I thought I could not be so deceived; but now, it is clear; the state of his mind is as clear and decided, as my wishes on the subject have been ever since I knew you.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

His valet, hearing the noise, ran into the apartment, lifted him upon a couch, and despatched a messenger for proper assistance, while he himself endeavoured to recall his spirits by such applications as chance afforded.
— from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. (Tobias) Smollett

He defended himself with intentional awkwardness when he was brought up for trial, kept up his part with the most perfect self-possession and without any signs of the despair and anguish that he felt in his heart, and, condemned and degraded and made to suffer martyrdom in his honor as a man and a soldier—he was an officer—he did not protest, but went to prison as one of those criminals whom society gets rid of like noxious vermin.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

The history of almost all the great councils and consultations held among mankind for reconciling their discordant opinions, assuaging their mutual jealousies, and adjusting their respective interests, is a history of factions, contentions, and disappointments, and may be classed among the most dark and degraded pictures which display the infirmities and depravities of the human character.
— from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton

Then let another Prism DEG deg , parallel to the former, be placed at X, to refract that white Light upwards towards Y. Let the refracting Angles of the Prisms, and their distances from the Lens be equal, so that the Rays which converged from the Lens towards X, and without Refraction, would there have crossed and diverged again, may by the Refraction of the second Prism be reduced into Parallelism and diverge no more.
— from Opticks Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton

'What do you mean by this?' said Sikes; backing the inquiry with a very common imprecation concerning the most beautiful of human features: which, if it were heard above, only once out of every fifty thousand times that it is uttered below, would render blindness as common a disorder as measles: 'what do you mean by it?
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Every kind of sickness is attributed to the influence of some demon, with whom a magician can communicate, and discover a means of liberation.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 7 of 7 by Edgar Thurston

I have never contracted any debts, and my manners are pure and uncorrupted.”
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

These angels combine, as does a model, the idea and its hypostazisation; cf. 142 a , Letter to the Athenians 275 b .
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 1 by Emperor of Rome Julian

—THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES In the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, in the vicinity of the common grave, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all the tombs of fancy which display in the presence of eternity all the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Q. Does it cost a dollar a mile as the outside?—A. I could not—— Q. Would it not?—A. I would not want to pay you the disrespect of saying a thing that I know nothing about.
— from Postal Riders and Raiders by W. H. Gantz

Jeremiah come a dancing at me sideways, after I had let you out (he always comes a dancing at me sideways when he’s going to hurt me), and he said to me, “Now, Affery,” he said, “I am a coming behind you, my woman, and a going to run you up.”
— from Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

It has been narrated in the chronological order of events, how five members of the Military Commission were, in all probability, beguiled into the abdication of their own power of commutation and did, as matter of fact, sign a paper “praying” the President, “if he could find it consistent with his sense of duty to the country,” to commute the death sentence of Mrs. Surratt; how that the paper may have been carried to the President by Judge Holt and have been present at the confidential interview when the death warrant was composed; and how that Judge Holt, in drafting the death warrant, went out of his way to so write it out, as in fact,
— from The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt by David Miller DeWitt

out from under it crawled a Dragon, and made at the man to swallow him up.
— from Tales from the Fjeld: A Second Series of Popular Tales by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

And now behind them marched, with the precise, easy rhythm of the foot soldier, the four companies, A, B, C and D, all moving like so many fine, automatic, easy-jointed machines.
— from Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants; or, Handling Their First Real Commands by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

No minister would have been impeached, who had even advised his being created a duke; and, most assuredly, the country would have rejoiced at his merited elevation to that dignity.
— from The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Volume 1 by James Harrison

A barrel suspended beneath the cart, contained as deadly a machine as could be constructed with gun-powder and all the missiles of death.
— from Napoleon Bonaparte by John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

Narni Castalio Castelletti, Cristoforo Castelvetri, Giacopo Castiglione, Baldassarre Castle of Labour Catharine of Austria Catherine of Siena, Saint Catullus Cavassico, Bartolommeo Cavendish, George Cazza, Giovanni Agostino Cecaria Cecco di Mileto Cefalo Cefalo y Pocris Celos aun del aire matan Cent Nouvelles nouvelles Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de Cesana, Gasparo Chaloner, Thomas Chamberlain, John Chambers, E. K. Chandos, Lord Chapman, George Chariton Charles I Charles II Châteillon, Sébastien Chaucer, Geoffrey Chester mysteries Chettle, Henry Chetwood, W. R. Child, F. J. Child Waters Chloridia Chloris Chloris and Ergasto Cicro Cid Cintia Ciotti, Giovanbattista Claudio of Savoy Clio Clorys and
— from Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in England by W. W. (Walter Wilson) Greg