He went, and bent down and looked, and says: “It’s a dead man.
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Why should the literary world sympathize with a movement which from the French Revolution onwards has always been directed against literature, art, and science, and has openly proclaimed its aim to exalt the manual workers over the intelligentsia?
— from Secret Societies And Subversive Movements by Nesta Helen Webster

One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for some minutes, asked him, “If his plans were yet unchanged.”
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

He that was a mariner today, is an apothecary tomorrow; a smith one while, a philosopher another, in his volupiae ludis ; a king now with his crown, robes, sceptre, attendants, by and by drove a loaded ass before him like a carter, &c. If Democritus were alive now, he should see strange alterations, a new company of counterfeit vizards, whifflers, Cumane asses, maskers, mummers, painted puppets, outsides, fantastic shadows, gulls, monsters, giddy-heads, butterflies.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

So far was only the ordinary quarrelling of ill-tempered country folk, and nothing very damaging to confess to; but now Brian Darcy’s fair words drew from her all about her imp Suckin, a he and like a black dog, and Lierd, a she and like a hare or a lion, and red.
— from Witch Stories by E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn) Linton

" That is, having examined each tract—say a hill, a valley, an inch, a reclaimed bit, and by digging and looking at the soil, they were to consider what crop it could best produce, considering its soil, elevation, nearness to markets, and then estimating crops at the foregoing rate, they were to say how much per acre the tract was, in their opinion, worth.
— from Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry by Thomas Osborne Davis

And as soon as I perceived that we not only held our advantage but drew a little away, I began to feel quite easy of the issue.
— from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson

He would have no difficulty in seeing such a body distinctly as long as the upper surface of the water remained quiet, and unruffled by waves.
— from The Wonder Book of Volcanoes and Earthquakes by Edwin J. (Edwin James) Houston

"She keeps him at a blushing distance, and looks as if she had not the least idea where he is, and would turn her head away if he came up. Bless their hearts, I know them all; though I never let them see it.
— from Dariel: A Romance of Surrey by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore

She ran to fetch and carry for him, she tried to do things that he did, just as Bunting did, and laughed at herself for trying.
— from Abington Abbey: A Novel by Archibald Marshall

The humblest of these folk must have a particular talent, a talent so peculiar that it might almost be described as “latent Americanism.”
— from The Modern Railroad by Edward Hungerford

Akbar was painted all over with vermilion and blue decorations, and looked as if butter would not melt in his mouth.
— from Guns of the Gods: A Story of Yasmini's Youth by Talbot Mundy

The man can’t draw, but he can feel colour and big distances and lots and lots of air.”
— from Round the Corner Being the Life and Death of Francis Christopher Folyat, Bachelor of Divinity, and Father of a Large Family by Gilbert Cannan