"The flowers scented the air; every breath of air was hushed; it seemed as if the sea were a part of the sky that stretched above the deep valley.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

The house was surrounded with evergreens, according to the English custom, which would have given almost an appearance of summer; but the morning was extremely frosty; the light vapor of the preceding evening had been precipitated by the cold, and covered all the trees and every blade of grass with its fine crystalizations.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

They were lovely, beneficent beings, so pure and innocent that, according to some authorities, their name was derived from the same root as the Latin word “white” ( albus ), which, in a modified form, was given to the snow-covered Alps, and to Albion (England), because of her white chalk cliffs which could be seen afar.
— from Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas by H. A. (Hélène Adeline) Guerber

But these extravagant reports were very prejudicial to our trade, as well as unjust and injurious in themselves, for it was a long time after the plague was quite over before our trade could recover itself in those parts of the world; and the Flemings and Dutch (but especially the last) made very great advantages of it, having all the market to themselves, and even buying our manufactures in several parts of England where the plague was not, and carrying them to Holland and Flanders, and from thence transporting them to Spain and to Italy as if they had been of their own making.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

And yet, despite her swaying grace, and the almost ethereal beauty of her face, you felt instinctively the presence of something hard and menacing, a kind of metallic strength that found expression in the tones of her voice and in that gimlet-like quality of her eyes.
— from The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

In so far as they are expressed by one and the same representation, they are indistinct.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

And the reason this life struck him in this way was that he found in it at that time, as he thought, an extraordinary being, our celebrated elder, Zossima, to whom he became attached with all the warm first love of his ardent heart.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(The abbreviations under Theaters are explained below, on page
— from Psychological Warfare by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

With a loud bang he threw an empty box on the pile of rubbish in the hallway and then went heavily down the stairs.
— from Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson

With an impartial hand he maintained between them an exact balance of favor, conferred on both the rank of Augustus, with the revered name of Antoninus; and for the first time the Roman world beheld three emperors.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

These are either Bodies or Minds.
— from A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2) by John Stuart Mill

Above all, those are most subject to envy, which carry the greatness of their fortunes, in an insolent and proud manner; being never well, but while they are showing how great they are, either by outward pomp, or by triumphing over all opposition or competition; whereas wise men will rather do sacrifice to envy, in suffering themselves sometimes of purpose to be crossed, and overborne in things that do not much concern them.
— from The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral by Francis Bacon

And it was decided--in order to eradicate the ancient enmity between our families, and to expiate old and new guilt--for Duke Alaric had been condemned in consequence of a secret and unproved accusation--that the poor ill-used daughter of the Balthes should become the wife of the noblest of the Amelungs.
— from A Struggle for Rome, v. 1 by Felix Dahn

Because a cup full of lead will weigh more than the same cup fall of water, or any bulk of lead will weigh more than an equal bulk of water.
— from First Lessons in Natural Philosophy for Beginners by Joseph C. (Joseph Comly) Martindale

A very young gentleman, who boasted how much he had lost at the races, how much they had gambled, and how much they drank of champagne the night before—champagne, by the by, is thought a very aristocratic drink among psuedo-great men, although it is common as ditch-water in the United States—engrossed the whole conversation of the dinner-table, picked his teeth, took up the room of two, called the waiter fifty times, and ended by ordering the cheese to be placed on the table before the pies and puddings were removed.
— from Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 1 by Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir

We noted that the Greeks used the interstices of their construction for their chief decoration, their figure sculpture, and to some extent the same plan is followed in Gothic architecture, where we find the tympanums of doors, the spandrels of arcades (as in the Chapter House at Salisbury or the angel choir at Lincoln), and canopied niches (as at Wells), used for figure sculpture; but, at the same time, the structural features themselves are emphasized by ornament to a far greater extent, as in caps, arch mouldings,
— from The Bases of Design by Walter Crane

They were forever an easy prey—not only of the astute Europeans, but of the simple Indian as well.
— from The Frontiersmen by Mary Noailles Murfree

But it seemed to them all that an exceedingly bulky object had passed as guardian of the light-footed damsels preceding him.
— from Sandra Belloni (originally Emilia in England) — Complete by George Meredith