Some vices and some virtues were so inherent in the constitution of an aristocratic nation, and are so opposite to the character of a modern people, that they can never be infused into it; some good tendencies and some bad propensities which were unknown to the former, are natural to the latter; some ideas suggest themselves spontaneously to the imagination of the one, which are utterly repugnant to the mind of the other.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

She sent it subsequently to Salzburg, where it still hangs in the Mozarteum.]
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Just as the train I was on was starting out of the depot at Indianapolis a messenger came running up to stop it, saying the Secretary of War was coming into the station and wanted to see me.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

It must be cut below the knot, and the reapers continue to throw their sickles at it, one after the other, until one of them succeeds in severing the stalks below the knot.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

I didn’t want you to be dull in the arbour, so I sent the same letter to Mitya too!
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Westwards, like tiger's skin, each separate isle Spotted the surface of the yellow Nile; Gray obelisks shot upwards from the soil.
— from Poems by Victor Hugo

She does not, beautiful as she is, seize the soul by surprise, but, with more dangerous fascination, she steals it almost imperceptibly.”
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

Burnt alive; so it stands, they say: a very curious civic document.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

Nature is not effete, as he saith, or so lavish, to bestow all her gifts upon an age, but hath reserved some for posterity, to show her power, that she is still the same, and not old or consumed.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

And even if I wish to rise more quickly to the surface, I ship the screw, and the pressure of the water causes the Nautilus to rise vertically like a balloon filled with hydrogen.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

At last his old measure was found too small, and I got his Majesty's consent to have a new one-taken; so I summoned the shoemaker, who had succeeded his father, and was exceedingly stupid.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon by Various

And similarly, the only true interpretation of ( c ) may be some such fact as that, if I were to turn the coins over, or break them up, I should have certain sensations, of a sort I can imagine very well; of ( d ) that if I were at an equal distance from the half-crown and the florin, the sensible, I should then see corresponding to the half-crown would be bigger than that corresponding to the florin, whereas it is now smaller; of ( e ) that, if, when my eyes were closed, they had been open instead, I should have seen certain sensibles.
— from Philosophical Studies by G. E. (George Edward) Moore

“I am glad to see, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “that the Women’s Domestic Guild of America has succeeded in solving the servant girl problem—none too soon, one might almost say.”
— from Idle Ideas in 1905 by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

The ravine in front of it is the gully between the two spurs; it shelters the sunken road to Contalmaison; the heap is Fricourt village, and the woodland to the north is Fricourt Wood.
— from The Old Front Line by John Masefield

So I sang the song he chose, "My love, she's but a lassie yet"; and he took the bunch of bluebells from my braids, and was gone.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 63, January, 1863 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

"Keep still," I said, "Tom's sick.
— from Shenanigans at Sugar Creek by Paul Hutchens