The shutters cut off the least ray of light, and we waited in absolute darkness.
— from Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Illustrated by Arthur Conan Doyle

Even in the largest sense, comparative mythology must demean itself modestly in order to be tolerated in the severe company of the sciences.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

One of these sprinkled the heads of all the (remaining) upright posts in the seaward compartment of the stakes, while the other boarded the big boat belonging to the stakes, and sprinkled the boat and all its gear from stem to stern (commencing on the left side of the bows, and working right down to the stern, and then recommencing on the right and working down to the stern again).
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

I refuted them to the best of my power; but that power was provokingly small, at the moment, for I was too much flurried with indignation—and even shame—that he should thus dare to address me, to retain sufficient command of thought and language to enable me adequately to contend against his powerful sophistries.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

I remember myself as a gaunt black figure, going along the slippery, shiny pavement, and the strange sense of detachment I felt from the squalid respectability, the sordid commercialism of the place.
— from The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Without disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends—and especially a clergyman's—will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nor indeed does Herodotus seem at all acquainted with the affairs of the Jews; for as he never names them, so little or nothing of what he says about them, their country, or maritime cities, two of which he alone mentions, Cadytus and Jenysus, proves true; nor indeed do there appear to have ever been any such cities on their coast.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

Gloster is the superstitious character of the drama,—the only one.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

The Representative Valentin was in solitary confinement; on the morning of the 4th his warder suddenly became amiable, and offered to obtain for him news from outside, through his wife, who, he said, had been a servant in General Leflô's household.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

Foreign youth steer clear of the gymnasium; its rules are too severe.
— from A Tramp Abroad — Volume 01 by Mark Twain

Yes—the old woman gazed long and ardently upon the sweet countenance of that young creature,—gazed as if in an adoration forced upon a savage mind by the apparition of some radiant being from a heavenly sphere!
— from The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 by George W. M. (George William MacArthur) Reynolds

This is how it befell: a workman of mine had heard Some bitter speech in my mouth, and he took me up at the word, And said: “Come over to-morrow to our Radical spouting-place; For there, if we hear nothing new, at least we shall see a new face; He is one of those Communist chaps, and ’tis like that you two may agree.”
— from William Morris: Poet, Craftsman, Socialist by Elisabeth Luther Cary

This is strongly corroborative of the correctness of the theory in relation to the longevity of man, which cannot now, I think, fail to be accepted generally.”
— from The Life and Adventures of Ben Hogan, the Wickedest Man in the World by Ben (Benedict) Hogan

one-half of the second class; otherwise, the bare majority are to be of the first class, and the rest of the second.
— from Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. 1866. Fourth edition. by United States. Navy Department. Bureau of Ordnance

It is the non-conducting quality of glass that makes it so liable to break, when it is thick, if it be exposed to any sudden change of temperature.
— from Science for the School and Family, Part I. Natural Philosophy by Worthington Hooker

Finally, after a series of spasmodic encounters which lasted fifteen hours, the enraged snout turned blue, the fiery eyes blackened, and victory was ours—not as the result of the knife alone, not in a square fight of brute force, but by the superior cunning of the human animal under the stimulus of hunger.
— from My Attainment of the Pole Being the Record of the Expedition That First Reached the Boreal Center, 1907-1909. With the Final Summary of the Polar Controversy by Frederick Albert Cook

The delusion incident to an enormously excessive paper circulation, which gave a fictitious value to everything and stimulated adventure and speculation to an extravagant extent, has been happily succeeded by the substitution of the precious metals and paper promptly redeemable in specie; and thus false values have disappeared and a sounder condition of things has been introduced.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

He still retained his old staff, composed of Rawlins, adjutant-general; Riggin, Lagow, and Hilyer, aides; and he had a small company of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry as an escort.
— from Project Gutenberg Edition of The Memoirs of Four Civil War Generals by John Alexander Logan