But the lower part of his face and his nose—O what an exquisite expression of elegance and sensibility!—There appeared no depth, weight, or comprehensiveness in the forehead.—The whole face seemed to say, that Lessing was a man of quick and voluptuous feelings; of an active but light fancy; acute; yet acute not in the observation of actual life, but in the arrangements and management of the ideal world, that is, in taste, and in metaphysics.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A little travelling clock ticked purringly at her elbow, and a log broke in two and sent up a shower of sparks.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Therefore did I more weep among the singing of Thy Hymns, formerly sighing after Thee, and at length breathing in Thee, as far as the breath may enter into this our house of grass.
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

A few days afterwards, the earl and Laski being in the antechamber of the Queen, awaiting an audience of her majesty, Dr. Dee arrived on the same errand, and was introduced to the Pole.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

I then asked if I could serve him in any other way; to which he answered, “You have already done too much;” and, unable to contain the emotions of his soul any longer, burst into tears, and wept aloud.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

She gasped a little, but gulped it down, and lay back in the armchair.
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Not a muscle, not one inch of flesh from my heels to my hands that was not sore and lame, but I took a good rub-off with the powerful camphor from the 394 bottle mother so carefully filled for me, and went to bed with orders for my horse at 6 A.M. Sunday morning's devotion for Minister McLean and the Rochester strong-minded was to ride two and a half miles to Mirror lake, and there wait and watch the coming of the sun over the rocky spires, reflected in the placid water.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

So that Jacob was at one and the same time blessed and lame: blessed in those among that people who believed in Christ, and lame in the unbelieving.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

"Demos" does not aspire to vie with "Alton Locke," but it tells a story more practical, and of more brightness and variety.'— Times.
— from The Talking Horse, and Other Tales by F. Anstey

Here in the Congress you can demonstrate effective legislative leadership by discharging the public business with clarity and dispatch, voting each important proposal up, or voting it down, but at least bringing it to a fair and a final vote.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

And in the shut-in valley it made and left behind it to all but cover the entire floor of the valley a lakelet of very clear water not over a quarter of a mile from edge to edge, but very deep.
— from Six Feet Four by Jackson Gregory

Whether he was really achieving a Van Dyke he did not dare to guess, but he was at least bringing it to a point at the chin, and was cropping away some of its shagginess on the cheeks.
— from Sam by E. J. Rath

To dream that your ledger has worthless accounts, denotes bad management and losses; but if the accounts are good, then your business will assume improved conditions.
— from Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; Or, What's in a Dream A Scientific and Practical Exposition by Gustavus Hindman Miller

"After a fine morning's run following the steers they'd like as not have a little branding in the afternoon, the old-fashioned kind that ain't done in the higher ranch circles any more, where a couple of silly punchers rope an animal fore and aft and throw it, thereby setting it back at least four months in its growth.
— from Somewhere in Red Gap by Harry Leon Wilson

As he looked in his face, from which the mask had fallen aside, he started so greatly that he almost leaped bodily in the air.
— from The Men of the Moss-Hags Being a history of adventure taken from the papers of William Gordon of Earlstoun in Galloway by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

It seemed to pass over my head, and was followed by a loud bang in the air, where now hung a ring of white smoke.
— from The Invasion of 1910, with a full account of the siege of London by William Le Queux