Having thus secured my good opinion, he began to give me some tokens of a particular passion, founded on a veneration of the qualities of my mind, and, as an accidental ornament, admired the beauties of my person; till at being fully persuaded of his conquest, he chose a proper season for the theme, and disclosed his love in terms so ardent and sincere, that it was impossible for me to disguise the sentiments of my heart, and he received my approbation with the most lively transport.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

and put, now and then, a little bit on my plate, and guided it to my mouth.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

“It was only the juice out of a bit of mandarin peel.”
— from Bliss, and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield

My conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, but instincts: and yet, withal, so cunningly had the few materials of his character been put together, that there was no painful perception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what I found in him.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I refuted them to the best of my power; but that power was provokingly small, at the moment, for I was too much flurried with indignation—and even shame—that he should thus dare to address me, to retain sufficient command of thought and language to enable me adequately to contend against his powerful sophistries.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

If she had before had any prejudice against Minna because of my premature marriage to her, a closer acquaintance with her domestic gifts soon changed it into respect, and she quickly learned to love the partner of my doleful days in Paris.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

We stopped soon afterwards before the bank of M. Pierre Marcello, a charming young man, who had near him Madame Venier, sister of the patrician Momolo.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

He suddenly dropped a tiny bag, which he was holding in his left hand; though indeed it was not a bag, but rather a little box, or more probably some part of a pocket-book, or to be more accurate a little reticule, rather like an old-fashioned lady’s reticule, though I really don’t know what it was.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

e Quai Malaquais, and he returned with an Aldus which he had bought for forty sous in the Rue des Grès.—“I owe five sous,” he said, beaming on Mother Plutarque.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

“Come, you may think better of my proposal; but I will now take you to visit my associates.”
— from Jovinian: A Story of the Early Days of Papal Rome by William Henry Giles Kingston

He was a man of loose morals and savage disposition, [209] but of most pleasant manners.
— from Travels in Brazil by Henry Koster

With the exception of Kiau-Chau, the colonies of Germany have never been of much practical value, except as possible coaling and wireless stations for the German fleet.
— from The New Map of Europe (1911-1914) The Story of the Recent European Diplomatic Crises and Wars and of Europe's Present Catastrophe by Herbert Adams Gibbons

[162:B] Book of Mormon , p. 167.
— from The Mormon Prophet and His Harem Or, An Authentic History of Brigham Young, His Numerous Wives and Children by C. V. (Catherine Van Valkenburg) Waite

On each side of the narrow passage arose a complete wall of various heavy lumber, which the least blunder on my part might be the means of bringing down upon my head; or, if this accident did not occur, the path might be effectually blocked up against my return by the descending mass, as it was in front by the obstacle there.
— from The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket Comprising the details of a mutiny and atrocious butchery on board the American brig Grampus, on her way to the South Seas, in the month of June, 1827. by Edgar Allan Poe

A band of marauders, prowling on the coast of Egypt, are surprised by the sight of a ship moored to the shore without any one on board, while the beach around is strewed with the fragments of a costly banquet, and with a number of dead bodies of men, slain apparently in mutual conflict; the only survivors being a damsel of surpassing beauty, arrayed as a priestess of Diana, who is wailing over the inanimate form of a wounded youth.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843 by Various

The West India Company had a trading post there conducted by one Michael Paulis, from whom it was called Paulus' Hook, which it retains, Pauw also established a trading post there which, as it lay directly in the line of the great Indian trunk-path (see Saponickan), so seriously interfered with the trade of the Dutch post that the Company purchased the land from him in 1638, and in the same year sold the island to one Abraham Planck.
— from Footprints of the Red Men Indian geographical names in the valley of Hudson's river, the valley of the Mohawk, and on the Delaware: their location and the probable meaning of some of them. by Edward Manning Ruttenber

The Bishop of Münster prepared to follow the example, and had the work in Cologne been lasting, certainly many others would have pursued the same course.
— from Church History, Volume 2 (of 3) by J. H. (Johann Heinrich) Kurtz

To form an idea of the many laborious, expensive, and ingenious establishments and undertakings which are often necessary in this business, one may peruse Mémoire sur les Travaux qui ont Rapport à l’Exploitation de la Mâture dans les Pyrénées.
— from A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 1 (of 2) by Johann Beckmann

To me a dreadful scroll—inexorable eyes—the cloud of cruel witnesses looking down in freezing brightness on my prayers and agonies.
— from Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu