Howard and the Judge sprang to their feet with the opening sentence—why, neither knew; then they stood gazing vacantly at each other.
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

The verisimilitude which is given to the pilgrimage of a thousand years, by the intimation that Ardiaeus had lived a thousand years before; the coincidence of Er coming to life on the twelfth day after he was supposed to have been dead with the seven days which the pilgrims passed in the meadow, and the four days during which they journeyed to the column of light; the precision with which the soul is mentioned who chose the twentieth lot; the passing remarks that there was no definite character among the souls, and that the souls which had chosen ill blamed any one rather than themselves; or that some of the souls drank more than was necessary of the waters of Forgetfulness, while Er himself was hindered from drinking; the desire of Odysseus to rest at last, unlike the conception of him in Dante and Tennyson; the feigned ignorance of how Er returned to the body, when the other souls went shooting like stars to their birth,—add greatly to the probability of the narrative.
— from The Republic by Plato

It was the old story.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

He learned that some of the boys she went with in Baltimore were “terrible speeds” and came to dances in states of artificial stimulation; most of them were twenty or so, and drove alluring red Stutzes.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

Nor pause established to their breaking up, They hold there is no minimum in things; Albeit we see the boundary point of aught Is that which to our senses seems its least, Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, because The things thou canst not mark have boundary points, They surely have their minimums.
— from On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus

Such an attitude takes advantage of the meanings aroused and built up in free play, but controls their development by seeing to it that they are applied to things in ways consistent with the observable structure of the things themselves .
— from How We Think by John Dewey

Two large halls, hung with splendid tapestry, and paved with marble, opened on each side of a court, of whose two other sides one overlooked the deep dark lake, and the other was bounded by a mountain, from whose stony side gushed, with roar and splash, the celebrated fountain.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

But it is evident that if we now take up the card and replace it with the other side uppermost, we shall in the same manner get five other routes by revolution.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

Nay, not in Kôr, but in whatever spot, In fields, or towns, or by the insatiate sea, Hearts brood o'er buried Loves and unforgot, Or wreck themselves on some Divine decree, Or would o'er-leap the limits of our lot, There in the Tombs and deathless, dwelleth SHE!
— from He by Walter Herries Pollock

This was the only subject on which she was not perfectly confidential to her new friend, Delia, who was now her constant companion, for although Anna went very seldom to Dornton, Mrs Forrest made no objection to their meeting often elsewhere.
— from Thistle and Rose: A Story for Girls by Amy Walton

The Need for Superior Intelligence There was a time in the halcyon days of the old coloratura singers when the opera singer was not expected to have very much more intelligence than a parrot.
— from Great Singers on the Art of Singing Educational Conferences with Foremost Artists by James Francis Cooke

Indeed, I was only then apprised of its existence by the drums of the Sixth grenadiers beating for military Mass. A piazza in Florence means an acre, more or less, of oblong, open, flat, macadamized, unornamented ground; without tree, or shrub, or flower, or even the picturesque grasses of the deader Italian towns.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 08, October, 1868, to March, 1869. by Various

Lacking this assistance, it is unlikely that the youth [Pg 111] would have found his way to our shores.
— from The Ifs of History by Joseph Edgar Chamberlin

The ticking of the clock was the only sound heard.
— from The Transformation of Job A Tale of the High Sierras by Frederick Vining Fisher

On the other hand, it must be noted that the recognition and satisfaction fell to the share of only one sex, while the other sex, on the contrary, was treated as if it could not and should not have the same impulses; the slightest transgression of the laws of morality prescribed by man, was severely punished.
— from Woman under socialism by August Bebel

My friend de Shay, being the fidus Achates of the host, had the power to reveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or two occasions when there were not so many present and while the others were chattering in the various rooms—music-, dining-, ball-, library and so forth—I was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and also various secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a flower on a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open or close which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no way connected with the others save by another secret door and leading always to a private exit.
— from Twelve Men by Theodore Dreiser

But breakfast puts a better construction on the onward journey; and by the time we have made acquaintance with the Oxford sausages and Australian sheep's tongues, we begin to scramble about quite merrily, and doff boots, coats, and hats for the task with as jaunty a grace as did my Lord Russell on Tower Hill.
— from Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 709 July 28, 1877 by Various

I see a light out yonder somewheres about where them old stones is on the hill.
— from The Young Castellan: A Tale of the English Civil War by George Manville Fenn

I am not so sure that a reed “pervious throughout” would throw off shoots; some such are merely sheathed like bulrushes and flags.
— from The World's Earliest Music Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and Sumer by Hermann Smith