It troubled me that there should have been a lurker on the stairs, on that night of all nights in the year, and I asked the watchman, on the chance of eliciting some hopeful explanation as I handed him a dram at the door, whether he had admitted at his gate any gentleman who had perceptibly been dining out?
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

But yet, you see, that though I could part with you, while my anger held, yet the regard I had then newly professed for your virtue, made me resolve not to offer to violate it; and you have seen likewise, that the painful struggle I underwent when I began to reflect, and to read your moving journal, between my desire to recall you, and my doubt whether you would return, (though yet I resolved not to force you to it,) had like to have cost me a severe illness: but your kind and cheerful return has dispelled all my fears, and given me hope, that I am not indifferent to you; and you see how your presence has chased away my illness.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

"Why, dear Maggie," she interposed, "you have always pretended that you are too fond of being admired; and now, I think, you are angry because some one ventures to admire you."
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

That I brought a dread burden down here— On this night, of all nights in the year, Ah, what demon has tempted me here?
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

We deceived you then, writing that this money came from Dounia’s savings, but that was not so, and now I tell you all about it, because, thank God, things have suddenly changed for the better, and that you may know how Dounia loves you and what a heart she has.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The laws of his mind, the periods of his actions externized themselves into day and night, into the year and the seasons.
— from Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are no impossibilities to youth and inexperience; but when a person has tried several times to reach high C and been coughed down, he is quite content to go down among the chorus.
— from The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner — Volume 1 by Charles Dudley Warner

We must act now, I tell you, and rend the air no more with idle moaning, or else we perish all!
— from The Curse of Koshiu: A Chronicle of Old Japan by Lewis Wingfield

Barbara is attending to affairs in the kitchen, and now I tell you again: You must help a sufferer."
— from The Burgomaster's Wife — Volume 03 by Georg Ebers

Well, as I was reading the magazine I heard a noise in the yard and upon going out found the six-foot corporal slugging the five-foot five Légionnaire.
— from Kelly of the Foreign Legion: Letters of Légionnaire Russell A. Kelly by Russell Anthony Kelly

‘And now I think you are well enough to direct operations,’ said she. ‘Tell me what to do, and I’ll be your workman.’
— from The Wrong Box by Robert Louis Stevenson

I've told him, and now I tell you again, I won't have any more quarreling on board."
— from Nelson the Newsboy; Or, Afloat in New York by Alger, Horatio, Jr.

And now, I think you are all right.”
— from Dorothy's Tour by Evelyn Raymond