Soon the Christians, who dared not attack, but believed they held the Moslems in their grasp, perceived them deliberately setting up barracks, and contentedly tilling the soil and preparing for the various operations of agriculture.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole

Equality places men side by side, unconnected by any common tie; despotism raises barriers to keep them asunder; the former predisposes them not to consider their fellow-creatures, the latter makes general indifference a sort of public virtue.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

My brother left the school-house and ran to the yard, cautiously opened the gate, slipped up behind, and caught the 'hawk'—which proved to be a large and almost famished turkey-buzzard.
— from Wild Life Near Home by Dallas Lore Sharp

A band in gorgeous uniforms played three whole days in the yard, and the men in their holiday clothes stepped up, bowed, and crossed themselves, and laid their gifts on the plate which St. Rocco's namesake, the saloon-keeper in the block, who had got up the celebration, had put there for them.
— from Children of the Tenements by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

To illustrate this, I will mention a case of some gentlemen, who were once shut up by a cruel tyrant in a very small room, with a very little window in it.
— from Letters to Persons Who Are Engaged in Domestic Service by Catharine Esther Beecher

The boy who had come forward as advocate for his father was, on his first entrance into the school, so uncurbed in his overflowing strength, and so untamed by any culture, that, instead of taking his place in the usual way, he always vaulted over tables and benches; the wild creature scarcely kept within his clothes.
— from Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. II. by Gustav Freytag

These four words contain the soul of our and suchlike spiritless ( geistlos ) government machines:—in the first place salaried—and this implies a tendency to maintain and to multiply the number of salaried officials; then book-learned —that is, living in the world of the dead letter, and not in the actual world; without interest —for these men stand in no connexion with any class of the citizens, which are the mass of the state; they are a peculiar caste, these men of the quill, (" die Schreiberkaste ;") lastly, without property —this implies that they stand unmoved by all changes that affect property, in sunshine or in rain, with taxes high or low, with old chartered rights maintained or destroyed, with independent peasants or a rabble of mere journeymen, with a dependence of the peasants on the proprietors, or of all on the Jews and the bankers—'tis all one to the bureaucracy.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845 by Various

But there are indications in most cases that the pause at nowhere is only temporary, that presently the lines will summon up breath and courage to push on across the still trackless pampas.
— from Working North from Patagonia Being the Narrative of a Journey, Earned on the Way, Through Southern and Eastern South America by Harry Alverson Franck

As the flames started up, brisk and crackling, the soldiers seemed to become suddenly sobered and alarmed.
— from Pierrot, Dog of Belgium by Walter A. (Walter Alden) Dyer

Lovel was much entertained by a declaration not very consistent with the eagerness wherewith his friend seemed to catch at an opportunity of coming before the public, though in a manner which rather resembled stepping up behind a carriage than getting into one.
— from The Antiquary — Complete by Walter Scott