On the January night, after he had come near dying with cold and after his mind had two or three times actually slipped away into an odd land of fantasy so that he had by an exercise of will power to force himself back into consciousness, Kate Swift appeared.
— from Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson

Were it only the wrong done me that I had to bear, I could keep silence, waiting until God restored your justice and your gentleness.
— from Veranilda by George Gissing

King of Corpus (who was an incorrigible wag) was about to point out a half dozen of people in the room, as the most celebrated wits of that day; but I cut King's shins under the table, and got the fellow to hold his tongue, while Jones wrote on his card to Hoskins, hinted to him that a boy was in the room, and a gentleman who was quite a greenhorn: hence that the songs had better be carefully selected.
— from Boys and Girls from Thackeray by Kate Dickinson Sweetser

They seem to be in company, keeping station almost, and holding on the same course, all mates together—until you catch the cough of a machine-gun, and realise that they are actually engaged in the deadliest sort of duel which can possibly be fought in these days.
— from Letters from France by C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow) Bean

The Turks who were passing by in crowds kept stopping and looking up, but when they perceived the bird was alive and moving, struck with compassion they exclaimed, it was a shame that a harmless bird should be so tortured, called the goldsmith out, seized him by the neck, and dragged him before the judge who tries capital charges, and he was near being bastinadoed, when a messenger came from the gentleman, who administers the law to the Venetians at Constantinople, and is called the Venetian Baily, 177 to demand his release; the application was favourably received by the judge, and the goldsmith was dismissed, to the great indignation of the Turks who were present.
— from The Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Volumes 1 and 2 by Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq

Silent for long on political matters, the cruel repression of the revolution was too much for him; he published in the leading organs of the European press the mournful and tragic letter beginning, "I can keep silence no longer."
— from Tolstoy by Lilian Winstanley

“Dear me,” exclaimed Ethel Blue, shaking her head gravely; “I don’t believe I could keep still as long as that.”
— from Ethel Morton at Sweetbrier Lodge by Mabell S. C. (Mabell Shippie Clarke) Smith

But I cannot knit stockings for the mountain goats, or make the beds for the marmots, can I?
— from From a Swedish Homestead by Selma Lagerlöf