She came in looking as if bears were after her," said Beth, as she cuddled her sister's feet with a motherly air.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

“She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, 'It is for thine own dear sake.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Pepys might complain of the trade in briefs, as similar contributions had been levied fourteen weeks successively, previous to the one in question at St. Olave’s church.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Here she comes, with her ‘bonne,’ as she calls her nurse.”
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

He was conventionally honest, he kept his records of buyers and sellers complete, he had experience with leases and titles and an excellent memory for prices.
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

What opinion are we to form of a system of education, when the author says of his heroine, "that with her, doing things well is but a SECONDARY concern; her principal concern is to do them NEATLY."
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

Chia Yün wended his steps straightway home; and the next day, he came to the front entrance, where, by a strange coincidence, he met lady Feng on her way to the opposite side to pay her respects.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

But let me on.—Years dragged themselves along heavily, and still I dwelled within the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass; but a second change had come upon all things.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

No fancy was laid to her charge; if there had been any, she certainly had been very careful of appearances.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

The messenger, Olga's maid, went off with it: and almost before I thought she could have had time to get home and back again, she came hurrying in again breathless and excited, and all white with fear.
— from By Right of Sword by Arthur W. Marchmont

But a step came hurrying down the stairs, the step of a heavy body lightly carried, and Caddie Musgrave came in at a flying pace.
— from Country Neighbors by Alice Brown

Yet his hope never wholly failed: the saying that he quoted to encourage his friend Soltan—' speravit contra spem : that is a great and holy word of the sacred Scriptures'—might stand for his motto; and a saying from one of his poems, as Miss Gardner not unjustly contends, might well be his epitaph: 'If you would mark him out by any sign, call him a Pole, for he loved Poland.
— from Kościuszko A Biography by Monica M. (Monica Mary) Gardner

She sat silent, picturing what his life and what her own life would be through all the years, the lifelong years, when even the boy's love would be bitterness, and she could have a friend in nobody because of the great sad secret which would govern all her life.
— from Double Harness by Anthony Hope

His Electoral Grace, by a special condescension, had graciously determined to make the theatrical performances gratuitous and to that end has closed a contract with His Highness’s Theatrical Director Grossmann according to which besides the theatre free of rent, the illumination and the orchestra he is to receive an annual subvention for the maintenance of the company.
— from The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume I by Alexander Wheelock Thayer

But on the other hand he had that instinctive knowledge, not of what she did but of what she actually was, which no man but a son can have, and that only when it concerns just one woman in the world.
— from Robin Linnet by E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

He had never ceased to mourn over the lost opportunity, and to cast up to his friend the discoveries he might have made; while Dr. May declared that if by any strange chance he had come back at all, he would have been so rabid on improved nursing and sanatory measures, that there would have been no living with him.
— from The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge