She used to say Ben Dollard had a base barreltone voice.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

It is worked on the substitute or “scapegoat” principle ( tukar ganti ), and the idea is to make little dough images of all kinds of birds, beasts, fishes, and even inanimate objects (a few of the former being fowls, ducks, horses, apes, buffaloes, bullocks, wild cattle ( sĕladang ), deer, mouse-deer, and elephants, besides those enumerated in the charm itself, whilst exceptions are to be the “unlucky” animals ( bĕnatang sial ) such as cats, tigers, pigs, dogs, snakes, and iguanas).
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

Her naive retelling of a child's tale she has heard, like the story of "Little Jakey," which she rehearses for Dr. Holmes and Bishop Brooks, is charming and her grave paraphrase of the day's lesson in geography or botany, her parrot-like repetition of what she has heard, and her conscious display of new words, are delightful and instructive; for they show not only what she was learning, but how, by putting it all into letters, she made the new knowledge and the new words her own.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

Negro firemen, deck hands, and barbers belonging to those boats were distinguished personages in their grade of life, and they were well aware of that fact too.
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

It is a shameful thing that the face should be subject unto the mind, to be put into what shape it will, and to be dressed by it as it will; and that the mind should not bestow so much care upon herself, as to fashion herself, and to dress herself as best becometh her.' H2 anchor XXV.
— from Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

At every fresh avowal he professed the deepest repentance, and described himself as being “bathed in tears”; but this did not prevent him from putting on a boastful air at times, and some of his stories were so absurdly comical that both he and the prince laughed like madmen.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A new and sweet sensation pulsed through his veins, and this remained even after the ring of dancers had again been broken.
— from Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales by Gottfried Keller

Although this theory of development had already been brought forward and defended by several great naturalists, and especially by Lamarck and Goethe, in the beginning of our century, still it was through Darwin, thirteen years ago, that it received its complete demonstration and causal 5 foundation; and this is the reason why now it is commonly and exclusively (though not quite correctly) designated as Darwin’s Theory .
— from The History of Creation, Vol. 1 (of 2) Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes by Ernst Haeckel

On one night of one particularly troublesome week without a letter he went to sleep from his banal world at an empty table and dreamed his anything but banal dreams.
— from Corpus of a Siam Mosquito by Steven David Justin Sills

It stood to the south-east; in which direction, however, a black bog intervened, which had more than once baffled all my attempts to cross it.
— from Lavengro The Scholar - The Gypsy - The Priest, Vol. 1 (of 2) by George Borrow

Mrs. Helm was attacked by a young Indian, who raised his tomahawk, intending to deal her a blow, but she avoided the murderous weapon and seized her assailant around the neck.
— from The Story of Old Fort Dearborn by J. Seymour (Josiah Seymour) Currey

and at last, as it rose from the dim horizon, and became brighter and brighter in ascending the heavens, how it delighted my heart!
— from The Country of the Dwarfs by Paul B. (Paul Belloni) Du Chaillu

"Like one who had never had the gout," she said, as she hurried to meet him, smiling, so intimately did his appearance bring back old times.
— from Sister Teresa by George Moore

I can scarcely see his face through his disheveled hair and bushy beard.
— from Tales from the German. Volume II. by C. F. van der (Carl Franz) Velde

Some look as if disintegration had already begun, but if we had discovered them earlier in the year, we should have seen that they were never less fragile or loosely constructed than we find them now.
— from The Log of the Sun: A Chronicle of Nature's Year by William Beebe