My dress, I saw, struck Lord Orville with astonishment; and I was myself so much ashamed of appearing whimsical and unsteady, that I could not look up.
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

[15] Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You went to the Opera while Sibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging?
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"You went to the opera while Sibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging?
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

3 Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt, Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves, Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant, With sudra face and worn brow, black, but in the depths of my heart, proud as any, Lifted now and always against whoever scorning assumes to rule me, Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many wiles, (Though it was thought I was baffled, and dispel'd, and my wiles done, but that will never be,) Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly appearing, (and old ones also,) Permanent here from my side, warlike, equal with any, real as any, Nor time nor change shall ever change me or my words.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

That in the lane down which I rushed I should have met no human creature, and that the first open door I saw should lead to the residence of a decrepid old man, who appeared to be its single inhabitant, were occurrences equally extraordinary, yet seem to have been both indispensable to my safety.
— from St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century by William Godwin

It was the language of the Roman soldier, colonist, and trader, with common characteristics in the way of diction, form, phraseology, and syntax, dropping into some slight local peculiarities, but kept essentially a unit by the desire which each community felt to imitate its officials and its upper classes.
— from The Common People of Ancient Rome Studies of Roman Life and Literature by Frank Frost Abbott

Difficulties in securing skilled labor, necessary materials, and tools delayed production of these mounts, but the eighteen 6-inch gun mounts ordered September 28, 1917, were completed in March, 1918, while the twenty-eight 5-inch gun mounts ordered on the same date were finished in April.
— from America's Munitions 1917-1918 by Benedict Crowell

Silently the good wife took that infant into the house and disrobed it; sorrowfully she laid it alongside its little brothers and sister; long and bitterly she wept over the quartette; and then with one tender look at her lord and master, smoking in solemn silence by the fire, and resembling them with all his might, she gathered her shawl about her bowed shoulders and went away into the night.
— from The Fiend's Delight by Ambrose Bierce

An account of my work in the Kansas Chalk would not be complete without some mention of my discovery, in several small localities, of the crinoid Uintacrinus socialis Grinell.
— from The Life of a Fossil Hunter by Charles H. (Charles Hazelius) Sternberg

How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image, should she look in the mirror of nature!"
— from Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany by Georg Brandes