In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Is poor father dead?' To which the doctor, on one knee beside the body, busy and watchful, only rejoins without looking round: 'Now, my girl, unless you have the self-command to be perfectly quiet, I cannot allow you to remain in the room.' Pleasant, consequently, wipes her eyes with her back-hair, which is in fresh need of being wound up, and having got it out of the way, watches with terrified interest all that goes on.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

In the day great troubles overwhelmed my mind; and in the night I dreamed often of killing the savages and of the reasons why I might justify doing it.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

A man, devoid of other knowledge, but well acquainted with the sixty-four divisions, becomes a leader in any society of men and women.
— from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding Remarks by Vatsyayana

" The clergyman explained that, as far as he was aware, it had quite died out of knowledge, and could hardly be said to be known at all.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

We may partly explain it by the different degrees of our knowledge in the two cases: there are many acts and forbearances of which we cannot lay down definitely that they ought to be done or forborne, unless we have the complete knowledge of circumstances which a man commonly possesses only in his own case, and not in that of other men.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

So fierce a gale made havoc here of late Among the strange devices of our kings; Yea, shook this newer, stronger hall of ours, And from the statue Merlin moulded for us Half-wrenched a golden wing; but now—the Quest, This vision—hast thou seen the Holy Cup, That Joseph brought of old to Glastonbury?" 'So when I told him all thyself hast heard, Ambrosius, and my fresh but fixt resolve To pass away into the quiet life, He answered not, but, sharply turning, asked Of Gawain, "Gawain, was this Quest for thee?" '"Nay, lord," said Gawain, "not for such as I.
— from Idylls of the King by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

When he called his mother names, because she wouldn’t give up the young lady’s property, and she relenting, caused him to relent likewise, and fall down on one knee and ask her blessing, how the ladies in the audience sobbed!
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Helios is said to have loved Clytie, a daughter of Oceanus, who ardently returned his affection; but in the course of time the fickle sun-god transferred his devotion to Leucothea, the daughter of Orchamus, king of the eastern countries, which so angered the forsaken Clytie that she informed Orchamus of his daughter's attachment, and he punished her by inhumanly burying her alive.
— from Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by E. M. Berens

We won't make no war on them as minds their own business; but all the Abolitionists, such as them Browns over there, we're going to whip, drive out, or kill,—any way to get shut of them!"
— from Historic Adventures: Tales from American History by Rupert Sargent Holland

He dropped on one knee suddenly, bending low, affecting to find something amiss with one of his moccasins.
— from The Frontiersmen by Mary Noailles Murfree

The Duke of Orleans kept the bank; my grandmother excused herself in an off-hand manner for not having yet paid her debt, by inventing some little story, and then began to play against him.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“Cheer up, my lad,” said the captain in a kindly voice, as he went down on one knee beside the prostrate man; “don’t attempt to speak or exert yourself in any way.
— from Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

[16] We saw the Indian women go down on one knee and kiss the hand of the haciendado whose farm we were viewing.
— from The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan by Frederick J. Tabor Frost

Nor has so-called practicistical history ever been dispensed with, either [Pg 45] according to the Græco-Roman practice, which was that of proposing portraits of statesmen, of captains, and of heroic women as models for the soul, or according to that of the Middle Ages, which was to repeat the lives of saints and hermits of the desert, or of knights strong of arm and of unshakable faith, or in our own modern world, which recommends as edifying and stimulating reading the lives and 'legends' of inventors, of business men, of explorers, and of millionaires.
— from Theory & History of Historiography by Benedetto Croce

It was an interesting period for an American to be in London, that of the death of one king, and the accession of another; and, as such events are not of every-day occurrence, we esteemed ourselves particularly fortunate in being on the spot at the time.
— from The American Quarterly Review, No. 18, June 1831 (Vol 9) by Various

It was only towards the end of the dinner that a personal experience was mentioned about the impossibility of getting work done on great feast days, or of knowing which were the greater—and the great dislike of the peasant mind to new methods.
— from Beechcroft at Rockstone by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

Then, knowing that a King has need of a wife, he sent for all the aldermen and wise men of his Kingdom, as soon as the days of mourning for his father were over, and told them that he wished to wed the Princess Elfreda, daughter of Offa, King of Mercia, and that he willed that a deputation should go from among them to the Court of that Monarch, to ask, in his name, for her hand.
— from Tales of English Minsters: Hereford by Elizabeth W. (Elizabeth Wilson) Grierson

He became especially angry on seeing strange orders: “Which nobody ought to be allowed to wear in France,” and he bore Chenet a particular grudge, as he met him on a tram-car every evening, wearing a decoration of one kind or another, white, blue, orange, or green.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant