It is, perhaps, to this dear Image in my Heart owing, that I am apt to relent, that I easily forgive, and that many desirable things are grown into my Temper, which I should not have arrived at by better Motives than the Thought of being one Day hers.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

He saw the lovely, creamy, cool little ear of the baby, a bit of dark hair rubbed to a bronze floss, like bronze-dust.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

But one day he took it into his silly noddle that the elfin cow was getting old, and that he had better fatten her for the market.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

My dog, for I had not Chance then, and he's no hunter, pricked up his ears, but instead of answering with a bark of defiance, he crouched down, trembling, at my feet.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

The little citizen, not to be outdone, declared her to be a celestial witness.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

He reined in his horse with the care of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged his saber which had caught in his cloak.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Rows of spotless plates winked from the shelves of the dresser at the far end of the room, and from the rafters overhead hung hams, bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions, and baskets of eggs.
— from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

But the genuine Cynic has no enemy, even though men strike his feeble body or drag his name in the mire, or slander and speak ill of him, because enmity is felt only towards an opponent, but that which is above personal rivalry is usually loved and respected.
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 2 by Emperor of Rome Julian

Consequently, if further information was not forthcoming, we would assume that all that the Bishop of Durham had done was to evince, in some tangible manner, his belief in the efficacy of masses for the departed.
— from Education in England in the Middle Ages Thesis Approved for the Degree of Doctor of Science in the University of London by Albert William Parry

"But one day he did not return from the mountains, and when his janizaries sought him they found him lying dead on the ground, pierced with daggers.
— from Mohammed Ali and His House by L. (Luise) Mühlbach

Ibrahim saw his opportunity, and, setting sail for Crete at the beginning of December, he reached it without falling in with the enemy.
— from A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 by Charles Alan Fyffe

Even the drone of school-children chanting Chinese classics—as our little mountaineers chant the alphabet in a "blab-school"—and the barking of dogs have ceased.
— from Following the Sun-Flag: A Vain Pursuit Through Manchuria by Fox, John, Jr.

It was strange, that amid the painful and bewildering ideas that crowded the brain of D'Harville, he should have found one thought to waste upon the beauty of his wife's foot; but so it was; and at the moment that was about to separate them for ever, to his eager gaze that fairy foot and well-turned ankle had never looked so charming; and then, as by a rapid train of thought he recalled the matchless loveliness of his wife, and, as he had ever believed till now, her purity, her mental graces, he groaned aloud as he remembered that another was preferred to him, and that the light figure that glided on before his fixed gaze, was but the hollow spectre of fallen goodness, a lost, degraded creature, hastening to steep her husband and infant in irremediable disgrace, for the indulging of a base and guilty passion.
— from The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 2 of 6 by Eugène Sue

Early upon the irruption the physician, three policemen, a Reading Clerk, and the Bishop of Durham, had managed to extricate and drag the Regent out; and through the shouting of the outside crowd he was driven home unconscious.
— from The Lord of the Sea by M. P. (Matthew Phipps) Shiel

The Act proved no idle menace; and the execution of Cuthbert Mayne, a young priest who was arrested in Cornwall with the Papal Bull of Deposition hidden about him, gave a terrible indication of the character of the struggle upon which Elizabeth was about to enter.
— from History of the English People, Volume IV by John Richard Green

Tossing upon a bed of discomfort, he heard the clocks toll out each passing hour until, weary and tired eyed, he left his bed, ill prepared to face the burdens and perplexities of the new day.
— from The Triumph of Virginia Dale by John Francis

This particular clock had but one dial hand, and the exact time of day could not be determined by it until the appearance of the Cuckoo, who, in a squeaking voice, seemed to announce that it was just one hour later or earlier, as the case might be, than at his last appearance.
— from Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. 2, No. 3 September 1897 by Various

These words, with their peculiar punctuation and their copious capitals, are those not of the stately and partisan Clarendon but of David Hume, whom Adam Smith considered "as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit."
— from Through East Anglia in a Motor Car by James Edmund Vincent