I lately examined the harbour," he continues, "accompanied by such officers, naval and military, as I thought most competent to give me assistan
— from Toronto of Old Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario by Henry Scadding

A conflict of the main body, but not an unimportant one about a secondary object, not a mere attempt which is given up when we see betimes that our object is hardly within our reach: it is a conflict waged with all our forces for the attainment of a decisive victory.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

She replied, in a dignified manner, that she had made it to divert herself with the crystallization of the silver, spirit of nitre, and mercury, and that she looked upon it as a piece of metallic vegetation, representing in little what nature performed on a larger scale; but she added, very seriously, that she could make a Tree of Diana which should be a very Tree of the Sun, which would produce golden fruit, which might be gathered, and which would continue to be produced till no more remained of a certain ingredient.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

It was a true scene of nature, and made a vivid impression upon me at the moment.
— from The Quadroon: Adventures in the Far West by Mayne Reid

He was a close student of nature and modeled all kinds of natural objects, glazing them in the proper hues.
— from The Potter's Craft: A Practical Guide for the Studio and Workshop by Charles Fergus Binns

The men in the bows of the boat still remained in the same attitude, as if unconscious or dead; but the other in the stern-sheets appeared to hear the skipper’s hail, for he half-turned his head and uttered a feeble sort of noise and made a feeble motion with one of his hands.
— from The Ghost Ship: A Mystery of the Sea by John C. (John Conroy) Hutcheson

In that strange place, with the dripping spell of night about me, and the fire casting weird lights and shadows, he seemed like some devil of the hills awakened by magic from his ancient grave.
— from Salute to Adventurers by John Buchan

Brutus was a stout, jolly, clean-shaven, immaculate seller of “notions and machinery,” and under this elastic head he handled a motley lot of stuff in a district where the Paradise was the most comfortable hotel; and it was his habit to “make it” for Sundays if possible.
— from The Rising of the Tide: The Story of Sabinsport by Ida M. (Ida Minerva) Tarbell

It has, conjointly with them, a shore-line of 13,000 miles, and exposes a surface of nearly a million and a quarter of square miles.
— from History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) Revised Edition by John William Draper

Calm study of nature and man, and rational speculation on the great problems of life displaced impassioned and imaginative thought.
— from The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible by Richard Heber Newton

Don’t you suppose they try?” “Oh, yes, but you see they can’t reason the way human beings do, and a lot of these fires burn around in a circle, so that while they were running away from one part of the fire they might very easily be heading straight for another, and get caught right between two fires.” Soon, however, they passed a section where the [133] land had been cleared of trees for a space of nearly a mile, and, once they had travelled through it, they came to the deep green woods again, where no marring traces of the fire spoiled the beauty of their trip.
— from A Campfire Girl's Test of Friendship by Jane L. Stewart

“A superintendent who is never sordid or niggardly,” added Monsieur; “and who pays in gold all the orders I have on him.”
— from The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas