He isn't one of the cool, stiff Englishmen, but is rather peppery, for he has Scotch blood in him, as one might guess from his bonnie blue eyes.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Miss Polly Branghton is rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and, I believe, very good-natured.
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

“No, I do not hesitate; but I really pity this poor Comte de Wardes, since you have ceased to love him.
— from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

He takes with him the sincere thanks of those who know what he has done in the cause of woman, and of those who appreciate what a power The Revolution has already been in rousing public thought to the importance of her speedy enfranchisement.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

For, in considering them separately, many lose of themselves their borrowed importance; one feels, for instance, quite plainly that the value of a base of operations, even if we look at nothing in it but its relative position to the line of operations, depends much less in that simple form on the geometrical element of the angle which they form with one another, than on the nature of the roads and the country through which they pass.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

The dried root made into powder, and mixed with sugar, and taken, serves to the same purpose, and is also profitable for those who have their urine stopped, or the stopping of women’s courses, the pains of the mother and the stone in the reins, kidneys, or bladder; it resists poison, and stays the spreading of the venom of serpents, as also putrid and pestilential fevers, and the plague itself.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

After all, I was very likely to be mistaken—and it was within the range of probability and possibility that we were not making our way through the strata of rocks which I believed I recognized piled on the lower layer of granitic formation.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

Wherefore, it being the lower rooms chiefly of the palaces and other buildings that were wrought with stucco, with painting, and with statuary, there was buried by the ruins from above all that good work that has been discovered in our own day, and those who came after, judging the whole to be in ruins, planted vines thereon, in a manner that, since the said lower rooms remained under the ground, the moderns have called them grottoes, and "grotesque" the pictures that are therein seen at the present day.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

Resuming, when the schoolmaster had quite talked himself out of breath, as coolly as if he had never been interrupted, Ralph proceeded to expatiate on such features of the case as he deemed it most advisable to lay the greatest stress on.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

[Pg 284] One of the most important and interesting subjects connected with the Navy and Army of late years, and with the changes in which I was at one time much associated, is that of the gradual advance of modern armaments, not only in size, but in range, power, and accuracy.
— from Recollections of a Military Life by Adye, John, Sir

The Prince President is the most accomplished rascal that Europe has yet produced, fertile as she has been in reprobate politicians, and he deserves a Juvenal.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 2, August 1852 by Various

But I rather prefer Mary Feversham, even if she is more quiet."
— from Dave Porter and His Classmates; Or, For the Honor of Oak Hall by Edward Stratemeyer

But I rode part way with his deputy.
— from Jim Waring of Sonora-Town; Or, Tang of Life by Henry Herbert Knibbs

"Before I reply, please answer one question.
— from The Home at Greylock by E. (Elizabeth) Prentiss

He had been in Rhodesia, poking about in some ancient ruins there, and—oh, my garden flower!—the stuff he used to give me to write and type!
— from Poppy: The Story of a South African Girl by Cynthia Stockley

To point out the peculiar qualities which secure to it claims of which no other system can boast, would be, if required, perfectly easy.
— from English Grammar in Familiar Lectures Accompanied by a compendium, embracing a new systematic order of parsing, a new system of punctuation, exercises in false syntax, and a system of philosophical grammar, in notes, to which are added an appendix and a key to the exercises : designed for the use of schools and private learners by Samuel Kirkham

I have seen Wilkinson play “Macbeth;” Matthews, “Othello;” Wrench, “George Barnwell;” Buckstone, “Iago;” Rayner, “Penruddock;” Keeley, “Shylock;” Liston, “Romeo” and “Octavian;” G. F. Cooke, “Mercutio;” John Kemble, “Archer;” Edmund Kean, clown in a pantomine; and C. Young, “Shaccabac.”— Record of a Stage Veteran.
— from Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol. 3 A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

In August, 1856, I was general servant to Mrs. Brown in Russell Place.
— from The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix