I polished my boots a second time with my own hands; nothing in the world would have induced Apollon to clean them twice a day, as he considered that it was more than his duties required of him.
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It would be the easiest folly in the world to fall in love with her: there is such a sweet babylike roundness about her face and figure; the delicate dark rings of hair lie so charmingly about her ears and neck; her great dark eyes with their long eye-lashes touch one so strangely, as if an imprisoned frisky sprite looked out of them.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

His remains which so eminently deserved rites of honourable sepulture, were from unavoidable circumstances consigned to earth by the hands
— from Toronto of Old Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario by Henry Scadding

Giovanni had not considered with himself what should be his deportment; whether he should apologize for his intrusion into the garden, or assume that he was there with the privity at least, if not by the desire, of Dr. Rappaccini or his daughter; but Beatrice's manner placed him at his ease, though leaving him still in doubt by what agency he had gained admittance.
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the same way he beheld, as though they had passed before him in visible forms, the two ideas which had, up to that time, formed the double rule of his soul,—the concealment of his name, the sanctification of his life.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

There is also the exceedingly interesting "English Grammar" "made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of all strangers out of his observation of the English language now spoken and in use," in Latin and English; and "Timber, or Discoveries" "made upon men and matter as they have flowed out of his daily reading, or had their reflux to his peculiar notion of the times."
— from The Alchemist by Ben Jonson

" The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one.
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Lucien de Rubempre offered him his romance, "The Archer of Charles IX.," but the publisher would not give him more than four hundred francs for it, so the trade was not concluded.
— from Repertory of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z by Anatole Cerfberr

One of the monks who attended the cardinal, being naturally of a savage and cruel disposition, requested of him that he might shed some of the blood of these poor people with his own hands; when his request being granted, the barbarous man took a large sharp knife, and cut the throats of fourscore men, women, and children, with as little remorse as a butcher would have killed so many sheep.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

There was the impress of the despised race on her face, yet none could help feeling its mournful and pathetic beauty, while its stony sharpness, its cold, fixed, deathly aspect, struck a solemn chill over him.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Yet—directly he was alone, his dreams, and his horror of the dark, returned on him.
— from Grettir the Outlaw: A Story of Iceland by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

In March 1624, a committee of the Privy Council, by the authority of the King, deprived Rigg of his office, fined him in fifty thousand pounds Scots, and ordered him to be warded in Blackness Castle till the sum was paid, and afterwards to be confined in Orkney.
— from Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Third Edition) by Samuel Rutherford

He continually, by devout recollection of his indebtedness to God, seeks to keep himself in hand.
— from The Life of Nelson, Volume 1 The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

But a student's worth can never perish; a time is certain to arrive when his erudition will receive its due reward of human praise.
— from Bibliomania in the Middle Ages by F. Somner (Frederick Somner) Merryweather

Over the little whitewashed fence double rows of hollyhocks and sunflowers nodded their heavy heads, and bordering the narrow walk were lines of chrysanthemums and dahlias.
— from The Voice of the People by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"Certainly, you do," said Diana, reading over his shoulder.
— from Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and the First Christmas of New England by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Then came the deep roar of heavy artillery, mingled with the rushing sound of their huge missiles through the air.
— from A Chapter of Adventures by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

Perhaps he would meet the due reward of his evil ways without any act of ours.
— from In Taunton town : a story of the rebellion of James Duke of Monmouth in 1685 by Evelyn Everett-Green

If the witness is wandering on purpose, as many a prisoner does for definite reasons of his own, he will spread himself still more as he recognizes that his examiner does not like it.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross