It was deserted by all who possessed the power of removing; and he, the brother of my soul, was exposed to the perils from which all but slaves enchained by circumstance fled.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

However, she persisted in dishing the dinner as well as cooking it, and then sat down, bibless and apronless, to partake of it as an illustrious guest: Mrs Wilfer first responding to her husband's cheerful 'For what we are about to receive—' with a sepulchral Amen, calculated to cast a damp upon the stoutest appetite.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

They seemed to swarm over the place all at once, till the lamplight, shining on their moving dark bodies and glittering, baleful eyes, made the place look like a bank of earth set with fireflies.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

Do be a reasonable man!
— from Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

She took a couple of deep breaths and stood up.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

A thought is never lost, and the truth discovered by a great intellect illumines the way for future generations like a torch in the dark.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out the region of the shadows?
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

"Oh, if we could only have those dear, monotonous, pleasant days back again!
— from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

To remedy this, they fell perhaps gradually into the custom of writing the two parts of the alliterative couplet in one line, always, however, marking the division by a dot.
— from The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman, Volume 1 of 2 by William Langland

Those which were stored in the palace of the Nasrite [242] sultans of Granada are described by Al-Makkari as “solid, without pores, soft to the touch, and famed for their imperviousness.”
— from The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume 1 (of 3) by Leonard Williams

His intellect was of the most ordinary kind; his knowledge the most common-place; his capacity nil; his exterior that of a ferret, of a pedant; his conversation disagreeable, broken, always uncertain; his falsehood written upon his forehead; his habits too measureless to be hidden; his fits of impetuosity resembling fits of madness; his head incapable of containing more than one thing at a time, and he incapable of following anything but his personal interest; nothing was sacred with him; he had no sort of worthy intimacy with any one; had a declared contempt for faith, promises, honour, probity, truth; took pleasure at laughing at all these things; was equally voluptuous and ambitious, wishing to be all in all in everything; counting himself alone as everything, and whatever was not connected with him as nothing; and regarding it as the height of madness to think or act otherwise.
— from Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Complete by Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de

It is a terrible yet delightful thing thus to be dominated by a young woman.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

He was struck dead by a ball.
— from History of the Expedition to Russia Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 by Ségur, Philippe-Paul, comte de

Every morning ere the McIntyre family were afoot a great bouquet of strange and beautiful flowers was brought down by a footman from the Hall to brighten their breakfast-table.
— from The Doings of Raffles Haw by Arthur Conan Doyle

For Mark was not dead by a long shot.
— from A Cadet's Honor: Mark Mallory's Heroism by Upton Sinclair

and she say, 'I feel a leetle 'stericky again dis morning, doctor: what can you pescribe for me?' 'Pescribe!' says my massa with a sort of short laugh: 'why, dat you go to de top of de house wid a brush and dustpan and sweep de stairs all de way down, and make all de beds, and leave off drinking strong coffee;' and a berry fashionable lady too, as dey tell me after.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 86, February, 1875 by Various

188 As the wind was not yet strong enough to prevent the fire from running, it made good progress in the right direction, burning all the more thoroughly that it burned slowly; but, on the other hand, it was constantly coming in the direction of the house, increasing its pace as the wind and heat dried up the moisture from the grass.
— from Charlie Bell, The Waif of Elm Island by Elijah Kellogg

Mr. G. H. Oatway, M.I.E.E. , in a valuable paper read before the International Congress of Fire Brigades in London in 1903, says that the difference between the damage resulting from a fire signalled in its early stage, and the same fire reported when it has spread to two or three floors, is often the difference between a nominal loss and a "burn out."
— from The Romance of Modern Mechanism With Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wonderful Machinery and Mechanical Devices and Marvellously Delicate Scientific Instruments by Archibald Williams