Well, au revoir , prince, I see I am keeping you, and boring you, too, interfering with your most interesting private reflections.”
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Nay, I will e'en tell you more, that, seeing you with those clothes on your back, which were my late husband's, and meseeming you were himself, there hath taken me belike an hundred times to-night a longing to embrace you and kiss you: and but that I feared to displease you, I had certainly done it.'
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

“It is to the treason of a ruffian that you owe your triumph,” he said to his captor, “and not to your valour: had I received the smallest relief I could still have repulsed and kept you at bay.
— from Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean: The grand period of the Moslem corsairs by E. Hamilton (Edward Hamilton) Currey

I was to stay and keep you at bay.
— from Deficient Saints: A Tale of Maine by Marshall Saunders

To add to our security, light a small fire with the wood you collected, and keep yourself awake by feeding it.
— from The Pirate of the Mediterranean: A Tale of the Sea by William Henry Giles Kingston

"An American carries his civility one step further; if he meets you afterwards, in other company, the fact that he has seen you at this friend's and had an agreeable chit-chat is introduction enough, and, unless there is something peculiar in your case, he will ever after know you and be your friend.
— from Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals In Two Volumes, Volume I. by Samuel Finley Breese Morse

“Ah!” he faintly sighed, “if I could only suffer enough to be able to silence my reason, and kneel yonder and believe in all those fine stories.”
— from The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Complete by Émile Zola

"Faith, Hungerford!" replied Chartley, laughing; "like a kingfisher, you are better known by your feathers than your voice.
— from The Woodman: A Romance of the Times of Richard III by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

Oh, when I see you—when I look at you and see how sweet and kind you are——” Bertha, terrified that Mary would begin to cry and get hysterical, tried to stop her.
— from Bird of Paradise by Ada Leverson