He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that we both laughed and I scarcely blushed.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

However, wretch as he was, he was still living under the shield of British law, and I have no doubt, Inspector, that you will see that, though that shield may fail to guard, the sword of justice is still there to avenge.”
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

You were in my imagination nothing but lightness and inconstancy.
— from Letters of Abelard and Heloise To which is prefix'd a particular account of their lives, amours, and misfortunes by Héloïse

If the belief be looked at in this comprehensive manner, it seems to be clear that to some extent at least, as has been pointed out already (pp.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

It's your bad luck, and I'm sorry for you, Bessy; for you was allays my favorite sister, and we allays liked the same patterns."
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

And then when people flocked round him, he reproached them for coming with eagerness to folly, but being lazy and indifferent about good things.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

But she died; and with my own hands I bore her to the tomb; and I laughed with a long and bitter laugh as I found no traces of the first in the channel where I laid the second.—Morella.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

I mean little, loungy men, who had just enough to live on and had nothing to do but lean about in bar-rooms and bet on horses, in bad clothes that were just too good for them.
— from The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Under a scientific point of view, and as leading to further investigation, but little advantage is gained by believing that new forms are suddenly developed in an inexplicable manner from old and widely different forms, over the old belief in the creation of species from the dust of the earth.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

the hermit's cell, his sackcloth, and girdle of thorns would be luxury and indulgence compared with what I suffer.
— from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

They have been left as in the original.
— from The Cricket by Marjorie Benton Cooke

" I fear that Mr. Burnham doesn't make much money out of grateful correspondents who were cured of locomotor ataxia by his prescription, because locomotor ataxia is absolutely and hopelessly incurable.
— from The Great American Fraud The Patent Medicine Evil by Samuel Hopkins Adams

And that he had done nothing but look at it for the rest of the night!
— from The Book of Elves and Fairies for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the Children's Own Reading by Frances Jenkins Olcott

But if Blank Verse be laboured, as it ought to be; it is sufficiently distinguished from Prose.
— from The Preface to the Aeneis of Virgil (1718) by Joseph Trapp

I knowed we would be going away from there before long, and I says to myself before I go I'm going to have that girl fur my girl, or else know the reason why.
— from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis

“Now, then,” said the first speaker again, “the express won’t be long afore it’s here; who’ll do it?”
— from True to his Colours The Life that Wears Best by Theodore P. Wilson

Peter the Great had a strong aversion to being looked at in public, a peculiarity which when visiting this country kept him almost entirely aloof from the gaieties of the Court.
— from Royalty in All Ages The Amusements, Eccentricities, Accomplishments, Superstitions and Frolics of the Kings and Queens of Europe by T. F. (Thomas Firminger) Thiselton-Dyer

Rollo ought, now, when he found that he must be disappointed about his ride, to have immediately banished it from his mind altogether, and turned his thoughts to other pleasures; but like all ill-humored people, he would keep thinking and talking, all the time, about the thing which caused his ill-humor.
— from Rollo at Play; Or, Safe Amusements by Jacob Abbott

Please go away and let me be!" Poor Mr. Brooke looked as if his lovely castle in the air was tumbling about his ears, for he had never seen Meg in such a mood before, and it rather bewildered him.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott