His unshaven beard, his disordered hair, his cap soiled with mud, his blood-stained hands, his clothes in rags, he looked horrible.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking me, and then looked at me from head to foot.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

His dense, delicate hair, his overdrawn, retouched features, his clear complexion, ripe without being coarse, the very evenness of the growth of his beard, and that light, smooth slenderness of structure which made the movement of a single one of his fingers produce the effect of an expressive gesture—these personal points struck our sensitive young woman as signs of quality, of intensity, somehow as promises of interest.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James

The large table, too, that used to stretch along the upper end of the hall, where the master of the mansion loved to display his hospitality, and whence the peal of laughter, and the song of conviviality, had so often resounded, was now removed; even the benches that had surrounded the hall were no longer there.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

Cy , D , H49 , H51 , JC , O'F , Q , W 40 (it selfes death) 1635-69 , A25 , B , H51 , L74 , Lec , N , O'F , P , Q , TCD , W: (it selfe death) 1633 ,
— from The Poems of John Donne, Volume 1 (of 2) Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts by John Donne

But it was enough to have terrified a bolder man than I; and, indeed, it alarmed all our company, when, with the noise of Friday’s pistol, we heard on both sides the most dismal howling of wolves; and the noise, redoubled by the echo of the mountains, appeared to us as if there had been a prodigious number of them; and perhaps there was not such a few as that we had no cause of apprehension: however, as Friday had killed this wolf, the other that had fastened upon the horse left him immediately, and fled, without doing him any damage, having happily fastened upon his head, where the bosses of the bridle had stuck in his teeth.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

He was continually reckoning on the beads, while his face perspired and looked strained, or he would ask for money or, stroking his whiskers, would describe how he had once been in a first-class station and used to prepare champagne-punch for officers, and at grand dinners served the sturgeon-soup with his own hands.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The male stepped forward, fixing his eyes on me: I drew near, still holding out my lure, while he, depressing his head, rushed at me with his horns.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Aubrey often wished to represent this to his friend, and beg him to resign that charity and pleasure which proved the ruin of all, and did not tend to his own profit;—but he delayed it—for each day he hoped his friend would give him some opportunity of speaking frankly and openly to him; however, this never occurred.
— from The Vampyre; a Tale by John William Polidori

But the devil has hope, according to Job 40:28, "Behold his hope shall fail him."
— from Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province by Thomas, Aquinas, Saint

I dropped her hand, and put all the reproach I could summons into the words.
— from A Maid of the Kentucky Hills by Edwin Carlile Litsey

Cabral , in the year 1500, first landed on the coast of Brazil, and immediately gave notice to the court of Lisbon of the discovery he had made.
— from The History of the Revolutions of Portugal by abbé de Vertot

Far in yon azure deeps, Hide, hide your golden light!
— from The Home Book of Verse — Volume 2 by Burton Egbert Stevenson

When Curtius leaped into the gulf, he probably leaped into utter darkness, other than physical; but when Guyon of Marseilles sunned himself for the last time in the balcony of the house where he was shut up with the plague-spotted body which he was to die in dissecting, he had faith that he should step out of a waxing and waning sunlight into a region which "had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, the glory of God being the light of it."
— from How to Observe: Morals and Manners by Harriet Martineau

If, by any chance, they returned together to a dark house, he would not enter till she touched the button in the hall, and illuminated the room.
— from The Shape of Fear by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

Hours later, when he was lying snug and warm in his own blankets, David heard him get up, and watched him as he scraped together the burned embers of the fire and added fresh fuel to them.
— from The Courage of Marge O'Doone by James Oliver Curwood