I think I have told you that Walter is sweeping the firmament with a feather like a maypole and indenting the pavement with a sword like a scythe—in other words, he has become a whiskered hussar in the 18th Dragoons.” Before the receipt of this most obliging letter, however, I had determined to look to no leading bookseller for a launch, but to throw my work before the public at my own risk, and let it sink or swim according to its merits.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

After that I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and in coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which at last it did, quite brightly.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

So he made much of Robin, and laughed and talked with him more than with any of the others.
— from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

One winter's night, as we sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest to him that, as he had finished pasting extracts into his common-place book, he might employ the next two hours in making our room a little more habitable.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Whilst Oak was doing as she desired, Bathsheba collected the flowers, and began planting them with that sympathetic manipulation of roots and leaves which is so conspicuous in a woman's gardening, and which flowers seem to understand and thrive upon.
— from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

He is a busy-body, with much of romance and little of wit.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe

The possibility of a standstill brings into the action of War a new modification, inasmuch as it dilutes that action with the element of time, checks the influence or sense of danger in its course, and increases the means of reinstating a lost balance of force.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

When Jim appeared, at somebody’s exclamation, all the heads turned round together, and then the mass opened right and left, and he walked up a lane of averted glances.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

This conspicuous predominance of magic over religion, at least over the worship of the dead, is a very notable feature in the culture of a people so comparatively high in the scale of savagery as the Trobriand Islanders.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

Thence away to my Lord Bruncker’s, and there was Sir Robert Murray, whom I never understood so well as now by this opportunity of discourse with him, a most excellent man of reason and learning, and understands the doctrine of musique, and everything else I could discourse of, very finely.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

To this Major Melville answered, with great composure, that so far from claiming any merit in this affair, Mr. Cruickshanks ought to deprecate the imposition of a very heavy fine for neglecting to lodge, in terms of the recent proclamation, an account with the nearest magistrate of any stranger who came to his inn; that as Mr. Cruickshanks boasted so much of religion and loyalty, he should not impute this conduct to disaffection, but only suppose that his zeal for kirk and state had been lulled asleep by the opportunity of charging a stranger with double horse-hire; that, however, feeling himself incompetent to decide singly upon the conduct of a person of such importance, he should reserve it for consideration of the next quarter-sessions.
— from Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since by Walter Scott

St. Francis de Sales has given us, on this subject, some reflections wherein the delicate point of a pleasant malice is touched with superior reason, and I should reproach myself did I not present them to you: "We have seen gentlemen and ladies pass not only one night, but several in succession at play—worldly people said nothing, friends gave themselves no trouble concerning them; but let us give one hour to meditation, or rise a little earlier than usual to prepare for communion, these same friends would run for the doctor to cure us of jaundice or hypochondria.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867 by Various

The policy of making other people afraid of you must have an end, the policy of making others respect and like you can have no end.
— from Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View by Price Collier

People begin now to speculate on the possibility of Lord Derby's reconstructing his minority on rather a larger basis, and maintaining himself for three or four years; which, in these times, is a good old age for a Minister.
— from Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Volume 2 by Nassau William Senior

And then I came to my own room and lit my lovely bright students' lamp.
— from Iolanthe's Wedding by Hermann Sudermann

Mimbo, sometimes abbreviated to mim, was a drink made of rum and loaf-sugar—and possibly water.
— from Stage-coach and Tavern Days by Alice Morse Earle

" "I was merely remarking that Mrs. Orville received a letter from Alice last week, and sis, who used to be acquainted with her, called to inquire after her welfare.
— from Eventide A Series of Tales and Poems by Effie Afton

By such doctrines Moses convinced not a few men of reason, and led them to the place where Jerusalem now is.
— from The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6) by Max Duncker

The old-fashioned boating-tavern has not been demolished, but perched upon the hill above the Caversham Reach a more modern hotel tempts the oarsman to pause and refresh, and the holiday-maker to look out upon the remarkable map of river and landscape for which the situation [Pg 94] is celebrated.
— from Rivers of Great Britain. The Thames, from Source to Sea. Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial by Various