For what use is there, Callicles, in giving to the body of a sick man who is in a bad state of health a quantity of the most delightful food or drink or any other pleasant thing, which may be really as bad for him as if you gave him nothing, or even worse if rightly estimated.
— from Gorgias by Plato

My dear little friend, the kitten, would certainly be changed: she was already growing a fine cat; and when I returned, even for a hasty visit at Christmas, would, most likely, have forgotten both her playmate and her merry pranks.
— from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

The final syllable of a Greek word is rarely elided.
— from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane

The other point of view is that which is reserved exclusively for natural philosophers, according to which it is that the existence and substance of things are examined, [for instance, whether the sun and the stars consist of matter and form,] and whether the sun is born or not born, whether it is living or lifeless, corruptible or incorruptible, whether it is regulated by Providence, and other questions of this kind.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

Was it really eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had she indeed reached the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The sensation of life which is renewed each day, of fresh, happy, loving life trembled in the leaves, palpitated in the air, was mirrored in the water.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

Hence we may reasonably suspect a similar element in our own moral code: and must admit the great importance of testing rigorously any rule which we find that we have a habitual impulse to obey; to see whether it really expresses or can be referred to a clear intuition of rightness.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

I felt that I was despised on account of this gracious calling, and was looked upon as a speckled bird by the ministers to whom I looked for instruction, and to whom I resorted every opportunity for the same; but when I would converse with them, some would cry out, "You are an enthusiast;" and others said, "the Discipline did not allow of any such division of the work;" until I began to think I surely must be wrong.
— from Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman by Old Elizabeth

I was in real earnest about it, but the doctors laughed at me and said they would soon teach me to be a surgeon.
— from Recollections of a Pioneer by J. W. (J. Watt) Gibson

The Savage Island hut of Cook's time, with its rounded ends, took the shape of an elongated oval, and the concrete walls of the modern cottage are moulded to the same form.
— from Savage Island: An Account of a Sojourn in Niué and Tonga by Basil Thomson

But I am puzzled to think why I remember even your tone and manner so well, for I can't recall any chance meeting with you in the past."
— from A Fortune Hunter; Or, The Old Stone Corral: A Tale of the Santa Fe Trail by John Dunloe Carteret

When this unnatural Zeal gets into them, it throws them into ten thousand Heats and Extravagancies; their generous Souls 3 set no Bounds to their Love or to their Hatred; and whether a Whig or Tory, a Lap-Dog or a Gallant, an Opera or a Puppet-Show, be the Object of it, the Passion, while it reigns, engrosses the whole Woman.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

Round a temple, with iron roofs ending in copper balls at the top, a crowd was watching, some seated on steps cut in the soil and some squatting on the hillside, here almost perpendicular.
— from Enchanted India by Bozidar Karadordevic

Now that she reappears in London once more, a flaming meteor of song, the cynosure of neighbouring eyes, a flashing diamond of the purest water, I recognise equally the altered facts.
— from Linnet: A Romance by Grant Allen

In our illustration, a woman is represented enveloped in her yasmak and feridgē, performing this duty.
— from Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor Series One and Series Two in one Volume by R. (Robert) Walsh

Of same edible quality as C. aurea, which it resembles, excepting that it is darker and less abrupt in the ending of its clusters.
— from Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc. by Charles McIlvaine

When everything was in readiness except for the application of polish, Rick and Chahda took time to eat, then got into the vinta and began practicing.
— from The Pirates of Shan: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story by Harold L. (Harold Leland) Goodwin