I suppose I must have fallen asleep; I hope so, but I fear, for all that followed was startlingly real—so real that now sitting here in the broad, full sunlight of the morning, I cannot in the least believe that it was all sleep.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

That boy is fit for a boatswain.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Possessing these qualities, that Being is free from any external restraint or limitation; but those restraints and limitations, which his very constituting elements themselves impose, are not removed by these qualities.
— from Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer by Jesse Henry Jones

Jos's position in life was not grand enough to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where none can live but retired Members of Council, and partners of Indian firms (who break, after having settled a hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into comparative penury to a country place and four thousand a year); he engaged a comfortable house of a second- or third-rate order in Gillespie Street, purchasing the carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and appropriate planned furniture by Seddons from the assignees of Mr. Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta House of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor Scape had embarked seventy thousand pounds, the earnings of a long and honourable life, taking Fake's place, who retired to a princely park in Sussex (the Fogles have been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)—admitted, I say, partner into the great agency house of Fogle and Fake two years before it failed for a million and plunged half the Indian public into misery and ruin.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Its breadth is forty furlongs, and its length one hundred and forty; its waters are sweet, and very agreeable for drinking, for they are finer than the thick waters of other fens; the lake is also pure, and on every side ends directly at the shores, and at the sand; it is also of a temperate nature when you draw it up, and of a more gentle nature than river or fountain water, and yet always cooler than one could expect in so diffuse a place as this is.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

Sea-water also is undrinkable and brackish, but it feeds fish, and is a sort of vehicle to convey and transport travellers anywhere.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

It may stand for broth, sauce, stock, gravy, drippings, even for court bouillon —in fact for any liquid appertaining to or derived from a certain dish or food material.
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

He referred to the cap as if he had borrowed it from Fenn, and had returned it by bearer, hoping that its loss had not inconvenienced him at all.
— from The Head of Kay's by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

Its antiquity must be great indeed—more than a thousand years; and, growing as it does out of a huge ledge of limestone rock, and throwing its withered [Pg 2] and nearly leafless branches in fantastic forms across the little river which divides it from the castle, the picturesqueness of its situation is such as the painter must look at with feelings of admiration and delight.
— from The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 01, July 4, 1840 by Various

Guns, Maxims, and rifles were blazing in fullest fury at the enemy, as, in their heroic effort, they sought to charge home upon us.
— from Khartoum Campaign, 1898; or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan by Bennet Burleigh

In the growing darkness friend became indistinguishable from foe, and the firing had to be broken off.
— from The Franco-German War of 1870-71 by Moltke, Helmuth, Graf von

I have discussed the probable origin of domestic pigeons at some, yet quite insufficient, length; because when I first kept pigeons and watched the several kinds, knowing well how true they bred, I felt fully as much difficulty in believing that they could have descended from a common parent, as any naturalist could in coming to a similar conclusion in regard to the many species of finches, or other large groups of birds, in nature.
— from On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (2nd edition) by Charles Darwin

Not of one dear hand only I complain, Which hides it, to my loss, again from view, But its fair fellow and her soft arms too Are prompt my meek and passive heart to pain.
— from The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch by Francesco Petrarca

Bod I grist Iesu y gysegredig a oddefe ar y groes, Pan godaist Sant Lasarys o’i fedd wedi farw, Pan faddeuaist Bechodau I fair fagdalen, a thrygra wrthyf fel bo gadwedig
— from Welsh Folk-Lore a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales by Elias Owen

Suddenly, as he approached it, the night burst into fragrance, for a gust of wind shook the lime-blossom, and flung the scent in Meynell's face; while at the same time the dim masses of roses in the garden sent out their sweetness to the passers-by.
— from The Case of Richard Meynell by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

In a real-life example mentioned by Parker, some automobile engineers in Detroit called up a computer service bureau in Florida, found a trap door, and could “search uninhibitedly” for privileged passwords.
— from The Silicon Jungle by David H. Rothman