One of the great waves, stirred up by Iörmungandr’s struggles, set afloat Nagilfar, the fatal ship, which was constructed entirely out of the nails of those dead folks whose relatives had failed, through the ages, in their [ 333 ] duty, having neglected to pare the nails of the deceased, ere they were laid to rest.
— from Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas by H. A. (Hélène Adeline) Guerber

There we stood, well squared up before it, shoulder to shoulder and foot to foot, with our hands behind us, not budging an inch.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

And here and there, in the midst of this hurly-burly, and seemingly undisturbed by it, sat great groups of natives on the bare stone floor,—young, slender brown women, old, gray wrinkled women, little soft brown babies, old men, young men, boys; all poor people, but all the females among them, both big and little, bejeweled with cheap and showy nose-rings, toe-rings, leglets, and armlets, these things constituting all their wealth, no doubt.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

It struck me again tonight, as if I had not seen it almost daily for more than twenty years—Why, here is Walden, the same woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago; where a forest was cut down last winter another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever; the same thought is welling up to its surface that was then; it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it may be to me.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

He was no longer bent to the ground, like an over-nursed flower of spring, that, shooting up beyond its strength, is weighed down even by its own coronal of blossoms.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Grim from the town of Skier (um) born in Skagafiord.
— from The Danish History, Books I-IX by Grammaticus Saxo

“Shut up, Bianchon; I shall never marry her.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

We breathe that they may breathe, not that we may do so; we only care about oxygen in so far as the infinitely small beings which course up and down in our veins care about it: the whole arrangement and mechanism of our lungs may be our doing, but is for their convenience, and they only serve us because it suits their purpose to do so, as long as we serve them.
— from Life and Habit by Samuel Butler

This admission of his may seem undemocratic, but it simply shows that the former President had a clear perception of the permanent tendencies that direct American consciousness; for no people are more disciplined and more ready to follow their chosen executive than the Americans, at least on critical occasions, and more particularly when confronted with foreign aggression.
— from Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism by Gilbert Chinard

Forty years had left little of the Palermo that Garibaldi had shown to the boy of 1860, but Sicily in all ages seems to have taught only catastrophe and violence, running riot on that theme ever since Ulysses began its study on the eye of Cyclops.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

He had many lines in his face—even his simple life had gone hard with him, its sorrows unassuaged by its simplicity.
— from The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge, and Other Stories by Mary Noailles Murfree

He merely insisted that he knew Lady Grosville to be a bit of an old cat; that of course there was something up; but it seemed a shame for those at least who accepted Madame d'Estrées' hospitality to believe the worst.
— from The Marriage of William Ashe by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

Another bolder shaft shot up beyond it, seeming to say: "This way!
— from The Messenger by Elizabeth Robins

Opposite the sumac, the black bass, with gamy spring, snapped up, before it struck the water, every luckless, honey-laden insect that fell from the feast of sweets in a blossom-whitened wild crab.
— from The Song of the Cardinal by Gene Stratton-Porter

He read his paper and dozed a good deal, and snapped up Bessie if she spoke to him: so, on the whole, Mrs. Mayne had rather a dull morning.
— from Not Like Other Girls by Rosa Nouchette Carey