So to dinner, and then to my business again all the afternoon close, when Creed come to visit me, but I did put him off, and to my business, till anon I did make an end, and wrote it fair with a letter to the Lords to accompany my accounts, which I think will be so much satisfaction and so soon done (their order for my doing it being dated but May 30) as they will not find from any hand else.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

I even bought a pearl necklace for my fiancée, Kate Tender, but she married somebody else instead.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

“Go in peace, dear Leonela, I will not do so,” said Camilla, “for rash and foolish as I may be, to your mind, in defending my honour, I am not going to be so much so as that Lucretia who they say killed herself without having done anything wrong, and without having first killed him on whom the guilt of her misfortune lay.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

This boy was Gottfried Narr, a dull, good creature, with no harm in him and nothing against him personally; still, he was under a cloud, and properly so, for it had not been six months since a social blight had mildewed the family—his grandmother had been burned as a witch.
— from The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories by Mark Twain

But Sir Marhaus smote Sir Tristram a great wound in the side with his spear, and then they avoided their horses, and pulled out their swords, and threw their shields afore them.
— from Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Malory, Thomas, Sir

To be sure Miss Squeers was in a desperate flutter as the time approached, and to be sure she was dressed out to the best advantage: with her hair—it had more than a tinge of red, and she wore it in a crop—curled in five distinct rows, up to the very top of her head, and arranged dexterously over the doubtful eye; to say nothing of the blue sash which floated down her back, or the worked apron or the long gloves, or the green gauze scarf worn over one shoulder and under the other; or any of the numerous devices which were to be as so many arrows to the heart of Nicholas.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Behind these, back to back with them and facing the opposite wall, are five corresponding rows of cells, accessible by similar means: so that supposing the prisoners locked up in their cells, an officer stationed on the ground, with his back to the wall, has half their number under his eye at once; the remaining half being equally under the observation of another officer on the opposite side; and all in one great apartment.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

"He can take 'em back," said Miss Strong, with flashing eyes and a flirt of her apron.
— from Silas Strong, Emperor of the Woods by Irving Bacheller

Among the most important addresses was that of C. H. Payne, an influential and educated minister then engaged in religious and editorial work at Montgomery, and that of B. S. Morgan, State Superintendent of Public Schools.
— from The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 by Various

Evening came, but still Mr. Stanlock did not appear.
— from Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains; or, A Christmas Success against Odds by Stella M. Francis

Up to this place they had been journeying through a complete wilderness—the only exceptions being some missionary stations, in each of which a monkish priest holds a sort of control over two or three hundred half christianised Indians.
— from Bruin: The Grand Bear Hunt by Mayne Reid

He tried to remember all the minutes that had gone by since Marie, suddenly springing from her pallet of wretchedness, had raised her cry of resurrection.
— from The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Volume 4 by Émile Zola

In itself the Friedrich-Voltaire Correspondence, we can see, was charming; very blossomy at present: businesses increasing; mutual admiration now risen to a great height,—admiration sincere on both sides, most so on the Prince's, and extravagantly expressed on both sides, most so on Voltaire's.
— from History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 10 by Thomas Carlyle

Lindsay, who was somewhat opposed to the views expressed by Plimsoll, and it is rather unfortunate that he was so, having been so long a ship-owner himself, yet endorses the remarks of a friend—a Vice-Admiral of Her Majesty’s service—who wrote to him: “Should there not be some more stringent provisions with respect to the inspection of sailing vessels?
— from The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 2 by Frederick Whymper

He looked in silence at the man who brought, as it were, a waft of air from his own land,—from that isle where he had been so miraculously saved from the hatred of the “English party”; the land he was never to see again.
— from Vendetta by Honoré de Balzac