From time to time a broad sheet of lightning opened the horizon in its whole width, darted like a serpent over the black mass of trees, and like a terrible scimitar divided the heavens and the waters into two parts.
— from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

And then I saw that a bright spot of light, that shone a little to one side of my path, was growing very rapidly larger, and perceived that it was the planet Saturn rushing towards me.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Then came they to a black space of land, whereon was a black hawthorn tree, and on the tree there hung a black banner, and on the other side was a black shield and spear, and by them a great black horse, covered with silk; and hard by sat a knight armed in black armour, whose name was the Knight of the Blacklands.
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Manganese borate and manganese oxalate are both soluble in oil, the former much more readily than the latter, but they are both salts of little stability at high temperatures in contact with oils.
— from Pigments, Paint and Painting: A practical book for practical men by George Terry

They attach no shame to a retreat or even to a flight; but those antagonists who suppose that because they run away they are beaten, sooner or later find themselves egregiously mistaken.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Volume 62, No. 386, December, 1847 by Various

He drew with bold touches a broad sphere of light.
— from Dr. Rumsey's Patient: A Very Strange Story by L. T. Meade

Something had happened—something that is pretty sure to come to all bisons, sooner or later.
— from Two Arrows: A Story of Red and White by William O. Stoddard

But I was careful to avoid saying anything which might connect us with the Adventure ; because sooner or later news of the exploits of that ship is certain to penetrate as far south even as this, and I have a suspicion that the participants in those exploits will not be altogether popular with the dons.
— from Two Gallant Sons of Devon: A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess by Harry Collingwood

Because summer had come, the street lamps were all taken down; but that the chains and ropes might not hang idle, the lamplighter had tied a big stone or large brick, by no means ornamental, to the end of every one.
— from A July Holiday in Saxony, Bohemia, and Silesia by Walter White

I am apt to believe that a better system of law and page 27 p. 27 management would have good effects.
— from A Tour in Ireland. 1776-1779 by Arthur Young

The impulse of youth toward the unknown and the new, toward vague dreams and abstractions, was thus exasperated; and from out the seminaries, universities, and schools, from the ranks of the nobility and from the bosom of the literature, there arose a host composed of women hungering for the ideal, and young students, poor in pocket and position, who gave themselves up to a Bohemian sort of life well calculated to set at nought society and the world in general.
— from Russia: Its People and Its Literature by Pardo Bazán, Emilia, condesa de