These questions were solemnly propounded to Mr. Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston and the deacons of his church, who, to use their own phrase, “dealt with him” on the sin of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Each stage of development brings back the recollection of the course taken in the preceding stage, and the development has been so often repeated, that all doubt—and with all doubt, all consciousness of action—is suspended.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger ruled.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

It read: In provinces which are infested to such an extent with ladrones or outlaws that the lives and property of residents in the outlying barrios 10 are rendered wholly insecure by continued predatory raids — think of permitting a country to get into any such condition when you have an abundance of American troops on hand available to prevent it— and such outlying barrios thus furnish to the ladrones or outlaws their sources of food supply, and it is not possible with the available police forces constantly to provide protection to such barrios — there being all the time “available police forces,” in the shape of regular troops, amply able to handle these unsettled conditions, which were the inevitable aftermath of lawlessness consequent on five or six years of guerrilla warfare— it shall be within the power of the Governor-General, upon resolution of the Philippine Commission, to authorize the provincial governor to order that the residents of such outlying barrios be temporarily brought— observe the length of time this may last is not limited— [ 418 ] within stated proximity to the poblacion , or larger barrios, of the municipality, there to remain until the necessity for such order ceases to exist.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

After some eight years of war, negotiations, false truces, sudden outbreaks, reconciliation, treachery, and so on, and just as peace seemed at last permanently established, his “poor Mohammed Bonso” was assassinated at the gate of his own royal residence while dismounting in the highest spirits on his return from a successful deer-hunt.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

But she, not yet content with the woes of Rome, to the end that the things stolen might never return, brought thither for the ruin of the island a host of Saracens, who carried off both the wealth of the Sicilians and the spoils of Rome to Alexandria, to the very great shame and loss of Italy and of Christendom.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

The centerpiece is anywhere from 30 inches to a yard and a half square, on a square or round table, and from half a yard to a yard wide by length in proportion to the length of a rectangular table.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

The Master of Ceremonies was not present: there was no one who felt safe to venture upon this uncharted sea, or risk the attempt to solve this solemn problem.
— from The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal, and depreciate their authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who reigned at Damascus, and threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of reproach the accumulated weight of truth and victory.
— 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

It has just been said that at this day it is scarcely known what is meant by charity, and thus by good works, unless it be giving to the poor, enriching the needy, doing good to widows and orphans, and contributing to the building of churches and hospitals and lodging houses; and yet whether such works are done by man and for the sake of reward is not known; for if they are done by man they are not good, and if for the sake of reward they are not meritorious; and such works do not open heaven, and thus are not acknowledged as goods in heaven.
— from Spiritual Life and the Word of God by Emanuel Swedenborg

The building overhangs the canyon, and to reach it ladders were placed from one shelf of rock to another, all sloping outwards—just the wrong way for safety; and yet up these giddy stairways not only all supplies of food, but the solid materials for building this immense structure, had to be carried.
— from Chatterbox, 1905. by Various

After the ague left me, my nurse would not be satisfied until she applied the bark of the mutamba tree to my stomach; or rather the application was made just below the ribs, which she said was to prevent dureza ; this she described as a hardness immediately under the lower rib of each side, which sometimes was produced by the ague, and which, if precautions were not taken in time ended in dropsy.
— from Travels in Brazil by Henry Koster

Don’t you speak of rabbits to a New Zealander!
— from Conquest; Or, A Piece of Jade; a New Play in Three Acts by Marie Carmichael Stopes

The fourth was to inter them and to tread well the earth upon their graves, in order that nothing should ever come forth from their tombs which could grieve their friends and cause the spirit of revenge to arise in their minds.
— from Picture-Writing of the American Indians Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-89, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1893, pages 3-822 by Garrick Mallery

She had watched him when he had entered the field, sitting solid on his Irish horse, which was stepping high and snorting audibly; when at the "Fire" he had stood behind the firing line and at the "Cease fire" galloped in front; when he had threaded his forces round and round, north, south, and west, in and out as in a dance, so that they faced the enemy on every side; when somebody had blundered and his cavalry had been caught in a trap and he had had to ride without sword or revolver through a cloud of dark heads that had sprung up as if out of the ground; and above all, when his horse had stumbled and he had fallen, and the dervishes, forgetting that the battle was not a real one, had hurled their spears like shafts of forked lightning over his head.
— from The White Prophet, Volume 1 (of 2) by Caine, Hall, Sir

No ethical conceptions are possible at all,—except as floating shreds of unattached thought,—without a religious background; and the sense of responsibility, the agony of shame, the inner reverence for justice, first find their meaning and vindication in a supreme holiness that rules the world.
— from Studies of Christianity; Or, Timely Thoughts for Religious Thinkers by James Martineau

“All sorts of remarkable things are likely to happen on Christmas Eve.”
— from Marjorie Dean at Hamilton Arms by Josephine Chase

State organisation is never managed without dispute; and it makes the entire difference in the success of resistance to aggression whether the necessary apparatus has to be created in haste and confusion, or whether everything is in readiness for executing the will of the majority.
— from Society in America, Volume 1 (of 2) by Harriet Martineau