“There is no such thing as getting anything like a system in this family!”
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Between the sea and Novogorod an easy intercourse was discovered; in the summer, through a gulf, a lake, and a navigable river; in the winter season, over the hard and level surface of boundless snows.
— 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

The A. glandulōsa , a large and handsome tree, with pinnate leaves 1 or 2 feet long, is a native of China, but has been introduced into Europe and North America.
— from The New Gresham Encyclopedia. A to Amide Vol. 1 Part 1 by Various

I proceeded to ask: When two things, a greater and less, are called by the same name, are they like or unlike in so far as they are called the same?
— from The Republic by Plato

“‘Tis as good a lantern as any other, and perchance with that one, Diogenes would have found his man.”
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

53 Between the sea and Novogorod an easy intercourse was discovered; in the summer, through a gulf, a lake, and a navigable river; in the winter season, over the hard and level surface of boundless snows.
— 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

The next process was, to stretch the carcass to as great a length as he could before uncoiling himself; then to lick it all over; and he commenced his feast by succeeding, after some severe exertion, in getting the goat's head within his mouth.
— from Trade and Travel in the Far East or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, Singapore, Australia and China. by G. F. Davidson

He turned and gave a look at Stan, who was beaming.
— from March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. Navy by Marshall McClintock

The Greatest Teacher that ever lived used only truth and gentleness and look at the size of His school now.
— from Green Valley by Katharine Yirsa Reynolds

Certain scenes are constructed so that A gets a laugh at the expense of B; but B is a five-hundred-a-week comedian and A is a two-hundred-a-week juven
— from A Wodehouse Miscellany: Articles & Stories by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

This was, in all respects, what the Czar could most have wished for; and foreseeing that the longer the war in Poland lasted, the more time should he have both to retrieve his first loss, and to gain Narva, he took care it should be spun out to as great a length as possible; for which end he never sent [ 36 ] the King of Poland succour enough to make him too strong for the King of Sweden; who, on the other hand, though he gained one signal victory after the other, yet never could subdue his enemy as long as he received continual reinforcements from his hereditary country.
— from Secret Diplomatic History of The Eighteenth Century by Karl Marx

The author suggests a symbolic meaning for his story, hinting that the scientist’s laboratory holds many elixirs of life, that all growth and life are magical, that all being is miraculous.
— from The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction by Dorothy Scarborough

To resolve these doubts, and to effect the purpose of his dangerous attempt, he now applied his mouth to the small opening that he had made at the back of the tent, and gave a low and almost inaudible sound from his lips like the chirping of a cricket.
— from The Prairie-Bird by Murray, Charles Augustus, Sir

Take a glass as large as your paper, fasten it well between your eye and the object you mean to draw, and fixing your head in a frame (in such a manner as not to be able to move it) at the distance of two feet from the glass; shut one eye, and draw with a pencil accurately upon the glass all that you see through it.
— from A Treatise on Painting by da Vinci Leonardo

The rigidity of her steely eyes, and their unendurable brilliancy, made the Provençal shudder, especially when the beast walked towards him; but he gazed at her with a caressing expression, and smiling at her as if to magnetise her, allowed her to come close to him; then, with a touch as gentle and loving as if he were caressing the fairest of women, he passed his hand over her whole body from head to tail, scratching with his nails the flexible vertebrae which formed the panther's yellow back.
— from Honoré de Balzac by Honoré de Balzac