He told me once that he was resolved to go on pilgrimage as we do now; but all of a sudden he grew acquainted with one Save-self, and then he became a stranger to me, for at that time he gave up going on pilgrimage.
— from The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan Every Child Can Read by John Bunyan

We got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a brick, and I went out over the top of the tiller and landed, head down, on the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in the air between me and the sun.
— from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain

‘Didn’t I tell you last night that if we could find where they were going by bribing a servant through my fellow, and then established ourselves close by with the mother, these people’s honour would be our own?
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

The emperor Frederic the Second was a child; and his kingdom of Germany was disputed by the rival houses of Brunswick and Swabia, the memorable factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines.
— 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

The Tear-Drop Wae is my heart, and the tear's in my e'e; Lang, lang has Joy been a stranger to me: Forsaken and friendless, my burden I bear, And the sweet voice o' Pity ne'er sounds in my ear.
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

I'll get myself up regardless of expense tomorrow and be a satisfaction to my friends.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

By and bye he should place her in his lap, and try more and more to gain her consent, and if she will not yield to him he should frighten her by saying, "I shall impress marks of my teeth and nails on your lips and breasts, and then make similar marks on my own body, and shall tell my friends that you did them.
— from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding Remarks by Vatsyayana

The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

So thence, my wife and people by the highway, and I walked over the park with Mr. Shepley, and through the grove, which is mighty pretty, as is imaginable, and so over their drawbridge to Nun’s Bridge, and so to my father’s, and there sat and drank, and talked a little, and then parted.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Being but a short thousand miles from Gibraltar, the circles of military command exercised by these two places intersect.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

Like Beethoven, Schubert wrote nine symphonies, but the “Unfinished,” which was his eighth, and the C major, his ninth, which was discovered by Schumann in the possession of Schubert’s brother and sent to Mendelssohn for production at Leipzig, are the ones which seem destined to survive.
— from How to Appreciate Music by Gustav Kobbé

Robert Blum and Simon, the member for Breslau, in vain tried to make peace; entreating the Ministry to withdraw the troops, and the insurgents to pull down the barricades.
— from The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years by C. Edmund (Charles Edmund) Maurice

The prince rose indignantly and exclaimed, that if there should be a single tile missing from the temple or a single brick from the tower, it should be paid by so many lives that the streets of Seville should run with blood.
— from Spanish Papers by Washington Irving

"Before the sun sets, mother, I will go to confession and partake of the blessed sacrament; and I will cease my evil ways and be a son to my father.
— from A Lover in Homespun And Other Stories by F. Clifford (Frank Clifford) Smith

Clement blushed, and snatched the myrtle from his coat: “It is yours, Gabrielle.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872 A Monthly Magazine by Various

And this tells us that the translation had been a secret to man; for they would not have searched, had they seen it.
— from The Patriarchs Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth. by J. G. (John Gifford) Bellett

Never slip along the shore, or into quiet backwaters; always select the more frequented parts, not because you want to go there, but to make your presence known, and go amongst the crowd; and if a few sculls get broken, it only proves how very inferior and how very clumsy other people are.
— from The Open Air by Richard Jefferies

But John said that he was tired of supporting the heathen out of his butter, and he wished the rest of the family would also stop eating butter and save the money for missions; and he wanted to know where the other members of the family got their money to send to the heathen; and his mother said that he was about half right, and that self-denial was just as good for grown people as it was for little boys and girls.
— from Being a Boy by Charles Dudley Warner

If there had been a letter I should have gone directly back with it, but it was beyond all surmising, that my father should return.
— from The Maid of Maiden Lane by Amelia E. Barr