"Quite so!" continued Tai-yü with alacrity, "if we go on nagging in this way, it would be better for me to die, and that you should be free of me!"
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

In the forest the harness bells sounded yet more muffled than they had done six weeks before, for now all was thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs dotted about in the forest did not jar on the general beauty but, lending themselves to the mood around, were delicately green with fluffy young shoots.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

It is mighty foolish to let a stranger have it because he marries your daughter, and takes your name.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

“If you can bear it,” said Paulina, “I can make the statue move, make it come down and take you by the hand.
— from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

"Who should it be," said the barber, "but the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, the undoer of injustice, the righter of wrongs, the protector of damsels, the terror of giants, and the winner of battles?" "That," said the goatherd, "sounds like what one reads in the books of the knights-errant, who did all that you say this man does; though it is my belief that either you are joking, or else this gentleman has empty lodgings in his head."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

His business partnership was kept secret, and during all the years when the Waverley novels were the most popular books in the world, their authorship remained unknown; for Scott deemed it beneath the dignity of his title to earn money by business or literature, and sought to give the impression that the enormous sums spent at Abbotsford in improving the estate and in entertaining lavishly were part of the dignity of the position and came from ancestral sources.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

Now, sir, I am coming to the point; for no sooner did I name you, and told him that you and I came to town together, and had lived together ever since, than he called for another pot, and swore he would drink to your health; and indeed he drank your health so heartily that I was overjoyed to see there was so much gratitude left in the world; and after we had emptied that pot I said I would buy my pot too, and so we drank another to your health; and then I made haste home to tell you the news.”
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

On the surface, the record of the spot where it would fall, the place of its birth, as well as various family trifles and trivial love affairs of young ladies, verses, odes, speeches and enigmas was still complete; but the name of the dynasty and the year of the reign were obliterated, and could not be ascertained.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

‘But I’ll not do anything, though you should swear your tongue out, except what I please!’
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

We shall need the days and the years ahead, to look, to learn, and to understand the things of this house.
— from Anthem by Ayn Rand

Strict as he is to enforce discipline, and thorough, yet he is not severe; and the men love him for his personal attention to their wants, and for his appreciation of their labors.
— from Three Years in the Federal Cavalry by Willard W. Glazier

As one attempts to realize the situation as it was,—Judson suffering untold agonies, aggravated by his heartless tormentors,—in the miserable prison; Mrs. Judson, in her isolation and friendlessness, suffering from privation, intolerable heat, disease, and the yet greater mental suffering on account of her husband who might at any moment be led to execution before her eyes,—the picture becomes more and more terrible.
— from Among the Burmans: A Record of Fifteen Years of Work and its Fruitage by Henry Park Cochrane

He knew them in former days, and the young men, who have been already dining and drinking on guard, insist on more drink at the club.
— from The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray

The other youth up the rocks, though bronzed on the hands and face to a color as dark as the young Ute's, had the blue eyes and curly yellow hair that told of a pure white ancestry.
— from Lost in the Cañon The Story of Sam Willett's Adventures on the Great Colorado of the West by A. R. (Alfred Rochefort) Calhoun

During all those years they had watched the Republicans sitting at the national banquet.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 08 (of 12) Dresden Edition—Interviews by Robert Green Ingersoll

That this man, into every fibre of whose nature was woven undying hostility to Spain, as the great foe to national independence and religious liberty throughout the continent of Europe, whose every effort, as we have seen, during all these years of nominal peace had been to organize a system of general European defence against the war now actually begun upon Protestantism, should be accused of being a partisan of Spain, a creature of Spain, a pensioner of Spain, was enough to make honest men pray that the earth might be swallowed up.
— from PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

I beg of you, Mr. Brummell,” as this one now comes mincing in together with Lord Escombe, Sir Wyatt, Mr. Jack Chalmers and others for their game, “for you’ve the graces I lack in such matters.—These two gallants have had a difference, and ’tis you, Mr. Brummell, can set ’em straight again.”
— from My Lady Peggy Goes to Town by Frances Aymar Mathews

“I have learned to smile during all these years.
— from An Alabaster Box by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

A little later on, Sack did duty for the “inferior sherry” of the Victorian era, although a Sack-and-Angostura was not a frequent demand amongst the young bloods of the period.
— from The Flowing Bowl A Treatise on Drinks of All Kinds and of All Periods, Interspersed with Sundry Anecdotes and Reminiscences by Edward Spencer

I am perplexed and doubtful whether or no I dare accept this your congratulation.
— from The Piccolomini: A Play by Friedrich Schiller