I profit so much by it myself, in many ways—at least I ought to—that no one can be more convinced of it than myself; and therefore I speak with great diffidence, my dear Jane, I assure you.’
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Well, I tell you I will not drag my daughter before a tribunal, and give her up to the executioner!
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

A collection of dim-ribbed glass decanters, metal discs with a satin sheen on them, and piles of blue-edged earthenware plates of Touraine ware cover the sticky surfaces of the sideboards that line the room.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

Unlike his friend Addison, Swift saw, in the growing polish and decency of society, only a mask for hypocrisy; and he often used his verse to shock the new-born modesty by pointing out some native ugliness which his diseased mind discovered under every beautiful exterior.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

Soubise ( Charles de Rohan, prince de ), maréchal de France (1715-1787).
— from French Conversation and Composition by Harry Vincent Wann

Finally, strategic operations to cut an enemy's line of communications before giving battle, and attack him in rear, the assailing army preserving its own line of retreat, are much more likely to be successful and effectual, and, moreover, they require no disconnected maneuver during the battle.
— from The Art of War by Jomini, Antoine Henri, baron de

Never was man less inquisitive or less prying into other men’s affairs than I. In our fathers’ days, Monsieur de Boutieres had like to have lost Turin from having, while engaged in good company at supper, delayed to read information that was sent him of the treason plotted against that city where he commanded.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

I might go on prosing more and more, I might dive much deeper, and disclose other thoughts, propose questions the reader might be puzzled to answer, and deduce arguments that might startle his prejudices, or, perhaps, provoke his ridicule, because he could not comprehend them; but I forbear.
— from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

“'Dead men don't bite,' says he.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Lettres de Madame d'Epinay, tom. 1.
— from The Romance of Biography (Vol 2 of 2) or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, from the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age. 3rd ed. 2 Vols. by Mrs. (Anna) Jameson

Where did my darling get it?” said nurse.
— from Daddy's Girl by L. T. Meade

May the strife of human passions, May all riots and dissensions, May disease and flood and fire, Lift their baleful shadows from her.
— from The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky To the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. by Eugenia Dunlap Potts

Leech’s establishment, however, struggled on into my early time, for I can well remember being advised, if I wished for a good and wonderfully cheap dinner, consisting—as per advertisement—of quite startling varieties of dishes, my desire might be gratified by payment of eighteen-pence to the authorities at the London Coffee-House, Ludgate Hill.
— from John Leech, His Life and Work. Vol. 1 [of 2] by William Powell Frith

I know, dear Mrs. Daly, how much you have suffered.
— from The Drunkard by Guy Thorne

We had a very happy time together, and this would have gone far to keep me at home, if it had not, at the same time, deepened my disgust with our town, and my companions in the office.
— from We and the World: A Book for Boys. Part I by Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

had not [D] Don Miguel d'Almeida interpos'd.
— from The Revolutions of Portugal by abbé de Vertot

While the scholars literally dig for truth, we may sit on the site of this mighty, well-nigh perished bulwark at Stanwix, with what is perhaps the wrinkle left on the landscape by the wall's deep moat dropping, under a screen of hawthorns and wind-silvered poplars, sheer at our feet, and thence we may look out across the Eden, with its dipping gulls and sailing swans, its hurrying swifts and little dancing eddy, to the heights of Carlisle.
— from From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England. by Katharine Lee Bates