I took occasion to say that the murder of our sailors at Nagasaki was by no means disposed of, and that one of the first demands to be laid by us before the new government would be for the punishment of the murderers; that no money compensation would be accepted, and that the Japanese, if they wished to remain on good terms with foreigners and to avoid a disaster, had better prevent the occurrence of such incidents.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

Betty is the doctor's poor kinswoman, and a pretty girl she is; but no matter for that; ay, and dutiful girl to her parents, whom she visits regularly every year, though I must own I could never learn in what county they live, My service t'ye, gentlemen.”
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

The evils arising from want of exercise are numerous:—the circulation, from the absence of due stimulus, becomes languid, the appetite and digestion are weakened, the respiration is imperfect, and the blood becomes so ill-conditioned, that when distributed through the body it is inadequate to communicate the necessary stimulus to healthy and vigorous action.
— from The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society by Florence Hartley

They buzzed round the prince and stung his face and hands; angrily he drew his sword and brandished it, but he only touched the air and did not hit the gnats.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

Boys, as a rule, hate the artificial, and delight in the actual; give them the chance of earning, and they will soon earn.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

Let the reader picture to himself a series of visages presenting successively all geometrical forms, from the triangle to the trapezium, from the cone to the polyhedron; all human expressions, from wrath to lewdness; all ages, from the wrinkles of the new-born babe to the wrinkles of the aged and dying; all religious phantasmagories, from Faun to Beelzebub; all animal profiles, from the maw to the beak, from the jowl to the muzzle.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

The hatred of change and death is ineradicable while life lasts, since it expresses that self-sustaining organisation in a creature which we call its soul; yet this hatred of change and death is not so deeply seated in the nature of things as are death and change themselves, for the flux is deeper than the ideal.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

In the Volscian territory also a disaster was sustained in the loss of the garrison at Verrugo; where so much depended on time, that when the soldiers who were besieged there, and were calling for succour, might have been relieved, if expedition had been used, the army sent to their aid only came in time to surprise the enemy, who were straggling in quest of plunder, just after their putting [the garrison] to the sword.
— from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy

Without giving a detailed technical and anatomical description, which our space will not permit of, we may observe that the common prawn ( Palæmon serratus ) is about four or five inches long, with a rounded carapace, which is jointed and furnished at the head with numerous long antennæ, the eyes being large and round.
— from The Ocean World: Being a Description of the Sea and Its Living Inhabitants. by Louis Figuier

The arrival of the trunks brought a grateful respite to all, and Dexie disappeared the moment the expressman arrived, but with the excuse of helping to lift the trunks into the hall, Hugh followed her.
— from Miss Dexie A Romance of the Provinces by Stanford Eveleth

Sometimes showers of hot lava would be thrown up in the air, and descend on the edges of the pit where we stood.
— from My First Mission by George Q. (George Quayle) Cannon

All sounded most cheery; but the wind was unsteady, and the result was that the sails, which had been sent up with the fervent hope that they might remain set for the next six weeks, had to be lowered abruptly in as many minutes, and the anchor hastily dropped, to avoid a Dutch brig moored close to us, into which we were rapidly drifting in consequence of a sudden shift in the wind.
— from The Last Voyage: To India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' by Annie Brassey

Zillah had received it when her bitter feelings were in the ascendant, and did not think of answering it until Hilda urged on her the necessity of doing so.
— from The Cryptogram: A Novel by James De Mille

And you’ll follow them as a dog follows his master.
— from Whispers at Dawn; Or, The Eye by Roy J. (Roy Judson) Snell

On a bicycle it is tedious; you never get anywhere, and the one fact you learn is that France consists of ten thousand million plane trees and a dust-cloud.
— from Paris Nights, and Other Impressions of Places and People by Arnold Bennett

In the arrangement and design of the podium it accords better with other examples of Greek tombs than Mr. Fergusson’s.
— from A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. From the Earliest Times to the Present Day by James Fergusson