Then where this is possible the badge, if animate, is made to support the helmet and crest, and, later on, the shield, and there can be no doubt the badge was in fact acting as a supporter long before the science of armory recognised that existence of supporters.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

His wife had a nobler soul than he, as she wanted to sell all they had, and to take refuge in Holland rather than submit to the shame of a recantation.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

They thought they Page 475 now beheld an opportunity (by a certain sort of statesmen never long undiscovered or unemployed) of drawing to themselves by the aggrandizement of a court faction, a degree of power which they could never hope to derive from natural influence or from honorable service; and which it was impossible they could hold with the least security, whilst the system of administration rested upon its former bottom.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

It was a "fohn," that violent storm-wind which rushes from the mountain to the valley beneath, and in its fury snaps asunder the trunks of large trees as if they were but slender reeds, and carries the wooden houses from one side of a river to the other as easily as we could move the pieces on a chess-board.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

2 [B3(1); c1] become the sponsor of a religious celebration.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

He turned his head on his pillow and shut his eyes and a big tear was squeezed out and ran down his cheek.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

One Whitemash, a compositor I had known in London, an excellent workman, now came to me, and work'd with me constantly and diligently; and I took an apprentice, the son of Aquilla Rose.
— from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

I am inclined to suspect that we see in these polymorphic genera variations in points of structure which are of no service or disservice to the species, and which consequently have not been seized on and rendered definite by natural selection, as hereafter will be explained.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

Away with the black man's ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
— from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

There something more than ordinarily irrational in the fact that when a woman can give all the guarantees required from a male elector, independent circumstances, the position of a householder and head of a family, payment of taxes, or whatever may be the conditions imposed, the very principle and system of a representation based on property is set aside, and an exceptionally personal disqualification is created for the mere purpose of excluding her.
— from Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill

I should offend all rules of good taste and decency if I described the loathsome room; I wish I could forget it, but that I shall never do.
— from The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch by Talbot Baines Reed

I think I know enough of human nature now, to suspect with Reason, that this livery of contentment and joy which dazzles our eyes at intervals, as we review the multitudes of the laughing and the gay, is a thing to be put on and off at will, like any other garment; and hence is it that the earthly happiness of men and women is susceptible of a relative definition only.
— from The Doctor's Daughter by Vera

And the knight of the Grail fell headlong down the side of a rocky dell, 205 Tho' couch he had found, I think me, he slumbered not over well.
— from Parzival: A Knightly Epic (vol. 1 of 2) by Wolfram, von Eschenbach, active 12th century

He isn't a bad fellow by any means, though somewhat of a rough diamond.
— from The Rival Submarines by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman

Tracks scramble up the gorges along the slopes of shale, and climb by what are known as stangi over and round projecting noses of precipice.
— from The Cradle of Mankind; Life in Eastern Kurdistan by Edgar Thomas Ainger Wigram

"What sort of a ring was that you spoke of?"
— from Là-bas by J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

The regular Donga Dāsaris take the party who wants to enter their brotherhood to the side of a river, make him bathe in oil, give him a new cloth, hold a council, and give a feast.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 2 of 7 by Edgar Thurston

Now the light that had inspired her had gone, and her life here, which, when the light shone on it had seemed so real and solid, was nothing more than a shell of ash ready to crumble at a touch.
— from Robin Linnet by E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

"You had a sort of a run-in with a feller named Cross, hadn't you—you or Casey?
— from Desert Conquest; or, Precious Waters by A. M. (Arthur Murray) Chisholm