This she did thus; and she also piled up a mound along each bank of the river, which is worthy to cause wonder for its size and height: and at a great distance above Babylon, she dug a basin for a lake, which she caused to extend along at a very small distance from the river, 190 excavating it everywhere of such depth as to come to water, and making the extent such that the circuit of it measured four hundred and twenty furlongs: and the earth which was dug out of this excavation she used up by piling it in mounds along the banks of the river: and when this had been dug by her she brought stones and set them all round it as a facing wall.
— from The History of Herodotus — Volume 1 by Herodotus

As he quitted the room, Elizabeth felt how improbable it was that they should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality as had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire; and as she threw a retrospective glance over the whole of their acquaintance, so full of contradictions and varieties, sighed at the perverseness of those feelings which would now have promoted its continuance, and would formerly have rejoiced in its termination.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

We shall know how it was that the light tap came, if we leave Hetty for a short time and return to Dinah, at the moment when she had delivered Totty to her mother's arms, and was come upstairs to her bedroom, adjoining Hetty's.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

People entertained a suspicion that a report of his being killed had been contrived and spread by himself, with the view of discovering how they stood affected towards him. Nor had the conspirators fixed upon any one to succeed him.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

It was a long, difficult business, for the coins were of all countries and sizes—doubloons, and louis d'ors, and guineas, and pieces of eight, and I know not what besides, all shaken together at random.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of the "younger set," in which it was the recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Antonia said they always reminded her of soldiers—some uniform she had seen in the old country, when she was a child.
— from My Antonia by Willa Cather

Then he bowed a second time and retired.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

It will have a pernicious influence, and set them all running away.
— from Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana by Solomon Northup

On the death of that King he had acted for a short time as regent for Charles Felix, and had then served in the war between France and Spain, winning a great reputation for bravery.
— from Builders of United Italy by Rupert Sargent Holland

Unusually talkative and restless, he had suddenly hardened and stiffened to a repressed, tense calm; speechless, almost rigid in his chair.
— from Blix by Frank Norris

I heard the first lieutenant observe to Uncle Tom that he was very glad to get the ship snug at last; but I cannot say that I thought her snug, or anything snug about her, for there we were among clouds of sleet and spray, tumbling and rolling about in that undignified way in which I had not thought it possible so fine a frigate could have been tumbled and rolled about.
— from My First Cruise, and Other stories by William Henry Giles Kingston

Then followed a struggle that always remained nightmarish to Warrington.
— from Parrot & Co. by Harold MacGrath

The peculiar circumstances of modern life, which exhibit art in almost every form to the sight of the youths in our great cities, have a natural tendency to fill their imaginations with borrowed ideas, and their minds with imperfect science; the mere dislike of mechanical employments, either felt to be irksome, or believed to be degrading, urges numbers of young men to become painters, in the same temper in which they would enlist or go to sea; others, the sons of engravers or artists, taught the business of the art by their parents, and having no gift for it themselves, follow it as the means of livelihood, in an ignoble patience; or, if ambitious, seek to attract regard, or distance rivalry, by fantastic, meretricious, or unprecedented applications of their mechanical skill; while finally, many men earnest in feeling, and conscientious in principle, mistake their desire to be useful for a love of art, and their quickness of emotion for its capacity, and pass their lives in painting moral and instructive pictures, which might almost justify us in thinking nobody could be a painter but a rogue.
— from Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political Economy by John Ruskin

For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are any such things as real apparitions, spectres, or walking of people after they are dead; or whether there is anything in the stories they tell us of that kind more than the product of vapours, sick minds, and wandering fancies: but this I know, that my imagination worked up to such a height, and brought me into such excess of vapours, or what else I may call it, that I actually supposed myself often upon the spot, at my old castle, behind the trees; saw my old Spaniard, Friday’s father, and the reprobate sailors I left upon the island; nay, I fancied I talked with them, and looked at them steadily, though I was broad awake, as at persons just before me; and this I did till I often frightened myself with the images my fancy represented to me.
— from The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

As soon as he answered, she turned and ran
— from Shadows of Flames: A Novel by Amélie Rives

For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are any such things as real apparitions, spectres, or walking of people after they are dead, or whether there is any thing in the stories they tell us of that kind, more than the product of vapours, sick minds, and wandering fancies.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) by Daniel Defoe

If a dozen of them sat together and a lady or a gentleman passed whom one of them knew and saluted, they all rose to their feet and took off their caps.
— from A Tramp Abroad — Volume 01 by Mark Twain