They carried Valentine away; she had revived, but could scarcely move or speak, so shaken was her frame by the attack.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

“A pleasure to be crippled?” said Mavriky Nikolaevitch, frowning gravely.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Quod ubi peregrinus esset ingressus, uxorem tubicinis obviam euntem aspicit; illico cursum flectit, metuens ne nasus suus exploraretur, atque ad diversorium regressus est—exuit se vestibus; braccas coccineas sericas manticae imposuit mulumque educi jussit.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

We found play on words by symmetrical couples of sounds, with antithetic meaning like mo- and vi- , or mwana- and vina- , both couples signifying ‘male’ and ‘female’ respectively; or -mugwa (ancient) and -va’u (new); or ma- (hither) and wa- (thither), etc., etc.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

And like him who, having a garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once, which would exceed his reach and his strength, but works on one of the beds at a time, and, having accomplish'd the first, proceeds to a second, so I should have, I hoped, the encouraging pleasure of seeing on my pages the progress I made in virtue, by clearing successively my lines of their spots, till in the end, by a number of courses, I should be happy in viewing a clean book, after a thirteen weeks' daily examination.
— from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

In his dreams, Biff could see monkeys swarming over everything, even the Taj Mahal, until oddly, they seemed to be clambering over the cot itself.
— from Mystery of the Ambush in India: A Biff Brewster Mystery Adventure by Andy Adams

And, similarly, such facts as have been established respecting the anatomical elements of tissues, are more general than the facts established respecting any particular tissue, in the sense that they are facts which the various parts of organized bodies exhibit in a greater number of cases—they are objectively more general; and they can be called subjectively more general only in the sense that the conception corresponds with the phenomena.
— from Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3 Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions. by Herbert Spencer

t been cut since my sweet Geneva.
— from Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846 by Honoré de Balzac

It is a lane worth following, though narrow and somewhat fetid, for by it one may reach not only a certain very ancient fountain, the Fontana Mezzocannone, which is of itself worth seeing, but also the Church of San Giovanni Pappacoda, and by careful search may even find the bas-relief of Niccolo Pesce, of whom I spoke at length in a former chapter.
— from Naples, Past and Present by Arthur H. (Arthur Hamilton) Norway

“You must do the best you can, and try to trust that while you work in the right spirit, your failures will be compensated,” said Mr. Wilmot.
— from The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

The intention as the sole origin and antecedent history of an action: under the influence of this prejudice moral praise and blame have been bestowed, and men have judged and even philosophized almost up to the present day.—Is it not possible, however, that the necessity may now have arisen of again making up our minds with regard to the reversing and fundamental shifting of values, owing to a new self-consciousness and acuteness in man—is it not possible that we may be standing on the threshold of a period which to begin with, would be distinguished negatively as ULTRA-MORAL: nowadays when, at least among us immoralists, the suspicion arises that the decisive value of an action lies precisely in that which is NOT INTENTIONAL, and that all its intentionalness, all that is seen, sensible, or "sensed" in it, belongs to its surface or skin—which, like every skin, betrays something, but CONCEALS still more?
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I knew you at the Baths Club six months before his lordship Cedric and the mater kindly invited themselves to have tea with me there, and then I didn't count any more!
— from The Honeymoon: A comedy in three acts by Arnold Bennett

Rules of interpretation demand a strictly verbal construction of nothing but a penal statute; and a constitution is to be construed still more liberally than even a remedial one, because a convention legislating for masses, can do little more than mark an outline of fundamental principles, leaving the interior gyrations and details to be filled up by ordinary legislation.
— from Diary in America, Series One by Frederick Marryat