Ever since I have been suffering from sleeplessness, a question sticks in my brain like a nail.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“If he means to be but little at Netherfield, it would be better for the neighbourhood that he should give up the place entirely, for then we might possibly get a settled family there.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

During the marriage rites, the bride and bridegroom sit within a pandal (booth), and the men of the bridegroom’s party exhibit to those assembled betel leaf, areca nuts, oil, turmeric paste, etc., in which no foreign matter, such as fragments of paper, rags, etc., must be found.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 7 of 7 by Edgar Thurston

Tied up all day with his disciplined show upon him, subdued to the performance of his routine of educational tricks, encircled by a gabbling crowd, he broke loose at night like an ill-tamed wild animal.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

The colour of his face was yellow, of an earthy shade; the cheeks were sunken, the back long and narrow, and the hand upon which he leaned his hairy head was so lean and skinny that it was painful to look upon.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

He’d invent that, I’ll be bound; let a nigger alone for that, any time.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

That before living agent, now became the living instrument.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

It was a vast and badly lighted apartment, now full of uproar, now full of silence, where all the apparatus of a criminal case, with its petty and mournful gravity in the midst of the throng, was in process of development.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The white man who begins to break the law by lynching a Negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch a white man.
— from Up from Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington

"The Lord save you," said Olga, and she bowed low as nuns do.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Unused, any organ will atrophy, and so their capacity for sympathy may be latent and not easily roused.
— from Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier A Record of Sixteen Years' Close Intercourse with the Natives of the Indian Marches by T. L. (Theodore Leighton) Pennell

Then, at a much later date, we find in both literatures a new series of narrative works dealing again with the old stories.
— from The Heroic Age by H. Munro (Hector Munro) Chadwick

At a violent motion of her pretty head her hair has become loosened and now hangs in silken splendor over her shoulders.
— from Felix Lanzberg's Expiation by Ossip Schubin

From Cochesqui the road passes on to Guallabamba, which is four leagues from Quito, and here, the land being low and nearly on the equator, it is warm, but not so much so as to prevent it from being very populous, and it yields all things necessary for the support of man.
— from The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Léon, A.D. 1532-50, contained in the first part of his Chronicle of Peru by Pedro de Cieza de León

In this circumstance,—in the immediate loss of colour and in the odour emitted under the blowpipe,—in the degree of hardness and translucency of the edges,—and in the beautiful polish of the surface (From the fact described in my "Journal of Researches" of a coating of oxide of iron, deposited by a streamlet on the rocks in its bed (like a nearly similar coating at the great cataracts of the Orinoco and Nile), becoming finely polished where the surf acts, I presume that the surf in this instance, also, is the polishing agent.), rivalling when in a fresh state that of the finest Oliva, there is a striking analogy between this inorganic incrustation and the shells of living molluscous animals.
— from Volcanic Islands by Charles Darwin

May, Joan and Nancy and my mother all send their very best love and Nancy says she's looking forward to your new ties (I don't know what obscure jest of hers this is) and also to hear of your engagement (silly girl!).
— from Sinister Street, vol. 1 by Compton MacKenzie

I could fill a book with yarns of cases of people being lost and found, and of being lost and not found, but the most wonderful case I know of is that of a young colonial, who was lost for forty days, yet was found alive, and who I believe to be still living.
— from Camp Fire Yarns of the Lost Legion by G. Hamilton-Browne

He also sent into the low countries certeine persons, to learne the truth of this forged dukes progenie, where some of them that were so sent, comming to Tournie, got knowledge that he was borne in that citie, of base linage, and named Perkin Warbecke.
— from Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (3 of 6): England (7 of 9) Henrie the Seauenth, Sonne to Edmund Earle of Richmond, Which Edmund was Brother by the Moothers Side to Henrie the Sixt by Raphael Holinshed

The closer the cooperation between local and national assemblies, the greater will be the power and radiance which can and must stream forth from these institutions to the suffering ranks of humanity.
— from Dawn of a New Day by Effendi Shoghi