A sofa with its American-leather torn and peeling, a humble greasy-looking chair, a table covered with a little of paper, and a wretched oleograph on the wall, that was all I saw.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

To attempt a portrayal of that era and that land, and leave out the blood and carnage, would be like portraying Mormondom and leaving out polygamy.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

A most frequent and ordinary cause of melancholy, [1572] fulmen perturbationum (Picolomineus calls it) this thunder and lightning of perturbation, which causeth such violent and speedy alterations in this our microcosm, and many times subverts the good estate and temperature of it.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

B. & Co. wrote to their lawyer in New Orleans, who attached the real estate (these two articles and a lot of plantation hands formed the most valuable part of it), and wrote word to that effect to New York.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

p. 131) and Libanius (Orat. Parentalis, c. 148, p. 369) expresses the living sentiments of their respective factions.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

"I don't pretend to argue with a lady on politics," said Mr. Brooke, with an air of smiling indifference, but feeling rather unpleasantly conscious that this attack of Mrs. Cadwallader's had opened the defensive campaign to which certain rash steps had exposed him.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

1 As for the first, it is a little oval Poem, and may not improperly be called a Scholar's Egg.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

It generally works like magic, even though it's got millions of moving parts -- every ISP runs a DNS server, as do most governments and lots of private operators.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

At last, one pleasant morning, we steamed up the harbor of New York, all on deck, all dressed in Christian garb—by special order, for there was a latent disposition in some quarters to come out as Turks—and amid a waving of handkerchiefs from welcoming friends, the glad pilgrims noted the shiver of the decks that told that ship and pier had joined hands again and the long, strange cruise was over.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

NUMBER 426 Transcriber’s Note: Below is a list of printer errors that have been corrected in the Italian sonnets, by reference to the 1964 critical edition of Il Canzoniere edited by Gianfranco Contini, available at Liber Liber .
— from Fifteen sonnets of Petrarch by Francesco Petrarca

They ruined a lot of paper ...
— from Orlóff and His Wife: Tales of the Barefoot Brigade by Maksim Gorky

From a list of popular novels:— " The Beloved Premier , by H. Maxwell .
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 by Various

"I have told you many times that I am a Lutheran, of Polish descent.
— from Sans-Cravate; or, The Messengers; Little Streams by Paul de Kock

With the spelling and lack of punctuation corrected, her letter was as follows: "Dear, innocent, foolish Patsy: How astonished you will be to find I have vanished from your life forever; and what angry and indignant words you will hurl after poor Tato!
— from Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

A look of pain stole over Phronsie's face, and Mrs. Fisher hastened to say, "But oh.
— from Five Little Peppers Grown Up by Margaret Sidney

'There is great apology for you, Julia, as far as I can judge from a glance at these letters; you have obeyed at least one parent.
— from Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Complete by Walter Scott

"And such lots and lots of people!"
— from Sunny Boy in the Big City by Ramy Allison White

He at least only puts things down (or invents them).
— from Sweethearts at Home by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

But my fate, which has chased me through a life of perils and escapes, is now pressing me hard, and I have no alternative.
— from Rob Roy — Volume 02 by Walter Scott

[editor], Index to Periodical Literature (1853 and later editions), renders the magazines of the period accessible; and W. B. Cairns, Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833, with especial Reference to Periodicals, in University of Wisconsin, Bulletin (Literature Series, I., 1898), enumerates a list of periodicals not indexed in Poole.
— from Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 by Frederick Jackson Turner