According to his command we listened, and with full ears sucked in the air as some of you suck oysters, to find if we could hear some sound scattered through the sky; and to lose none of it, like the Emperor Antoninus some of us laid their hands hollow next to their ears; but all this would not do, nor could we hear any voice.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

At that moment there came the sound of unrestrained laughter: the wife, forgetful of everything, sought in her intoxication to make up by a few hours of happiness for the misery awaiting her next day.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

It is nothing less than the privilege it secures to the rational being of participating in the giving of universal laws, by which it qualifies him to be a member of a possible kingdom of ends, a privilege to which he was already destined by his own nature as being an end in himself and, on that account, legislating in the kingdom of ends; free as regards all laws of physical nature, and obeying those only which he himself gives, and by which his maxims can belong to a system of universal law, to which at the same time he submits himself.
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant

She retired from the song of Ullin, like the moon in the west, when she foresees the shower, and hides her fair head in a cloud.
— from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

And they did not; but the national spirit of unselfishness led them to divide up with neighbors who were not at the distribution, and next Sabbath the poor preachers could hardly keep countenance before their vast congregations.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without bending a single blade.
— from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

When, for defraying the expense of government, a revenue is raised within the year, from the produce of free or unmortgaged taxes, a certain portion of the revenue of private people is only turned away from maintaining one species of unproductive labour, towards maintaining another.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Then, during some block in the traffic, he had slipped out unseen, leaving the body of the victim to be discovered when the cab pulled up at the hotel.
— from Tales of Chinatown by Sax Rohmer

"Perhaps an alternate solution might be to allow someone of unquestioned loyalty to monitor the Rajput field commanders, someone experienced in handling Rajput concerns, though not necessarily a general.
— from The Moghul by Thomas Hoover

How would some of us like that?
— from Expositions of Holy Scripture Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy. by Alexander Maclaren

"Onward, Christian soldiers, towards the great terminus where bottles of sterilized milk for the babies are delivered at the bedroom windows by noiseless aeroplanes each morn, where the science of dentistry is so perfect that teeth are planted in a man's mouth without his knowing it, where twilight sleep is so delicious that every woman longs for her next confinement, and where nobody ever has to do anything except turn a handle now and then in a spirit of universal love—" That is the forward direction of the English-speaking race.
— from Fantasia of the Unconscious by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

But to conclude this subject, should our unprofitable lives, through a kind Providence, be spared a few years, by the blessing of the God of missions, we expect to see this people Christianized to a great extent, civilized, and happy, with much of science and the word of God, and many of the comforts of life; but not without many days of hard labor, and sore trials of disappointed hopes, and nameless perplexities.
— from A History of Oregon, 1792-1849 Drawn From Personal Observation and Authentic Information by W. H. (William Henry) Gray

A gray and eerie twilight, too, the low flat sky, of uniform leaden tint, hanging dark over the black fields and moaning sea.
— from A Changed Heart: A Novel by May Agnes Fleming

" By this time Hassan and Rejeb, into whose hands we had been entrusted for protection, came up and stood over us, looking threateningly at our gesticulating, excited friend.
— from By Desert Ways to Baghdad by Louisa Jebb Wilkins

If the State or municipality were permitted to conduct business on ordinary commercial principles, it might indeed be expected to seize the opportunity afforded by a large supply of unemployed labour, to undertake new public works at a lower cost than usual.
— from Problems of Poverty: An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of the Poor by J. A. (John Atkinson) Hobson

There were less than a score of us living then, but we carried the standard almost through their midst, and when my master went down, I and three others stood over him.
— from The League of the Leopard by Harold Bindloss