I wrote by that day's post, and put the case before him exactly as it stood, not only urging every argument I could think of to induce him to maintain the clause as I had drawn it, but stating to him plainly the mercenary motive which was at the bottom of the opposition to my settlement of the twenty thousand pounds.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

"My ass," said Sancho, "which, not to mention him by that name, I'm accustomed to call Dapple; I begged this lady duenna here to take care of him when I came into the castle, and she got as angry as if I had said she was ugly or old, though it ought to be more natural and proper for duennas to feed asses than to ornament chambers.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Did I behave better?"
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

and I confess to you that I did ill; but I swear to you, since I see her thus disposed, that you shall never more hear a word of this.'
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

Redegonde wanted a rest, as indeed did I, but she had to give way when I said caressingly that we could sleep at Minden.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Or ci movemmo con la scorta fida lungo la proda del bollor vermiglio, dove i bolliti facieno alte strida.
— from Divina Commedia di Dante: Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Hannibal, so long as he obtained a barely sufficient supply of food at the cost of encountering dangers, led a temperate life, as did his army; but after they had taken Capua and wintered there in idleness with ample provisions, they began to lose their physical strength by not laboring and their intellectual force by tranquillity, and in changing their ancestral habits they learned an accomplishment new to them,—that of being defeated in battle.—When the work of war finally became pressing, Hannibal transferred his quarters to the mountains and gave the army exercise.
— from Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek during the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form by Cassius Dio Cocceianus

A Signed Statement N oirtier was prepared to receive them, dressed in black, and installed in his armchair.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

I don't suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Again an advance may be observed, not only in the conduct of the plot, which moves artistically on an altogether different level, and even succeeds in arousing some dramatic interest, but likewise in the verse, which has a freer movement, and is on the whole less marred by the over-emphatic repetition of words and phrases in consecutive lines, a particularly irritating trick of the author's pastoral style, or by the monotonous cadence and painful padding of the blank verse.
— from Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in England by W. W. (Walter Wilson) Greg

Man, by living wholly in submission to the Divine Influence, becomes surrounded with, and creates for himself, internal pleasures infinitely greater than any he can otherwise attain to—a state of heavenly Beatitude.
— from Daily Strength for Daily Needs by Mary Wilder Tileston

“I found this year 'oss in a pond, I saves him from drowning, I brings him back to his master, and
— from Burlesques by William Makepeace Thackeray

"'As to that,' she began; but she was interrupted, almost as she opened her lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked particularly elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, that his face was the most deadly pale I ever saw, except in death.
— from In a Glass Darkly, v. 3/3 by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

I do think there is a good deal in both of the works in question, but their sublimity I dispute.
— from Sea and Shore A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" by Catherine A. (Catherine Ann) Warfield

Its beauty, its dignity, its perfect repose, reflect the higher life of the race that imagined it; and, though doubtless inspired by some Indian model, as the treatment of the hair and various symbolic marks reveal, the art is Japanese.
— from Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: First Series by Lafcadio Hearn

In Ulysses' room might be seen ribbons, skeins of silk, an old fan—all deposited in books and papers by the same mysterious reflex that had drawn his portraits from his mother's to his cousin's room.
— from Mare Nostrum (Our Sea): A Novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

World Globally, the 20th century was marked by: (a) two devastating world wars; (b) the Great Depression of the 1930s; (c) the end of vast colonial empires; (d) rapid advances in science and technology, from the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (US) to the landing on the moon; (e) the Cold War between the Western alliance and the Warsaw Pact nations; (f) a sharp rise in living standards in North America, Europe, and Japan; (g) increased concerns about the environment, including loss of forests, shortages of energy and water, the decline in biological diversity, and air pollution; (h) the onset of the AIDS epidemic; and (i) the ultimate emergence of the US as the only world superpower.
— from The 2008 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency