Thessaly, again, was a loose confederacy of towns or cantons, in which certain great families, such as the Aleuadae and Scopadae, held the direction of their local affairs; or some tyrannus, as Alexander of Pherae, obtained sovereign powers.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

An investigation of all the students who entered Yale University during nine years shows that the cigarette smokers were the inferiors, both in weight and lung capacity, of the non-smokers, although they averaged fifteen months older.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

This is a fair church, with a large cloister on the south side thereof about their churchyard, but foully defaced and ruinated.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum ! or rather what a noble simplification of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective!—What near approaches doth he make to the primitive community ,—to the extent of one half of the principle at least!— He is the true taxer who "calleth all the world up to be taxed:" and the distance is as vast between him and one of us , as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem!—His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air!
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

It was a large crustacean of the crab family, and its milk-white shell gave it a ghost-like look as it struggled about in the black waters, fiercely intent to keep its hold upon the oar.
— from Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey by Ingersoll Lockwood

On what a little clod of the whole earth do we creep!
— from The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus A new rendering based on the Foulis translation of 1742 by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold-fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies.
— from The Happy Prince, and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde

Sometimes, when I have written a piece of prose that I have been modest enough to consider absolutely free from fault, a dreadful thought comes over me that I may have been guilty of the immoral effeminacy of using trochaic and tribrachic movements, a crime for which a learned critic of the Augustan age censures with most just severity the brilliant if somewhat paradoxical Hegesias.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde

The first thing he saw in the small room was a large clock on the wall which already showed ten o'clock.
— from The Trial by Franz Kafka

He was a little crazy on that point.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

This was a little cove on the shore, surrounded on the land side by rocks, and only capable of receiving a small boat into its tranquil harbor.
— from The Pilgrims of New England A Tale of the Early American Settlers by Mrs. (Annie) Webb-Peploe

At her footstool are her suppliants, the men and women and little children of the city she has saved.
— from Renaissance in Italy, Volume 3 (of 7) The Fine Arts by John Addington Symonds

There were several tables loaded with books, between two windows there was a large crucifix, on the sofa a guitar was lying.
— from Count Brühl by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski

But, as a matter of fact, it was a legend current of the infancy both of the Regent Morton and of Montrose himself before it was given to Claverhouse; and possibly of many other youthful members of the Scottish aristocracy, who happened to make themselves obnoxious to a class of their countrymen whose piety [Pg 4] seems to have added no holy point to their powers of invective.
— from Claverhouse by Mowbray Morris

There was a loud clap of thunder, and Flora fainted away.
— from Masques & Phases by Robert Baldwin Ross

Startled at her authoritative cry, they pulled up their horses suddenly, with a loud clattering on the stones, a hundred yards from the bridge.
— from The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

This action was a logical consequence of the restoration of the executive power into the hands of the emperor.
— from Japan by David Murray

The next morning there was a long consultation over their plans.
— from By England's Aid; Or, the Freeing of the Netherlands, 1585-1604 by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

Reaching the "Warren," a lieutenant clambered over the side, and saluted Commodore Saltonstall on the quarter-deck.
— from The Naval History of the United States. Volume 1 by Willis J. (Willis John) Abbot

[Pg 43] I do not mean that this holds in gross of the unreflective world of experience over against the critical thought-situation—such a contrast implies the very wholesale, at large, consideration of thought which I am striving to avoid.
— from Studies in Logical Theory by John Dewey