ancery then) to ask if our services were required, and what work we had consisted chiefly of copying despatches and interminable accounts.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

He died of wounds received at Waterloo some months after the battle and before he had received his pension.
— from The Waterloo Roll Call With Biographical Notes and Anecdotes by Charles Dalton

But when we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas, and find still some ambiguity and obscurity; what resource are we then possessed of?
— from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume

As we rode along, we passed a party of Shakers, who were at work upon the road; who wore the broadest of all broad-brimmed hats; and were in all visible respects such very wooden men, that I felt about as much sympathy for them, and as much interest in them, as if they had been so many figure-heads of ships.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

But war being contrary to peace, as misery to happiness, and life to death, it is not without reason asked what kind of war can be found in the end of the wicked answering to the peace which is declared to be the end of the righteous?
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

But his face was mild and his eyes were mournfully following the movements of the chestnut horse racing away, as though his happiness were racing away with it.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

We have seen that many Hungarian swine-herds make fire on Midsummer Eve by rotating a wheel round a wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and that they drive their pigs through the fire thus made.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

Girls were running and walking through the other entrance.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

Would that, then, be a picture wanting in grandeur, where a competent artist—wishing to glorify in the sixteenth century not the warlike Reformation which rent asunder without remorse the ancient and majestic unity of Christendom, but the peaceful and fruitful reform which multiplied, according to the needs of a much troubled and suffering age, grand inspirations and magnanimous self-sacrifices—should group around the living centre of the church Ignatius Loyola and his brave companions, the pastor Pascal Baylon and the grand nobleman Francis Borgia, St. Philip Neri and St. Camillus of Lelli, St. Charles Borromeo in the midst of the plague at Milan and St. Francis of Sales evangelizing the populations of Chablais?
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 08, October, 1868, to March, 1869. by Various

He was rich as well as powerful.
— from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson

A lady of my acquaintance,[8] appropriated twenty-six pounds a year out of her allowance, for certain uses, which her woman received, and was to pay to the lady or her order, as it was called for.
— from The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. — Volume 09 Contributions to The Tatler, The Examiner, The Spectator, and The Intelligencer by Jonathan Swift

A deep sense of their own dignity, pride of name, the conviction that they were by birth great, gave rise in them to a kingly pride, the courage of knights, and the protecting kindness of a baronial lord; their manners, harmonizing with their notions, would have become princes, and offended all the world of the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve—a world, above all others, of equality, where every one believed that M. d’Espard was ruined, and where all, from the lowest to the highest, refused the privileges of nobility to a nobleman without money, because they were all ready to allow an enriched bourgeois to usurp them.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

“By what right are we enemies, princess?”
— from Samuel Brohl and Company by Victor Cherbuliez

She was beyond reach of her aunts and Jane, out by herself, alone in the wide road; and without her being conscious of the fact, this unwonted loneliness added to the terribleness of the situation.
— from The Tree of Knowledge: A Novel by Reynolds, Baillie, Mrs.

Our fine weather was very transient, for it was raining again when we reached Worcester.
— from British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and Scotland by Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler) Murphy

She hesitated, comparing the two; then, having formed her decision, walked rapidly away with the resolute stride of the woman who tears herself regretfully from the artful temptations of the shop-window.
— from The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) by Alphonse Daudet