And now, there he sat, with the remains of a beard at least a week old encumbering his chin; a soiled and crumpled shirt-frill crouching, as it were, upon his breast, instead of standing boldly out; a demeanour so abashed and drooping, so despondent, and expressive of such humiliation, grief, and shame; that if the souls of forty unsubstantial housekeepers, all of whom had had their water cut off for non-payment of the rate, could have been concentrated in one body, that one body could hardly have expressed such mortification and defeat as were now expressed in the person of Mr. Lillyvick the collector.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Its throne is built across a dark abyss, which no eye must dare to explore, lest the baseless fabric should totter under investigation.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

DESCRIPTIVE Amory was now eighteen years old, just under six feet tall and exceptionally, but not conventionally, handsome.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

The question to be debated was, “whether the Yahoos should be exterminated from the face of the earth?” One of the members for the affirmative offered several arguments of great strength and weight, alleging, “that as the Yahoos were the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animals which nature ever produced, so they were the most restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious; they would privately suck the teats of the Houyhnhnms’ cows, kill and devour their cats, trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually watched, and commit a thousand other extravagancies.”
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

The tavern was dirty and wretched, not even second-rate.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

denoting anxiety Wch, n. expansion Wchw, interj.
— from A Pocket Dictionary: Welsh-English by William Richards

So where trustees possessed of a schoolroom put in a schoolmaster, and he was afterwards dismissed, but the next day (June 30) re-entered by force; on the fourth of July he was required by notice to depart, and was not ejected until the eleventh; it was considered that the schoolmaster never got possession as against the trustees.
— from The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes

But in eternity there is no such thing as when, before, or after; hence it follows solely from the perfection of God, that God never can decree, or never could have decreed anything but what is; that God did not exist before his decrees, and would not exist without them.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

" It proved to be an easy task, and in a short time the "dead" auto was near enough to the electric line to permit Tom to run his charging wire over to it.
— from Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout; Or, The Speediest Car on the Road by Victor Appleton

He had been in town only a few weeks, and he did not go to school, and he boarded with or lived with, the Smiths, who lived next door to the Deckers, and were nice enough people, but did not have much to do with the fathers and mothers of these boys, and—well, the fact was, the boys did not know whether to take this new comer in, and make him welcome, or not.
— from Little Fishers: and Their Nets by Pansy

A little later she inquired for Darlington, and then discovered that he had that day journeyed to Dijon, and was not expected to return until two days later.
— from Lucian the dreamer by J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

The boat was late of arriving; it had been delayed, and was not expected at the moment when the passengers were ready to land.
— from At His Gates: A Novel. Vol. 3 (of 3) by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Braddock refused the purse, insisted on the duel, was disarmed, and would not even ask his life.
— from The Conquest of Canada, Vol. 2 by George Warburton

He bid me observe it, and I should always find, that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were, who by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances, on one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet, on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to the life of slavery for daily bread, or harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace, and the body of rest; not enraged with the passion of envy, or secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but in easy circumstances sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter, feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day's experience to know it more sensibly.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) by Daniel Defoe

One had no need to take off that costume during a whole night, even though one exhausted one's amorous imagination beyond the most extravagant dreams.
— from Ancient Manners; Also Known As Aphrodite by Pierre Louÿs