The dynasties recorded in the rustic histories, which have been written from age to age, have, I am fain to think, invariably assumed, under false pretences, the mere nomenclature of the Han and T'ang dynasties.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

Do you hear?' Jingling and clattering, till distance rendered its noise inaudible, and its rapid progress only perceptible to the eye, the vehicle wound its way along the road, almost hidden in a cloud of dust: now wholly disappearing, and now becoming visible again, as intervening objects, or the intricacies of the way, permitted.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

For since by ‘Nature’ men have really meant God, or God viewed in a particular aspect—God, we may say, as known to us in experience—when they have come to conceive a better state of things than that which actually exists, they have not only regarded this ideal state as really exhibiting the Divine purposes more than the actual, and as being so far more ‘natural’: but they have gone further, and supposed more or less definitely that this ideal state of things must be what God originally created, and that the defects recognisable in what now exists must be due to the deteriorating action of men.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

Ere thy dear relics in the grave are laid, Shall Hector's head be offer'd to thy shade; That, with his arms, shall hang before thy shrine; And twelve, the noblest of the Trojan line, Sacred to vengeance, by this hand expire; Their lives effused around thy flaming pyre.
— from The Iliad by Homer

In this double rôle it might be supposed that she would be reluctant to receive the exiles presented to her by Victor Hugo, whose society is so distasteful to her.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

Pashka, without noticing the doors, rushed into the smallpox ward, from there into the corridor, from the corridor he flew into a big room where monsters, with long hair and the faces of old women, were lying and sitting on the beds.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Thou hast good natural instincts, without which no knowledge is worth anything; commend thyself to God, and try not to swerve in the pursuit of thy main object; I mean, always make it thy aim and fixed purpose to do right in all matters that come before thee, for heaven always helps good intentions; and now let us go to dinner, for I think my lord and lady are waiting for us."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

To dream revery is well, to dream Utopia is better.
— from William Shakespeare by Victor Hugo

In glyph 4 is recorded the particular katun, 14, which came to its end on the date recorded in 1 and 2.
— from An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs by Sylvanus Griswold Morley

Yet the fact, already noted, must not be overlooked that the death rate in the rookery is enormously high; indeed, a frightful mortality often overtakes the young chicks when left by their parents.
— from Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes by C. Gasquoine (Catherine Gasquoine) Hartley

Most of the family quarrels that I have seen in life (saving always those arising from money disputes, when a division of twopence-halfpenny will often drive the dearest relatives into war and estrangement), spring out of jealousy and envy.
— from Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges by William Makepeace Thackeray

A man must be ready to do right in spite of what everybody thinks.
— from Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3) by Augustus Hopkins Strong