It was just at the time when he had received the news of his first wife's death in Petersburg, and, with crape upon his hat, was drinking and behaving so shamelessly that even the most reckless among us were shocked at the sight of him.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The next night Christiana had a dream; and, behold, she saw as if a broad parchment were opened before her, in which were recorded the sum of her ways; and the times, as she thought, looked very black upon her.
— from The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan Every Child Can Read by John Bunyan

AGAIN "Young ladies, like as stars, in the clear nights, are the ornaments of the heavens and the flowers and the leaf-clad shrubs, in the Spring, of the green fields and the hillsides, even so are praiseworthy manners and goodly discourse adorned by sprightly sallies, the which, for that they are brief, beseem women yet better than men, inasmuch as much speaking is more forbidden to the former than to the latter.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

‘What is yours?’ ‘When I dramatise a book, sir,’ said the literary gentleman, ‘ that’s fame.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

“Who knows what may not happen before that?” thought the miller’s daughter; and besides, she saw no other way out of it, so she promised the manikin what he demanded, and he set to work once more and spun the straw into gold.
— from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

Dresses For Dinners And Balls Supposing, since clothes suitable to the occasion are the first requisite of good taste, we take up a few details that are apart from fashion.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

One day he will scheme to begin a new mode of existence, a new dietary; yet before evening he will have so over-eaten himself as to be unable to speak or do aught but sit staring like an owl.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

These curious "diggings" are by some supposed to have been made by his men.
— from James's Account of S. H. Long's Expedition, 1819-1820, part 1 by Thomas Say

His voice died away; but she said nothing, though her eyes betokened her interest; and presently he resumed.
— from Afterwards by Kathlyn Rhodes

For the first time in her life she was brought face to face with death, and the violent change of scene, combined with the inability to do anything but stand still and watch, made a hard test of endurance.
— from An Unknown Lover by Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.

“Bit thick on the old man, isn’t it?” said Roddy, who had developed a bluff, straightforward style in the motor shop.
— from Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

A little after two in the morning he came on deck again, but stood still in astonishment at finding that the vessel was now boring her way through a thick woolly fog.
— from The Great Hunger by Johan Bojer

The old settlers among the Alleghany mountains had a way of pressing the juice from the drupes and by some simple process converting it into “cherry bounce,” a beverage somewhat bitter but it never went begging when the old-time mountaineers were around.
— from American Forest Trees by Henry H. Gibson

Dazzled, almost blinded, she stared across the intervening space, and met the steely, relentless eyes of Pierre Dumaresq!
— from The Swindler and Other Stories by Ethel M. (Ethel May) Dell