There is much rivalry among slaves, at times, as to which can do the most work, and masters generally seek to promote such rivalry.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

Her heart instantaneously at ease on this point, she resolved to lose no time in particular examination of anything, as she greatly dreaded disobliging the general by any delay.
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

In America, the cession of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland was the first step toward that entire loss of Canada which befell half a century later; but for the present she retained Cape Breton Island, with its port Louisburg, the key to the Gulf and River St. Lawrence.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

The generations succeeded each other; the warrior who had committed the sacrilege perished miserably; the Moonstone passed (carrying its curse with it) from one lawless Mohammedan hand to another; and still, through all chances and changes, the successors of the three guardian priests kept their watch, waiting the day when the will of Vishnu the Preserver should restore to them their sacred gem.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

When Suzanne had swept and cleaned the room which Charras, Hetzel, Lamoricière, Émile Deschanel, Dr. Yvan, Schoelcher and sometimes Dumas père daily enlivened with their wit and littered with the ashes from their pipes, she returned at about two o’clock.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

We accordingly translate the necessity, obviously lurking under life's commonplace yet unaccountable shocks, into verbal principles, names for general impressive results, that play some rôle in our ideal philosophy.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

The preamble of this very law treats the interest of money as illegal and criminal; and the prejudices still remained so strong, that the law permitting interest was repealed in the following reign.
— from The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. From Henry VII. to Mary by David Hume

The pursuer still ran, the chase still sped before him screaming; they avoided the grave, and skimmed close past the timbers of the wreck; in a breath they had cleared the sand; and still my kinsman did not pause, but dashed straight into the surf; and the black, now almost within reach, still followed swiftly behind him.
— from The Merry Men, and Other Tales and Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson

"Leaving this aside," continued the châtelain, "I would know if thy parents showed resentment at the misconduct of thy betrothed; whether aught was said in thy presence, that can throw light on this unhappy affair?"
— from The Headsman; Or, The Abbaye des Vignerons by James Fenimore Cooper