On the occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said to her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any sorrow, though but that of a child, in some little garden weeping over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of creation was completely marred.
— from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

Some gentlemen had made interest for Catherick, and he got the situation of clerk at Welmingham church, which was the reason of his coming to settle in our neighbourhood.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Subcutaneous injections of neutralized orange juice failed to cure scurvy in guinea-pigs; Harden and Zilva were equally unsuccessful with large doses of their concentrated lemon juice.
— from Scurvy, Past and Present by Alfred F. Hess

"Grandmother says I ought not to cry; that I am going to a good place, where I can learn to read and write, and that by and by I can write her a letter.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. (Harriet Ann) Jacobs

The sea is of no great depth at the Grand Banks.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

These "walls" of misunderstanding are only seldom due to physical deformities (Wing Biddlebaum in "Hands") or oppressive social arrangements (Kate Swift in "The Teacher.") Misunderstanding, loneliness, the inability to articulate, are all seen by Anderson as virtually a root condition, something deeply set in our natures. Nor are these people, the grotesques, simply to be pitied and dismissed; at some point in their lives they have known desire, have dreamt of ambition, have hoped for friendship.
— from Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson

A fat, pompous, ostentatious settler in our neighbourhood they called Muckakee, “the bull frog.” Another, rather a fine young man, but with a very red face, they named Segoskee, “the rising sun.”
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

whether I struck it or not I could not determine, but I am almost confident that I did; my gun is true and I had a steady rest by means of my espontoon, which I have found very serviceable to me in this way in the open plains.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

About the time we became settled in our new quarters, my month was up and Mr. Hudson paid me twenty-five dollars, telling me to make that my home all winter if I wished.
— from A Texas Cow Boy or, fifteen years on the hurricane deck of a Spanish pony, taken from real life by Charles A. Siringo

Although (see Introduction) of no particular literary merit they are singularly
— from A Letter Book Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing by George Saintsbury

A single surveyor might have to issue instructions to a thousand offices, and these to as many messengers, since ignorance or neglect in any member of the force would inevitably have produced confusion fruitful of annoyance and complaint in the places served.
— from The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the History of Penny Postage, Vol. 2 (of 2) by Hill, Rowland, Sir

He was of the same opinion; so was Macco: but whether the natives saw it or not, we could not tell.
— from In the Eastern Seas by William Henry Giles Kingston

You know no difference between the bleating of one sheep from another, but the poor lambs know their mother's voice, there is a secret instinct of nature that is more powerful than many marks and signs, even so those who are begotten of God know his voice,—they discern that in it which all the world that hear it cannot discern—there is a sympathy between their souls and that living word.
— from The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning by Hugh Binning

The Sèvres is of no earthly use to him, and he would scarcely dare to touch it, and he would certainly never eat his cutlet or have his venison served on it; but [103] it is something that everybody envies him, that nobody else has.
— from Princess Napraxine, Volume 3 (of 3) by Ouida

The immediate problem of what to do with this sudden influx of Negroes was complicated by the fact that many of the draftees, the product of vastly inferior schooling, were incompetent.
— from Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 by Morris J. MacGregor

Tasman anchored on the north coast of the south island of New Zealand, but canoes of warlike Maoris surrounded the ships, a conflict took place in which several Dutch seamen were killed, the weather grew stormy, and Tasman sailed away from the bay he named Murderer's Bay—rediscovered by Captain Cook about a hundred years later.
— from A Book of Discovery The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole by M. B. (Margaret Bertha) Synge

We shall study in our next lesson about them.
— from Clothing and Health: An Elementary Textbook of Home Making by Anna M. (Anna Maria) Cooley

"Some of 'em have already started in," observed Nort, as he went up to his pony, which, with the other two animals, had been contentedly grazing.
— from The Boy Ranchers in Camp; Or, The Water Fight at Diamond X by Willard F. Baker