His black, narrow figure, with the white band of the collar under the silvery gleams on the close-cropped hair at the back of the head, remained motionless.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad

If he bee a Christian, he alloweth the beleefe of this Article, that Jesus Is The Christ; and of all the Articles that are contained in, or are evident consequence deduced from it: which is all the Faith Necessary to Salvation.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

[the big umbrellas above the burning-ghats where the priests take their last dues] clutch hard at the bearers of the chattis [water-jars—young folk full of the pride of life, she meant; but the pun is clumsy].
— from Kim by Rudyard Kipling

One lawyer after another was sent out to run up the steps and let himself be thrown down again, offering what resistance he could as long as it was passive resistance, and his colleagues would catch him at the bottom of the steps.
— from The Trial by Franz Kafka

Top plunged into the water, but the capybara, hidden at the bottom of the pond, did not appear.
— from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

[Clarendon] as an enemy to him; that if he had a mind himself to be out of this employment, as Mr. Coventry, he believes, wishes, and himself and I do incline to wish it also, in many respects, yet he believes he shall not be able, because of the King, who will keepe him in on purpose, in opposition to the other party; that Prince Rupert and he are all possible friends in the world; that Coventry hath aggravated this business of the prizes, though never so great plundering in the world as while the Duke and he were at sea; and in Sir John Lawson’s time he could take and pillage, and then sink a whole ship in the Streights, and Coventry say nothing to it; that my Lord Arlington is his fast friend; that the Chancellor is cold to him, and though I told him that I and the world do take my Lord Chancellor, in his speech the other day, to have said as much as could be wished, yet he thinks he did not.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The Orion was a ship that had been ailing for a long time; in the course of its previous cruises thick layers of barnacles had collected on its keel to such a degree as to deprive it of half its speed; it had gone into the dry dock the year before this, in order to have the barnacles scraped off, then it had put to sea again; but this cleaning had affected the bolts of the keel: in the neighborhood of the Balearic Isles the sides had been strained and had opened; and, as the plating in those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The skull in the larger breeds has increased in length, but not in due proportion with the increased length of body; the brain has not duly increased in dimensions, or has even actually decreased, and consequently the bony case for the brain has remained narrow, and by correlation has affected the bones of the face and the entire length of the skull.
— from The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication by Charles Darwin

His corduroy trousers were cutting him at the back of the knees.
— from Tales of two people by Anthony Hope

But the literature of the age of Charlemagne proves that this creed had at the beginning of the ninth century an antiquity of at least more than a century (Ommaney, History and Structure of the Athanasian Creed , Oxford, 1897).
— from The Divine Office A Study of the Roman Breviary by Edward J. Quigley

As afar they roam To the shepherd's home, The shrieks of the wild Curlew! H2 anchor The Ballad of Tanna
— from The Poems of Henry Kendall With Biographical Note by Bertram Stevens by Henry Kendall

At evening, the place would be lighted by Chinese lanterns of various colors, hung among the boughs of the oak trees, giving to the grove a most romantic appearance.
— from Three Years in the Sixth Corps A Concise Narrative of Events in the Army of the Potomac, from 1861 to the Close of the Rebellion, April, 1865 by George T. (George Thomas) Stevens

Few, however, even of the best and boldest fishermen cared to wet a line in its waters, in consequence of the supposed impossibility of following a heavy fish through the gorge below or checking him at the brink of the fall.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, July 1849 by Various

To shew that if you stop the Top of the Stem of the Syphon while you pour Oil into both Vessels, a considerable Height above the Bend of the Syphon, and then unstop it, the Oil will press upon the Water in both Vessels, and force it to ascend in each Leg; till meeting at the Bend, it run down the longer Leg, out of the higher Water into the lower.
— from A Course of Mechanical, Magnetical, Optical, Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Experiments perform'd by Francis Hauksbee, and the Explanatory Lectures read by William Whiston, M.A. by William Whiston

The firing-line advanced keeping intervals and covering a front of about 600 yards, the centre being directed on to a conical hill at the back of the enemy's camp.
— from The Record of a Regiment of the Line Being a Regimental History of the 1st Battalion Devonshire Regiment during the Boer War 1899-1902 by Mainwaring George Jacson