Before and behind came other varieties, perfect leopards as to the full rich substance of their coats, and only lacking the spots.
— from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

With these words, Jefferson Hope leaned back in his chair and began the following remarkable statement.
— from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

The following remarkable specimen of the charms belonging to the first of these classes was given me by ’Che ʿAbas of Klanang in Selangor, a Kelantan Malay:— “If the corpse in the grave should speak, And address people on earth, May I be destroyed by any beast that has life, But if the corpse in the grave do not speak, And address people on earth, May I not be destroyed by any beast that has life, or by any foe or peril, or by any son of the human race.
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis'd it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.
— from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

Both [ 113 ] were members of the Katipunan, the Filipino Revolutionary Secret Society, an organization patterned after Masonry, membership in which was always treated by the Spaniards as sedition, and usually visited with capital punishment.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

On th’ other side, Adam , soon as he heard The fatal Trespass don by Eve , amaz’d, Astonied stood and Blank, while horror chill Ran through his veins, and all his joynts relax’d; From his slack hand the Garland wreath’d for Eve Down drop’d, and all the faded Roses shed:
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

From the triangle of which the hypotenuse is twice the lesser side the three first regular solids are formed—first, the equilateral pyramid or tetrahedron; secondly, the octahedron; thirdly, the icosahedron; and from the isosceles triangle is formed the cube.
— from Timaeus by Plato

Seated on a chair against the window, with her arm on the windowsill she was looking blankly at the flowing river, swift with the backward-rushing tide, struggling to see still the sweet face in its unreproaching sadness, that seemed now from moment to moment to sink away and be hidden behind a form that thrust itself between, and made darkness.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

I, too, astonished at my success in making her believe this fable, remained silent.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

and time for rest scanty.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 353, March 1845 by Various

" For Machiavelli this is the salient trouble in the Florentine retrospect, since it survived the feuds of Guelph and Ghibelline; though he sets down to the Papacy the foreign invasions and the disunion of the cities.
— from The Evolution of States by J. M. (John Mackinnon) Robertson

Where it is not known, and he fancies in his blindness that he can with impunity make a tool of his fellow-man, there flourish rankly slavery and tyranny, superstition and priestcraft, hatred and contempt, in all their poisonous luxuriance.
— from Hammer and Anvil: A Novel by Friedrich Spielhagen

Mr. Gamfield smiled, too, as he perused the document, for five pounds was just the sum he had been wishing for; and, as to the boy with which it was encumbered, Mr. Gamfield, knowing what the dietary of the workhouse was, well knew he would be a nice small pattern, just the very thing for register stoves.
— from Bentley's Miscellany, Volume I by Various

"Message for Dr. Turnbull from Rawlings Scientific Corporation," said the young man, in a voice that sounded even more bored than his face looked.
— from Dead Giveaway by Randall Garrett

They had lost their vessel, and, although there was not one among them who believed that they could be blamed for that, they felt rather serious, when they reflected that they would be called upon to prove this to the colonel's satisfaction.
— from Go-Ahead; Or, The Fisher-Boy's Motto by Harry Castlemon