I went to see The Stranger, as a Doctors’ Commons sort of play, and was so dreadfully cut up, that I hardly knew myself in my own glass when I got home.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and a cock-crowing.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

A strange thing, indeed, that those words, "two or three times," nothing more than a few words, words uttered in the air, at a distance, could so lacerate a man's heart, as if they had actually pierced it, could sicken a man, like a poison that he had drunk.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

The Bible gives me a deep, comforting sense that "things seen are temporal, and things unseen are eternal.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

He walked up and down constantly, stood by the hour at street corners arguing the point and made notes; but in the end it was Mrs Kearney who arranged everything.
— from Dubliners by James Joyce

Network ———- A data communications system which interconnects computer systems at various sites.
— from The Online World by Odd De Presno

From the far north they heard a [Pg 14] low wail of the wind, and Uncle Henry and Dorothy could see where the long grass bowed in waves before the coming storm.
— from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

But they can cultivate these qualities, as Davy Crockett said: "This thing remember, when I am dead: Be sure you are right, then go ahead.
— from The Art of Money Getting; Or, Golden Rules for Making Money by P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum

Some faint attempts she had made with blue ribbon, to freshen the appearance of a dingy curtain, she now saw to be piteous.
— from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane

" Burke looked at him and smiled a dry, cracked smile.
— from Peg O' My Heart by J. Hartley Manners

Then he was ashamed, and Doctor Cijfer said that he could not yet reduce it to figures, but that very soon he would be able to.
— from The Quest The authorized translation from the Dutch of De kleine Johannes by Frederik van Eeden

"I was wondering whether I could show you the sort of man Bert Mackay was" Nichols resumed suddenly "It's difficult enough to lay down the lines of any human being; and Bert was a doubly complex subject, chiefly, perhaps, because the key to his nature was so simple.
— from Under Sail by Lincoln Colcord

He watched her until she rose, looked about her with a disdainful, crafty smile, and turned out the light.
— from Youth and the Bright Medusa by Willa Cather

Although there is no difference in size between Rocky Mountain and Guatemalan specimens, the only two of the latter in the collection are darker colored, showing scarcely any indication of the frontal and supraloral whitish so conspicuous in most northern skins.
— from A History of North American Birds; Land Birds; Vol. 2 of 3 by Robert Ridgway

Knots worthy of solution, which alone A Deity could solve.
— from The Task, and Other Poems by William Cowper

The cabin itself, built of unpainted boards, consisted of a sitting-room, dining-room, kitchen, and two bedrooms, all plainly furnished, although one of the bedrooms was better ordered, and displayed certain signs of feminine decoration, which made Jackson believe it had been his cousin's room.
— from Openings in the Old Trail by Bret Harte

"I think he's over at de club, suh.
— from Ann Boyd: A Novel by Will N. (Will Nathaniel) Harben

These as Domini canes subjected to the most cruel tortures all on whom the suspicion of heresy fell, and all the resolute were handed over to the civil authorities, who readily undertook their execution.
— from Church History, Volume 2 (of 3) by J. H. (Johann Heinrich) Kurtz