Concerning war, which we are now hoping that we see the beginning of the end of, he need only have looked into The Biglow Papers to find his idolized Lowell saying: “Ez fur war I call it murder; There ye hev it plain an' flat; An' I don't want to go no furder Then my Testament fur that.” I feel it laid upon me in commending this book to a new generation of readers, to guard them, so far as I may, against such errors of it.
— from Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes

For beneath us lay the sea, seen through a narrow gap of richest verdure.
— from At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies by Charles Kingsley

It is very well understood in Delhi that any native gentleman of rank may call on Yasmini between midday and midnight without offering a reason for his visit; otherwise it would be impossible to hold a salon and be a power in politics, in a land where politics run deep, but where men do not admit openly to which party they belong.
— from The Winds of the World by Talbot Mundy

After following it for nearly a mile, it conducted them to a narrow gorge or ravine, lying between two rocky ridges.
— from Bruin: The Grand Bear Hunt by Mayne Reid

The advertisement should never contain anything repugnant to refined taste, and nothing grotesque or ridiculous.
— from Barkham Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 by Barkham Burroughs

From all we can learn, there are numerous groups of ruins scattered here and there—but of their nature we are, as yet, mostly in the dark.
— from The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished Races by Emory Adams Allen

—There are no genera of reptiles peculiar to this sub-region.
— from The Geographical Distribution of Animals, Volume 1 With a study of the relations of living and extinct faunas as elucidating the past changes of the Earth's surface by Alfred Russel Wallace

In general, they are not good on rough ground, in brushy districts, or where the snow does not fall to a good depth.
— from Woodcraft by Elmer Harry Kreps

But the employer will question any negro, if confidence can be placed in him, without giving him cause of suspicion, about all matters connected with the plantation, if he has any reason to believe that all things are not going on right.
— from Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Georgia Narratives, Part 4 by United States. Work Projects Administration

They are not grounded on reason or religion; they must, therefore, have a basis of incredulity for everything which they do not understand: the foolish vanity of being thought singular; ignorance, which boldly repudiates what it knows nothing of; keeping company with libertines; a conformity of feeling with heretics, and the spirit of the world, which is the enemy of all piety.
— from The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi by Candide Chalippe

The slope went down steeply and here the path was roughly stepped; as it led deeper, too, the slope narrowed, until at the bottom the entrance to the crater lay through a natural gateway of rock that rose high on either hand and almost shut out the light.
— from A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari And Other Tales of South-West Africa by Frederick Carruthers Cornell