She was really uncomfortable on the point he inquired about, but she only became a little more serious, and her eyes did not swerve.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Then indeed a strange terror thrills in all our amazed breasts; and Laocoön, men say, hath fulfilled his crime's desert, in piercing the consecrated wood and hurling his guilty spear into its body.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

" These flattering observations were by no means displeasing to the princess, but as she did not wish to betray her own feelings she merely said, "You are all a set of chatterboxes; go back to bed, and let me sleep.
— from The Arabian Nights Entertainments by Andrew Lang

Well then, your bond; and, let me see- but hear you, Methoughts you said you neither lend nor borrow Upon advantage.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

“It is not in the least beyond all limits, mamma!” said her daughter, firmly.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She builds all her hopes on you; she says that you will help her now and that she will borrow a little money somewhere and go to her native town with me and set up a boarding school for the daughters of gentlemen and take me to superintend it, and we will begin a new splendid life.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it; and also that if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Grief is the best opener for some hearts, and Jo's was nearly ready for the bag: a little more sunshine to ripen the nut, then, not a boy's impatient shake, but a man's hand reached up to pick it gently from the burr, and find the kernel sound and sweet.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

And would he like to borrow a late magazine she had in the house, that had an article about the growth of the "game"?
— from Skyrider by B. M. Bower

Her mother kissed her good-night, drew the blankets a little more snugly over her, opened two windows wide, took away the lamp, and shut the door.
— from The Bent Twig by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

In her eyes the only modification was that their originally mild rectitude of expression had become a little more stringent than heretofore.
— from Wessex Tales by Thomas Hardy

It had only been a little morning slumber with wild dreams, and there was no awakening.
— from Plays: the Father; Countess Julie; the Outlaw; the Stronger by August Strindberg

She came back at last, made simple and stoical somehow by the contrast of human pettiness with the serenity (as we call it) of those vast masses of débris that we poetize and humanize as patient giants.
— from We Can't Have Everything: A Novel by Rupert Hughes

As it sometimes happened, that when the skill of the sorcerers proved ineffective, a missionary had administered some simple medicine, which, by God's blessing, had the desired effect, they looked upon us, as the first of paters, though our medicines consisted in nothing but a little magnesia, spirits of nitre, and a few simples.
— from Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives with an account of an attempt made by the Church of the United Brethren, to convert them to Christianity by Johann Gottfried Haensel

And besides, it's all to your credit that you haven't one—I think that's one of the fine things about you, that you haven't got so many things you might have had, if you'd been a little more selfish," she said, almost fondly.
— from The Web of Time by Robert E. (Robert Edward) Knowles

Well, my dear, there were words and tears and groans; but at last Miss Sophy took the bit between her teeth, and went off to an old relative, a certain Miss Barberry, in Scotland, and arranged to live with her and look after her.
— from Girls of the Forest by L. T. Meade

In a high way neere this towne, there lieth a big and long moore stone, containing the remainder of certaine ingraued letters, purporting some memorable antiquity, as it should seeme, but past ability of reading.
— from The Survey of Cornwall And an epistle concerning the excellencies of the English tongue by Richard Carew