Lady Caroline, however, could not have heard, for she continued to sip, her elbow on the table, and listen to what Mrs. Wilkins was saying.
— from The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

A French dancing-master could never have taught him that timid look—that awkward address—that bashful manner— HARDCASTLE.
— from She Stoops to Conquer; Or, The Mistakes of a Night: A Comedy by Oliver Goldsmith

Shatov could not help shouting after him from the top.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Had a thunderbolt fallen into the room, Villefort could not have been more stupefied.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

I could not help distinctly observing, ‘You would not say so if you knew me,’ intending to follow that up with another declaration of my identity; but he merely muttered an incoherent reply, so I dropped it again, till some time after, when, as I was bathing his forehead and temples with vinegar and water to relieve the heat and pain in his head, he observed, after looking earnestly upon me for some minutes, ‘I have such strange fancies—I can’t get rid of them, and they won’t let me rest; and the most singular and pertinacious of them all is your face and voice—they seem just like hers.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

She was astonished the others did not give me a glance, and they could not have pleased me better.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

After two nights in her husband's house Yulia Sergeyevna considered her marriage a mistake and a calamity, and if she had had to live with her husband in any other town but Moscow, it seemed to her that she could not have endured the horror of it.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

For six whole months I never once went out except to see Madam de Warens, or to church, nor had I any inclination to it.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

All the same, I could not help bursting into laughter when he told us of something that happened as he was dining with the Fathers of the Council of Trent.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

This being done, and the Congregation dissolved by the Vice-Chancellor, I did with much content return to my Cozen Angier’s, being much pleased of doing this jobb of work, which I had long wished for and could never have had such a time as now to do it with so much ease.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The whiteness of the deck attracted his attention, and turning to me he made, smiling, an observation in a language which I did not understand, but could not help desiring to hear its silvery sounds again.
— from A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden 2nd edition by William A. Ross

It implies, also, that we can never have any self -knowledge, in [139] the fundamental signification of that phrase.
— from Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer by Jesse Henry Jones

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,–if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips and haws on the autumn's hedgerows; the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," because they did no harm to the precious crops.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

“Yes,” went on the lady; “and on another occasion my sister's husband himself heard him remark that a man could not help loving his country and hoping that it would win.”
— from The Burning Spear: Being the Experiences of Mr. John Lavender in the Time of War by John Galsworthy

He did not, of course, know about the meals between.... She could not, however, help telling him a little of it.
— from Helena Brett's Career by Desmond Coke

It is clear that Jesus could not have said these passages in the words given by Matthew, Clement, and Luke, repeating himself in three different forms, now connectedly, now in fragments; two, at least, out of the three must give an imperfect report.
— from Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History by Annie Besant

Besides, those who crowded nearest him would mostly be of the strongest who were least in need of a physician, and in whose being consequently there lay not that bare open channel hungering for the precious life-current.
— from Miracles of Our Lord by George MacDonald

Mr. Shrimp here knows the World; and, I warrant, for cogging a Die, bullying a Coward, bilking a Hackney Coachman, and storming a Nest of Whores in Drury-lane , not a Master of Arts in either University can come near him.
— from The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) by Baker, Thomas, active 1700-1709

Otherwise Plato could not have reasoned well about the republic without adjusting himself to the politics of Buddha or Rousseau, and we should not be able to determine our own morality without making concessions to the cannibals or giving a vote to the ants.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana