Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die!
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A little without the bars of West Smithfield is Charterhouse lane, so called, for that it leadeth to the said plot of the late dissolved monastery; in place whereof, first the Lord North, but since Thomas Howard, late Duke of Norfolk, have made large and sumptuous buildings both for lodging and pleasure.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

Up, and to the office, where all the morning, and at noon, eating very little dinner, my wife and I by hackney to the King’s playhouse, and there, the pit being full, satin a box above, and saw “Catiline’s Conspiracy,” yesterday being the first day: a play of much good sense and words to read, but that do appear the worst upon the stage, I mean, the least diverting, that ever I saw any, though most fine in clothes; and a fine scene of the Senate, and of a fight, that ever I saw in my life.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Those who describe the isthmus of this peninsula to be on the line drawn from Issus to the Euxine, lay down this line as a sort of meridian line, which some suppose to pass through Sinope, others through Amisus; but no one through the Chalybes, for such a line would be altogether an oblique line.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) Literally Translated, with Notes by Strabo

When Sophia was well satisfied of the violent passion which tormented poor Jones, and no less certain that she herself was its object, she had not the least difficulty in discovering the true cause of his present behaviour.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

If we suppose the amount of change between each horizontal line in our diagram to be excessively small, these three forms may still be only well-marked varieties; or they may have arrived at the doubtful category of sub-species; but we have only to suppose the steps in the process of modification to be more numerous or greater in amount, to convert these three forms into well-defined species: thus the diagram illustrates the steps by which the small differences distinguishing varieties are increased into the larger differences distinguishing species.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

The problem of the children becomes, in these swarms, to the last degree perplexing.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

Stern and choleric to the last degree, and even against inanimate objects; impetuous with frenzy, incapable of suffering the slightest resistance even from the hours and the elements, without flying into a passion that threatened to destroy his body; obstinate to excess; passionately fond of all kind of voluptuousness, of women, with even a worse passion strongly developed at the same time; fond not less of wine, good living, hunting, music, and gaming, in which last he could not endure to be beaten; in fine, abandoned to every passion, and transported by every pleasure; oftentimes wild, naturally disposed towards cruelty; barbarous in raillery, and with an all-powerful capacity for ridicule.
— from Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Complete by Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de

The late Dr. H. Brugsch collected [ 18 ] a number of the epithets which are applied to the gods, from texts of all periods; and from these we may see that the ideas and beliefs of the Egyptians concerning God were almost identical with those of the Hebrews and Muhammadans at later periods.
— from Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life by Budge, E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis), Sir

Then with, as it seemed, one impulse, all but one of the latter dismounted and, wading through the stream that now, after the long drought, was but knee-deep, rushed at the steep bank and endeavoured to ascend it.
— from The Land of Bondage: A Romance by John Bloundelle-Burton

If a ship is detained to wait for a tide or a pilot, the sailors find their pastime in contemplation and rude comment which the landsman does not understand.
— from Rivers of Great Britain. The Thames, from Source to Sea. Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial by Various

So far as his words go, this latter division is between "matters of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory," on the one hand, and matters of fact for which we have the evidence of our memory or senses, on the other.
— from Philosophical Studies by G. E. (George Edward) Moore

No one can note these differences without sometimes asking the cause of this lamentable degradation in the character of the buildings which compose our modern towns.
— from Evesham by E. H. (Edmund Hort) New

Most assuredly, they do not mean that we are to be "without natural affection," which is one of the special marks of the apostasy of the last days.
— from Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume II by Charles Henry Mackintosh

At times they rise, uttering what seems to be a sort of lamentation; then they fall prostrate, with their arms stretched out before them; all the lights disappear; there is nothing but darkness and silence; it seems as if man himself were extinguished.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 22, October, 1875, to March, 1876 A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science by Various

Oh, my love! '...When I look at you, Christine, and realize that you are my betrothed—that you love me, and that you have promised to be my wife; and when I take your little hand in mine, and stroke it, and feel its wondrous warmth and softness, and bring it to my lips, and breathe that most delicate fragrance which ever clings to it; and when I gaze into the luminous depths of your eyes, and behold your spirit burning far, far down in them:
— from The Yoke of the Thorah by Henry Harland

Bath saw the laughable disaster of his début, and so, in a manner, his whole life seems to belong to her, and the story of it to be a part of her annals.
— from The Works of Max Beerbohm by Beerbohm, Max, Sir