And, only fancy, here was that brain at twenty-six, undisciplined, completely free from principles, not weighed down by any stores of knowledge, but only lightly sprinkled with information of a sort in the engineering line; it was young and had a physiological craving for exercise, it was on the look-out for it, when all at once quite casually the fine juicy idea of the aimlessness of life and the darkness beyond the tomb descends upon it.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Having thus prepared all things as well as I was able, I set sail on the twenty-fourth day of September 1701, at six in the morning; and when I had gone about four-leagues to the northward, the wind being at south-east, at six in the evening I descried a small island, about half a league to the north-west.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

I do not know whether you noticed her sudden impulse to embrace and kiss me after her return to schoolwork the day I flogged her; that was a stray erotic impulse, and had we been alone, I could not have avoided responding to it in a way that would have delighted her, and initiated her into some of the delicious mysteries of venery.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

The Birth of the Monkey Beyond the seas, in the Eastern continent, in the kingdom of Ao-lai, is the mountain Hua-kuo Shan.
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

"These gentlemen, my tenants, cannot stand it any longer; Mr. B—" pointing to the lawyer, "has turned him out of his room, and he now persists in haunting the building generally, sitting upon the banisters of the stairs by day, and sleeping in the entry by night.
— from Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville

Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance?
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

And Jurgis looked the fellow squarely in the eye, and so the fellow wasted no time in conventional protests, but read him the deed.
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Our next chapters will take up various school activities and studies and discuss them as successive stages in that evolution of knowledge which we have just been discussing.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

Penelon, Penelon!” An old man, who was digging busily at one of the beds, stuck his spade in the earth, and approached, cap in hand, striving to conceal a quid of tobacco he had just thrust into his cheek.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

The blood within them, subtle as a bane, Burning as lava, scarce, flows ever fraught With sad ideals that ever come to naught.
— from Poems of Paul Verlaine by Paul Verlaine

If its progress be not stopped by a little moderation in the Democrats, it will turn the scale decidedly in favor of the Stadtholder, in the event of their being left to themselves without foreign interference.
— from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) by Thomas Jefferson

[158] By the time that the fellows had dressed, in the warm cabin, and had started to pry the shutters back, the first dim promise of daylight was showing in the east.
— from The Grammar School Boys Snowbound; or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

While Russia was thus torn with internal troubles, the situation in the East grew daily more threatening.
— from The North Pacific: A Story of the Russo-Japanese War by Willis Boyd Allen

The wind was blowing about 30 knots when I boarded the mother ship of the submarines in the English East Coast port.
— from Some Naval Yarns by Mordaunt Hall

Much must have been spent in the endeavor to convict the rightful possessor but, when the case was concluded, outstanding engagements were repudiated.
— from A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2 by Henry Charles Lea

And how, indeed, as descendants of an extinct race of primates, with a mind still in the early stages of accumulation, should we be in the way of reaching ultimate truth at any point?
— from The Mind in the Making: The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform by James Harvey Robinson

Also it has other properties—see,” and lifting the mirror I used it as a heliograph, flashing the reflected sunlight into the eyes of the long half-circle of men in front of us.
— from Allan and the Holy Flower by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard