Whenever Torvald has given me money for new dresses and such things, I have never spent more than half of it; I have always bought the simplest and cheapest things.
— from A Doll's House : a play by Henrik Ibsen

The will disappears, and she takes its secret with her to her grave.
— from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

I got together good store of dainties, and slung them in a basket on one side of the saddle; and she sprang up as gay as a fairy, sheltered by her wide-brimmed hat and gauze veil from the July sun, and trotted off with a merry laugh, mocking my cautious counsel to avoid galloping, and come back early.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

I will wait now, if you will allow me, until the company departs; I may just as well, for I have nowhere else to go to, and I shall certainly not do any sleeping tonight; I’m far too excited.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Up, and after the barber had done, and I had spoke with Mr. Smith (whom I sent for on purpose to speak of Field’s business, who stands upon L250 before he will release us, which do trouble me highly), and also Major Allen of the Victualling Office about his ship to be hired for Tangier, I went to church, and thence home to dinner alone with my wife, very pleasant, and after dinner to church again, and heard a dull, drowsy sermon, and so home and to my office, perfecting my vows again for the next year, which I have now done, and sworn to in the presence of Almighty God to observe upon the respective penalties thereto annexed, and then to Sir W. Pen’s (though much against my will, for I cannot bear him, but only to keep him from complaint to others that I do not see him) to see how he do, and find him pretty well, and ready to go abroad again.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

He showed how the cloaths, sending by these merchants to Turkey, are already bought and paid for to the workmen, and are as many as they would send these twelve months or more; so the poor do not suffer by their not going, but only the merchant, upon whose hands they lit dead; and so the inconvenience is the less.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Every day, at sunset, the iron gates at either end of the bridge and at the entrance to the court of honor are closed and barred.
— from The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice Leblanc

What therefore more easy than now to take his servant on a second journey into the blessed region of the Fourth Dimension, where I shall look down with him once more upon this land of Three Dimensions, and see the inside of every three-dimensioned house, the secrets of the solid earth, the treasures of the mines in Spaceland, and the intestines of every solid living creature, even of the noble and adorable Spheres.
— from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) by Edwin Abbott Abbott

That though it was my ill Fortune thus to lose (by one throw at play, inconsiderately) a thing of that value, my Maiden head I mean, yet it was some comfort to me, that it was a Gentleman of no mean worth that won it; and I question’d not but the off-spring would be like the Father, as well in the comely proportion of the Body, as Gallantry of Mind; being thus fully perswaded it will prove so goodly a Person, it will the more trouble me to part with it to another; that if I should do any such thing it is not for necessity; for, as I had money considerable of my own, before my deluding Lover came acquainted with me; yet, to compensate that single kindness, he hath so showred his Gold and Silver on me since, that my Wealth may procure a Match considerable enough, though my face carryed in it no other invitation.
— from The English Rogue: Continued in the Life of Meriton Latroon, and Other Extravagants, Comprehending the most Eminent Cheats of Both Sexes: The Third Part by Francis Kirkman

The tail, indeed, is the most striking feature of the bird, being not only so very long, but seemingly endowed with the gift of perpetual motion, since it is never still, but bobs up and down, and sidewise, too, into every possible angle, and almost incessantly.
— from Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 4, April, 1886 by Various

In consequence of this dissension a law was laid down at Sparta that it should not be permitted, when an army went out, that both the kings should go with it, for up to this time both used to go with it, and that as one of the kings was set free from service, so one of the sons of Tyndareus 64 also should be left behind; for before this time both of these two were called upon by them for help and went with the armies.
— from The History of Herodotus — Volume 2 by Herodotus

'To relieve me from the torture of uncertainty, I desire a faithful monitor which shall inform me when Ryno kneels before strange altars, that I may win back the idol of my heart with redoubled love, or,--learn to despise and scorn the inconstant.'
— from Tales from the German. Volume II. by C. F. van der (Carl Franz) Velde

This argument he had advanced when, at sunrise, he and his two companions had been led forth to die upon the altar before the great stone god; and it had consisted, first, in the narrative of how the Great White Chief in command of his party had miraculously cured a black panther which had been discovered in the last stage of dissolution, and subsequently tamed it, and secondly, in the confident assertion that the man who could do this thing could likewise cure the sick of the village, if he were approached in a becomingly humble spirit.
— from In Search of El Dorado by Harry Collingwood

It was so dark and stormy that in order that we might recognize each other each soldier wore a white band of paper on his cap on which was written—Liberty or Death!
— from Peggy Owen, Patriot: A Story for Girls by Lucy Foster Madison

It was dark there, but he felt his way to his seat beside the bishop's desk, and sitting there in the dark the boy faced his past and his future; faced, too, a duty that lay before him--a duty so hard that it seemed to him he never could perform it, yet he knew he must.
— from The Bishop's Shadow by I. T. (Ida Treadwell) Thurston

Little babies were thus bedecked, and the tender ears of some consequently hung distorted and stretched three inches downward, both the upper rim and the lobe of the [Pg 153] infant's ear being perforated with rings.
— from Due West; Or, Round the World in Ten Months by Maturin Murray Ballou