Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this matter, he was satisfied it could not be where Des Cartes 267 had fixed it, upon the top of the pineal gland of the brain; which, as he philosophized, formed a cushion for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho’ to speak the truth, as so many nerves did terminate all in that one place,—’twas no bad conjecture;——and
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

The Dialect of Conversation is now-a-days so swelled with Vanity and Compliment, and so surfeited (as I may say) of Expressions of Kindness and Respect, that if a Man that lived an Age or two ago should return into the World again he would really want a Dictionary to help him to understand his own Language, and to know the true intrinsick Value of the Phrase in Fashion, and would hardly at first believe at what a low Rate the highest Strains and Expressions of Kindness imaginable do commonly pass in current Payment; and when he should come to understand it, it would be a great while before he could bring himself with a good Countenance and a good Conscience to converse with Men upon equal Terms, and in their own way.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

All the people of business at Edinburgh, and even the genteel company, may be seen standing in crowds every day, from one to two in the afternoon, in the open street, at a place where formerly stood a market-cross, which (by the bye) was a curious piece of Gothic architecture, still to be seen in lord Sommerville’s garden in this neighbourhood—I say, the people stand in the open street from the force of custom, rather than move a few yards to an Exchange that stands empty on one side, or to the Parliament-close on the other, which is a noble square adorned with a fine equestrian statue of king Charles II.—The company thus assembled, are entertained with a variety of tunes, played upon a set of bells, fixed in a steeple hard by—As these bells are well-toned, and the musician, who has a salary from the city, for playing upon them with keys, is no bad performer, the entertainment is really agreeable, and very striking to the ears of a stranger.
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

As the temple of Olympic Zeus among the temples of Athens, so the 'Atlantis' is the only one among Plato's many noble writings that is unfinished.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

It is difficult for us to appreciate, impossible to overestimate, the shock which was thus communicated from centre to circumference of the whole known world.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, how many sprightly youths, whom, not others only, but Galen, Hippocrates or Æsculapius themselves would have judged most hale, breakfasted in the morning with their kinsfolk, comrades and friends and that same night supped with their ancestors in the other world!
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

[15] be part of our business to investigate: but we may perhaps say that prima facie the only two ends which have a strongly and widely supported claim to be regarded as rational ultimate ends are the two just mentioned, Happiness and Perfection or Excellence of human nature—meaning here by ‘Excellence’ not primarily superiority to others, but a partial realisation of, or approximation to, an ideal type of human Perfection.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

All the editions up to, and including, that of 1898 have been carefully collated, so that the student of Tennyson can follow step by step the process by which he arrived at that perfection of expression which is perhaps his most striking characteristic as a poet.
— from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

Thou art neither its kinsman nor its friend, thy soul is thine own and thy will as free as any man’s, whate’er he be, thou art in thine own house and master of it as much as the king of his taxes and thou knowest the common saying, “Under my cloak I kill the king;” all which exempts and frees thee from every consideration and obligation, and thou canst say what thou wilt of the story without fear of being abused for any ill or rewarded for any good thou mayest say of it.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

A bivouac in the Alps in the olden days.
— from Adventures on the Roof of the World by Le Blond, Aubrey, Mrs.

In use a static discharge is produced across from end to end of the conductors, igniting a proper explosive placed there as in the other case.
— from The Standard Electrical Dictionary A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice of Electrical Engineering by T. O'Conor (Thomas O'Conor) Sloane

The same quantity of water is thus constantly used for condensing the water vapor in one scrubber and giving it up to the air in the other.
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 by Various

The arrowheads in the original were in emerald-green ink.
— from The Art & Practice of Typography A Manual of American Printing, Including a Brief History up to the Twentieth Century, with Reproductions of the Work of Early Masters of the Craft, and a Practical Discussion and an Extensive Demonstration of the Modern Use of Type-faces and Methods of Arrangement by Edmund G. (Edmund Geiger) Gress

Its people seem to be possessed of every virtue, and preëminent among them all, is that of hospitality which seems to be blooming in the hearts of all its citizens to-day, as did poetry in the mind of Shakespeare three hundred years ago.
— from The Youthful Wanderer An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and the Rhine, Switzerland, Italy, and Egypt, Adapted to the Wants of Young Americans Taking Their First Glimpses at the Old World by George H. Heffner

If our motives be few, slow, and feeble, we then are heavy, dull, and stupid: if they be quick, numerous, and strong, we are too apt implicitly to obey first impulses, and to hurry headlong into folly and extravagance.
— from Anna St. Ives by Thomas Holcroft

Water code of the State of California, adopted May 13, 1943, with amendments up to and including those of the fourth extraordinary session of the fifty-fifth legislature, 1944.
— from U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1973 January - June by Library of Congress. Copyright Office

It is true that the American press made much of this, and in tones of derision.
— from Great Britain and the American Civil War by Ephraim Douglass Adams

The convict's hopeless condition, his despairing purpose, and his evident wish to live free from the past, all combined to arouse in the other a desire to aid him.
— from The Eyes of the World by Harold Bell Wright

Once he asked me to write a letter to Jean: "Say, 'Your father says every little while, "How glad I am that Jean is at home again!"' for that is true and I think of it all the time."
— from Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume III, Part 2: 1907-1910 by Albert Bigelow Paine