might not be informed of us, I deturmined to take the little Canoe which was with me and proceed with the three men in it to the Lodges, on my aproach not one person was to be Seen except three men off in the plains, and they Sheared off as I aproached near the Shore, I landed in front of five Lodges which was at no great distance from each other, Saw no person the enteranc or Dores of the Lodges wer Shut with the Same materials of which they were built a mat, I approached one with a pipe in my hand entered a lodge which was the nearest to me found 32 persons men, women and a few children Setting permiscuesly in the Lodg, in the greatest agutation, Some crying and ringing there hands, others hanging their heads.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

This is the pervading note in many amateur ethnographic accounts of sailing, where cheap fun is made by speaking of roughly hewn dug-outs in terms of “dreadnoughts” or “Royal Yachts,” just as simple, savage chiefs are referred to as “Kings” in a jocular vein.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

Unbalanced characters are always changing their affections, their tastes, their sentiments; the only constant factor is the habit of change; but the man of settled character always returns to his former habits and preserves to old age the tastes and the pleasures of his childhood.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

But these rare souls set opinion, success, and life, at so cheap a rate, that they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sentinel carrying and ringing the bell had just passed by on the wall, leaving for a short interval an unguarded space (the practice apparently being, to pass this bell round along the walls from one sentinel to another throughout the night), when some of the soldiers of Brasidas took advantage of the moment to try and mount.
— from History of Greece, Volume 06 (of 12) by George Grote

But a marriage shall in no case be adjudged a nullity, on the ground of being under age of consent, if the parties cohabited freely after reaching that age; nor the marriage of an insane person, if there be similar cohabitation after restoration to reason: act of March 28: Laws (1861), 96, 97; same in Comp.
— from A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 3 of 3 by George Elliott Howard

But what if the stormy cloud should come, And ruffle the silver sea?
— from The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Complete by Oliver Wendell Holmes

At Athens, in memory of the event, and to appease the manes of its victims, a ceremony called Hydrophoria was observed, having so close a resemblance to that in use at Hierapolis, in Syria, that we can hardly fail to look upon it as a Syro-Phoenician importation, and the result of an assimilation established in remote antiquity between the Deluge of Deucalion and that of Khasisatra, as described by the author of the treatise 'On the Syrian Goddess.'
— from Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly

It was from the trees by the creek the shot came, and Red took fright."
— from The Pioneers by Katharine Susannah Prichard

about the beauty of the weather and the prospects of the crops, eats ice-creams, drinks sherry-cobblers, or, it may be, smokes cigars and reads the evening newspaper.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 6, December 1850 by Various

What kind of person must the first king be—the first to supersede the old rule of the Divinely-inspired judges, the first to fulfil the cravings of the people, the first to guide the nation which had been appointed by God to stand in so close a relation to Himself?
— from The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel by William Garden Blaikie

But later the British commander, Commodore Anson, inflicted great damage on the Spanish colonies, and returned to England with vessels laden with large amounts of captured silver.
— from The Leading Facts of English History by D. H. (David Henry) Montgomery