There was a something of regret, a something as though they would wish to take me with them, but did not like to ask me, and yet as though I were hardly to ask to be taken.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

Full on the bark it fell; now high, now low, Toss'd and retoss'd, it reel'd beneath the blow; At once into the main the crew it shook: Sulphurous odours rose, and smouldering smoke.
— from The Odyssey by Homer

The hexamilion , the rampart of the Isthmus, so often raised and so often subverted, could not long be defended by three hundred Italian archers: the keys of Corinth were seized by the Turks: they returned from their summer excursions with a train of captives and spoil; and the complaints of the injured Greeks were heard with indifference and disdain.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

This, when they are thought to have done so, is then 139 taken down to the sea or river and set adrift, invariably at the ebb tide, which is supposed to carry the boat (and the spirits with it) “to another country.”
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

But people had said at the time that he was going far away to somewhere in the South of Russia, and so I was very much surprised at seeing him with us again so early, and alone with Mme.
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Then, while Guillaume Rym, a “sage and malicious man,” as Philippe de Comines puts it, watched them both with a smile of raillery and superiority, each sought his place, the cardinal quite abashed and troubled, Coppenole tranquil and haughty, and thinking, no doubt, that his title of hosier was as good as any other, after all, and that Marie of Burgundy, mother to that Marguerite whom Coppenole was to-day bestowing in marriage, would have been less afraid of the cardinal than of the hosier; for it is not a cardinal who would have stirred up a revolt among the men of Ghent against the favorites of the daughter of Charles the Bold; it is not a cardinal who could have fortified the populace with a word against her tears and prayers, when the Maid of Flanders came to supplicate her people in their behalf, even at the very foot of the scaffold; while the hosier had only to raise his leather elbow, in order to cause to fall your two heads, most illustrious seigneurs, Guy d’Hymbercourt and Chancellor Guillaume Hugonet.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men how they had liked being at Vronsky’s, when suddenly the coachman, Philip, expressed himself unasked: “Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all they gave us.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

But whichever of these complex ideas be clearest, that of body, or immaterial spirit, this is evident, that the simple ideas that make them up are no other than what we have received from sensation or reflection: and so is it of all our other ideas of substances, even of God himself.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

Miss Anthony presented a ringing set of resolutions, and splendid addresses were given by Mrs. Stanton, Theodore Tilton and Henry Ward Beecher.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

Before we give a partial account of the results obtained by the delicate experiments of Professor Marey on the flight of birds and insects, our readers should be reminded of the great differences between an insect and a bird, remembering that the former, is, in brief, a chitinous sac, so to speak, or rather a series of three such spherical or elliptical sacs (the head, thorax and abdomen); the outer walls of the body forming a solid but light crust, to which are attached broad, membranous wings, the wing being a sort of membranous bag stretched over a framework of hollow tubes (the tracheæ), so disposed as to give the greatest lightness and strength to the wing.
— from Our Common Insects A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and Houses by A. S. (Alpheus Spring) Packard

The Street-Seller of Walking-Sticks „ 438 The Street-Seller of Rhubarb and Spice „ 452 The Street-Seller of Combs „ 458 Portrait of Mr. Mayhew To face the Title Page [iii] PREFACE.
— from London Labour and the London Poor (Vol. 1 of 4) by Henry Mayhew

Dort , or Dordrecht (34), a town on an island in the Maas, in the province of South Holland, 12 m. SE. of Rotterdam; admirably situated for trade, connected as it is with the Rhine as well, on which rafts of wood are sent floating down to it; is famous for a Synod held here in 1618-19, at which the tenets of Arminius were condemned, and the doctrines of Calvin approved of and endorsed as the doctrines of the Reformed Church.
— from The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by P. Austin Nuttall

The young of all the Steganopodes are born naked, unlike the young of most of the other water birds, which, as a rule, are hatched covered with feathers and can swim or run about soon after birth.
— from Color Key to North American Birds with bibliographical appendix by Frank M. (Frank Michler) Chapman

Men, this is a very good start, or, rather, a second one, for your record, as forwarded me from the recruit rendezvous, mentions that you have [159] already been commended in orders for aiding in preventing the escape of a prisoner.
— from Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks; or, Two Recruits in the United States Army by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

Dr. Overweg examined the rocks, and found the outer crust a new species of rock, a sort of trachite or brachite; and the interior a sort of basalt, or volcanic substance.
— from Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 Under the Orders and at the Expense of Her Majesty's Government by James Richardson

I mean to say, I had this hump, you know, owing to one thing and another, and was feeling that life was more or less of a jolly old snare and delusion, and she bucked me up and all that, and suddenly I found myself kissing her and all that sort of rot, and she was kissing me and so on and so forth, and she's got the most ripping eyes, and there was nobody about, and the long and the short of it was, old boy, that I said, 'Let's get married!'
— from Jill the Reckless by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

Then she gave a great sigh of relief as she realized that her terrible fright was only a bad dream and that she was curled up right on the dear, familiar, old, sunny knoll and not running for her life at all.
— from Old Granny Fox by Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) Burgess

Langridge breathed a sigh of relief and struck out the next two men.
— from The Rival Pitchers: A Story of College Baseball by Lester Chadwick

A rude shed, supported on rough and slender sticks rather than posts, no walls, but the floor raised to within a foot of the eaves, is the style of architecture they usually adopt.
— from The Malay Archipelago, Volume 2 The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise; A Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature by Alfred Russel Wallace