In consequence, if is said, these very extensive public frauds were at length put in a proper train to be provided against in future; his representations were attended to; and every step which he recommended was adopted; the investigation was put into a proper course, which ended in the detection and punishment of some of the culprits; an immense saving was made to government, and thus its attention was directed to similar peculations in other arts of the colonies.
— from The Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson by Robert Southey

“There was a little passage in front of me, unpapered and uncarpeted, which turned at a right angle at the farther end.
— from Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Illustrated by Arthur Conan Doyle

Perhaps they were a little prouder in their downfall than in their prosperity.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

The shortest way, however, and an unerring one, to discover the answer to this question whether a lying promise is consistent with duty, is to ask myself, "Should I be content that my maxim (to extricate myself from difficulty by a false promise) should hold good as a universal law, for myself as well as for others?" and should I be able to say to myself, "Every one may make a deceitful promise when he finds himself in a difficulty from which he cannot otherwise extricate himself?"
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant

It appears there were also laws passed in both of the then colonies of New-Plymouth and New-Haven, and in the Dutch settlement at New-Amsterdam, now New-York, prohibiting the people called Quakers, from coming into those places, under severe penalties; in consequence of which, some underwent considerable suffering.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

Perhaps it was a lever; possibly it was a club.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Their safety was at least provisionally insured.
— from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

Your lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach or common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the design of this Treatise will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading, and will prevail to have those parts a little weighed, which might otherwise perhaps be thought to deserve no consideration, for being somewhat out of the common road.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

General Halleck had a map on his table, with a large pencil in his hand, and asked, "where is the rebel line?"
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

With a little practice it will soon become easy to speak without moving the jaw, and it is the movements of the jaw which disturb the features.
— from Cassell's Book of In-door Amusements, Card Games, and Fireside Fun by Various

Who is there among us who would have the patience to write any literary production in which he might be engaged twelve times over with his own hand!
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, April 1883 by Chautauqua Institution

You may be as scientific as you choose; the mob that can pay more for sulphuric acid and gunpowder will at last poison its bullets, throw acid in your faces, and make an end of you; of itself, also, in good time, but of you first.
— from The Queen of the Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm by John Ruskin

much compressed; hinge margin nearly rectilinear; surface of the valves longitudinally striated; convex valve longitudinally indented in the middle; the beak prominent and incurved at tip; opposite valve with a longitudinal prominence in the middle; the beak incurved into the hinge beneath the other beak, and distant from it.
— from James's Account of S. H. Long's Expedition, 1819-1820, part 1 by Thomas Say

There was a long pause in the conversation, during which Drumsheugh examined a loose slate on the roof of the church from three different points of view, and Jamie Soutar refreshed his remembrance of a neighbouring tombstone.
— from The Days of Auld Lang Syne by Ian Maclaren

"I shall not rest," he said to his Chancellor, "until I have seen your 'little dove' with my own eyes; and who knows," he added with a laugh, "perhaps I shall steal her from you!"
— from Love affairs of the Courts of Europe by Thornton Hall

Though their paternal inheritance was that of Lancashire squires, the Hollands won a leading place in the history of the next generation.
— from The History of England From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) by T. F. (Thomas Frederick) Tout

What a living paradox is the archbishop of a semi-province, a chapter owning 12,000 serfs, a drawing room abbé well supported by a monastery he never saw, a lord liberally pensioned to figure in antechambers, a magistrate purchasing the right to administer justice, a colonel leaving college to take the command of his inherited regiment, a Parisian trader who, renting a house for one year in Franche-Comté, alienates through this act alone the ownership of his property and of his person.
— from The Ancient Regime by Hippolyte Taine