Early to White Hall, thinking to have a meeting of my Lord and the principal officers, but my Lord could not, it being the day that he was to go and be admitted in the House of Lords, his patent being done, which he presented upon his knees to the Speaker; and so it was read in the House, and he took his place.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

xi. remarks, that "some are never more to be dreaded than when they blush; as if they had effused all their modesty.
— from The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus by Cornelius Tacitus

I think it's much more likely that the court officials will be too lazy, too forgetful, or even to fearful ever to continue with these proceedings and that they will soon be abandoned if they haven't been abandoned already.
— from The Trial by Franz Kafka

But on the other hand, as Emma wants to see her better informed, it will be an inducement to her to read more herself.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

Being also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to the Lion d’Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son’s account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law’s whole supply of eau-de-cologne.
— from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

These fugitives, who fled before the Turkish arms, passed the Tanais and Borysthenes, and boldly advanced into the heart of Poland and Germany, violating the law of nations, and abusing the rights of victory.
— 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

And how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how little of the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic too) had sufficed to turn a whole human life at once according to my will.
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"Yes, the petty lawyers," said the businessman, putting his hand to his brow as if thinking hard.
— from The Trial by Franz Kafka

She was English, and one must not expect them to behave as if they had a heart.
— from The New Warden by Ritchie, David G. (David George), Mrs.

And then the figure he made, with his decent portliness, his whiskers, the money in his purse, the excellent cigar that he now lit, recurred to his mind in consolatory comparison with that of a certain maddened lad who, on a certain spring Sunday ten years before, and in the hour of church-time silence, had stolen from that city by the Glasgow road.
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 10 by Robert Louis Stevenson

[Pg 121] for him to be afraid of a girl, even though she were armed; but supposing she had confederates, and it was scarcely likely she would be alone in the house.
— from The Banshee by Elliott O'Donnell

The conductor was American, but as in Texas he seemed to have little to do except to keep the train moving.
— from Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond by Harry Alverson Franck

The college was about five miles from the town, at the side opposite to you as you enter the town from Little Christchurch, and I had some time since made up my mind how, in the bright genial days of our pleasant winter, I would myself accompany Mr Crasweller through the city in an open barouche as I took him to be deposited, through admiring crowds of his fellow-citizens.
— from The Fixed Period by Anthony Trollope

These terrible penalties, which many Freemasons themselves regret as a survival of barbarism and which have in fact been abolished in the higher degrees, have done much to create prejudice against Freemasonry, whilst at the same time they provide an additional incentive to outside intriguers.
— from Secret Societies And Subversive Movements by Nesta Helen Webster

But Father Anastasy perceived it clearly, and realized that his presence was burdensome and inappropriate, that his Reverence, who had taken an early morning service in the night and a long mass at midday, was exhausted and longing for repose; every minute he was meaning to get up and go, but he did not get up, he sat on as though he were waiting for something.
— from The Bishop and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

How Miss Reese has been able, in the hurly-burly of American life, to find some indesecrate corner, some daffodiled garden-close, holding always the quiet and the glint of sunshine out of which these songs have come, is an enigma worth a poet’s solving.
— from The Younger American Poets by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse

The building was so immensely large, that it would have been almost impossible to have made a roof over it.
— from Rollo in Rome by Jacob Abbott

She is my benefactress, and I thank her.
— from Cruel As The Grave by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth