Mr. Pickwick had never held any personal communication with Mr. Winkle, senior, although he had once or twice corresponded with him by letter, and returned satisfactory answers to his inquiries concerning the moral character and behaviour of his son; he felt nervously sensible that to wait upon him, for the first time, attended by Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen, both slightly fuddled, was not the most ingenious and likely means that could have been hit upon to prepossess him in his favour.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

This accident so struck him with despair that, as he afterwards confessed, “his heart and his bowels turned within him, and he became like a rotten stick, void of str
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

The little priest bounded like a rabbit shot.
— from The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

They are like a sheet of water instead of being like a running stream, which can be used to turn a wheel.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

Quadruped lions are said to be savage, only when they are hungry; biped lions are rarely sulky longer than when their appetite for distinction remains unappeased.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Javert received the blow erect, full in the face, in his breast, like a Russian soldier.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Angelica, Aron, Birthwort, long and round, Sowbread, Bistort, Asarabacca, Briony white and black,
— 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

Not pleasure and pain, but law and reason shall rule in our State.
— from The Republic by Plato

Presently out rushed four or five girls, wild and laughing; then came one, bounding like a roe! "Such eyes were in her head, And so much grace and power!"
— from Horae subsecivae. Rab and His Friends, and Other Papers by John Brown

ng but loneliness and rugged shadow; scarred with clefts of moonlight, and at further distance fringed with mist.
— from Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore

Joe bristled like a ruffled sparrow.
— from Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts by Roy Rutherford Bailey

Near by lived a retired ship-chandler, happy in the possession of a solid fortune, an ethereal daughter, a white villa and a black Newfoundland dog.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 6, December 1850 by Various

“You needn’t be lookin’ around,” Rathburn said coldly.
— from The Coyote A Western Story by James Roberts

However, there are essential differences: the muscles are far from being expressed with the same vigour; no figure wears that long beard like a regular screw, which is so characteristic of Ninevite sculpture.
— from Manual of Oriental Antiquities by Ernest Babelon

As memory, ruthless and unsparing, pictured to his gaze all that they had been to each other, and recalled every incident of their courtship and marriage, when he had so blindly and foolishly thought that they were all the world to each other, the limits of the carriage in which he traveled seemed impossible to hold him, and the old lust of murder crept up on his brain like a returning springtide.
— from My Friend Pasquale, and Other Stories by James Selwin Tait

[116] Memoirs of Benjamin Lay and Ralph Sandiford, by Roberts Vaux, pp. 29, 64.
— from Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 12 (of 20) by Charles Sumner

And likewise to the eternal bonfire lechers, All rakehells, satyrs, goats and placket fumblers, Gibs, breakers-in-at-catch-doors, thunder tubes.
— from Toward the Gulf by Edgar Lee Masters