Nevertheless, I was for my own part impressed with the following:—The workmen's societies offered us three or four thousand combatants, a powerful assistance;—the workman does not understand strategy, he lives on enthusiasm, abatements of ardor discourage him; his zeal is not extinguished, but it cools:—three thousand to-day would be five hundred to-morrow.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

I took leave of him, and directly by water home, and there to read the life of Mr. Hooker, which pleases me as much as any thing I have read a great while, and by and by comes Mr. Howe to see us, and after him a little Mr. Sheply, and so we all to talk, and, Mercer being there, we some of us to sing, and so to supper, a great deal of silly talk.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Drewyer Set out up the Creek to Set his traps for beaver, Sergt.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

Its sharp culmination, and as it were solution, of so many bloody and angry problems, illustrates those climax-moments on the stage of universal Time, where the historic Muse at one entrance, and the tragic Muse at the other, suddenly ringing down the curtain, close an immense act in the long drama of creative thought, and give it radiation, tableau, stranger than fiction.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Then she threw herself on the floor and began to swim so energetically that some of us thought we should be kicked out of our chairs!
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

If he sell adulterated goods, the slave or metic who informs against him shall have the goods; the citizen who brings such a charge, if he prove it, shall offer up the goods in question to the Gods of the agora; or if he fail to prove it, shall be dishonoured.
— from Laws by Plato

In the calm of the summer sunset I drag my aged limbs with a little ostentation of activity, because I am so old, up to the rocky brow of the hill.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

But we are some of us too stern, too rigid, too precise, too grossly superstitious, and whilst we make a conscience of every toy, with touch not, taste not, &c., as those Pythagoreans of old, and some Indians now, that will eat no flesh, or suffer any living creature to be killed, the Bannians about Guzzerat; we tyrannise over our brother's soul, lose the right use of many good gifts; honest [6600] sports, games and pleasant recreations,
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

He crossed himself twice, as doubting whence arose the unwonted softening of a heart, which on such occasions used to resemble in hardness the steel of his sword.
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

But when the prospect was simultaneously opened up to Pompeius of being allowed to delete the name of Catulus and engrave his own on this proudest spot of the first city of the globe, there was offered to him the very thing which most of all delighted him and did no harm to the democracy—abundant but empty honour; while at the same time the aristocracy, which could not possibly allow its best man to fall, was brought into the most disagreeable collision with Pompeius.
— from The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) by Theodor Mommsen

and I were so intimate, even as boys, his peculiar temperament was often a source of unhappiness to both.
— from Walter Harland Or, Memories of the Past by Harriet S. Caswell

Punishment, state of, under the English law, , 722 —objects of, , 724 .
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846 by Various

And without further parley I stepped out upon the roof of the extension.
— from A Strange Disappearance by Anna Katharine Green

But if we are going to get on in this world of cars and automobiles and all sorts of unexpected things, we must always “have our wits about us,” as the saying goes, ready to send the messages out to the muscles in our legs and arms and fingers just as soon as any one of our “Five Senses” “rings up” the “Central” in our brain.
— from The Child's Day by Woods Hutchinson

The many little tables set out upon the pavement, along which the life of the bright little Belgian capital ebbed and flowed, were filled by men who daily, year in and year out, ate their midday meal, gossiped, and drank long glasses of iced bock .
— from At the Sign of the Sword: A Story of Love and War in Belgium by William Le Queux

Five generations were there present—the Rougons and the Macquarts, Adelaide Fouque at the root, then the scoundrelly old uncle, then himself, then Clotilde and Maxime, and lastly, Charles.
— from Doctor Pascal by Émile Zola

But I don't think you would ever see or understand them."
— from The Red Cross Girls in Belgium by Margaret Vandercook

It was originally written for a string quartet, but the master added a fifth part for contrabass for a performance of it given in London in 1884 by a large string orchestra under the direction of his pupil, Walter Bache.
— from Franz Liszt by James Huneker

It was pleasant to sit out upon the balcony even on moonless nights and when the stars were hidden, and look down upon the city all brilliantly alight, and listen to the unceasing music of the Falls of Eudosa.
— from Unveiling a Parallel: A Romance by Ella Merchant