A thousand times a day rough voices blessed her, and smiles of unwonted softness stole over hard faces, as she passed; and when she tripped fearlessly over dangerous places, rough, sooty hands were stretched involuntarily out to save her, and smooth her path.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America's most precious discoveries and possessions.
— from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Like a Hercules with the burning Nessus'-shirt on him, which shoots in on him dull incurable misery: the Nessus'-shirt not to be stript off, which is his own natural skin!
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

This nobody can prove, because such a synthetical connexion from mere concepts, without any reference to sensuous intuition on the one side, or connexion of it in a possible experience on the other, is absolutely impossible.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant

Sciscitet igitur obvios , 15. quà sit eundum; & caveat Prædones , 16.
— from The Orbis Pictus by Johann Amos Comenius

When the lawyers and tradesmen brought extravagant bills Sir Roger used to bargain beforehand for leave to cut off a quarter of a yard in any part of the bill he pleased; he wore a pair of scissors in his pocket for this purpose, and would snip it off so nicely as you cannot imagine.
— from The History of John Bull by John Arbuthnot

The subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were those of outlaws and fugitives: and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had been driven from their native seats, were reclaimed from a vagrant life, and enlisted in the service of the empire.
— 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

Marshall left the army in 1781, when most of the fighting in Virginia was over; and began practice in Fauquier County when the courts were opened, after Cornwallis’s surrender, in October of that year.
— from John Marshall by James Bradley Thayer

She is like ourselves, she is ourselves written large—written in animal, in tree, in fruit, in flower.
— from Under the Maples by John Burroughs

Why, to be sure, if one romance fails us, we must get a better, that is all!
— from Faces in the Fire, and Other Fancies by Frank Boreham

Thus, then, Western Asia spread itself out in Isaiah's day.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 1 (of 2) by George Adam Smith

He spit it out again, and then looked up to the stars, which were twinkling above him.
— from Snarleyyow; or, The Dog Fiend by Frederick Marryat

Some one present made an allusion to a similar childish dislike in the true tale of “The terrible knitters o’ Dent” given in Southey’s “Common-place Book:” and she smiled faintly, but said that the mere difference in food was not all: that the food itself was spoilt by the dirty carelessness of the cook, so that she and her sisters disliked their meals exceedingly; and she named her relief and gladness when the doctor condemned the meat, and spoke of having seen him spit it out.
— from The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 1 by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

It gives a very strange idea of the state of things then existing between England and Spain when we read that immediately after this unprovoked attack by Drake on Nombre de Dios , that captain was visited by a Hidalgo , {289} who protested that the object of his coming was to see and admire one who had shown such courage.
— from Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 1 of 2 by Robert Grant Watson

Then I fail to see that the matter is of the slightest importance one way or the other."
— from The Blue Lights: A Detective Story by Frederic Arnold Kummer

The first night we slept in our garden-house and for several nights after, the basha took upon himself to send us out a guard of soldiers, who were responsible for our safety.
— from In the Tail of the Peacock by Isabel Savory