In the east behind the mountains rose two green streaks of light, and it really was beautiful.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

And I say this to let parents know the value of it; for though I have met more learned book-worms in the world, especially a great hulking, clumsy, blear-eyed old doctor, whom they called Johnson, and who lived in a court off Fleet Street, in London, yet I pretty soon silenced him in an argument (at ‘Button’s Coffeehouse’); and in that, and in poetry, and what I call natural philosophy, or the science of life, and in riding, music, leaping, the small-sword, the knowledge of a horse, or a main of cocks, and the manners of an accomplished gentleman and a man of fashion, I may say for myself that Redmond Barry has seldom found his equal.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

The bob should be spherical, of lead, and its radius, I presume, about one inch.
— from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9) Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private by Thomas Jefferson

When he proposes a scheme of legislation, all its results exist in his mind as possibilities, and if an effect is produced not calculated in the conception, he is so far to be accounted a blunderer, not a statesman.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, July 1850 by Various

It was, indeed, this fear which mainly drove Britain, in spite of, or perhaps because of, her free trade theories, into a series of large annexations in regions where her trade had been hitherto predominant.
— from The Expansion of Europe; The Culmination of Modern History by Ramsay Muir

Especially for the working classes are intended the following: National and international protective legislation for workmen on the basis of a normal eight hours day, prohibition of child labour under fourteen years, prohibition of night work save rendered necessary by the nature of the work or the welfare of society, superintendence of labour and its relations by a Ministry of Labour, thorough workshop hygiene, equality of status between the agricultural labourer, servant class, and the artisan, right of association, and State insurance, as to which the working class should have an authoritative voice.
— from William of Germany by Stanley Shaw

Romance of a Harem is a true and faithful story of life as it really is in Turkish and Egyptian Harems.
— from Hall Caine, the Man and the Novelist by C. Fred (Charles Frederick) Kenyon

"By his loving speech and endearments?" "Seldom did he speak of love, and I remember me of no caresses save a kiss night and morning."
— from Balsamo, the Magician; or, The Memoirs of a Physician by Alexandre Dumas

If so many square miles and so many head of population were gained, whether of alien or kindred race, mutinous or friendly, the end of all statesmanship was realised, and the heaviest sacrifice of life and industry repaid.
— from A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 by Charles Alan Fyffe

Another phase of the problem of industry in which we may expect to see great changes in the future concerns the status of labor and its relation to capital.
— from The Psychology of Nations A Contribution to the Philosophy of History by G. E. (George Everett) Partridge