The next morning, however, made an alteration; for in a quarter of an hour's tête-à-tête with Mrs. Bennet before breakfast, a conversation beginning with his parsonage-house, and leading naturally to the avowal of his hopes, that a mistress for it might be found at Longbourn, produced from her, amid very complaisant smiles and general encouragement, a caution against the very Jane he had fixed on.—"As to her younger daughters she could not take upon her to say—she could not positively answer—but she did not know of any prepossession;—her eldest daughter, she must just mention—she felt it incumbent on her to hint, was likely to be very soon engaged."
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Madame Duval insisted upon keeping me with her; but Mrs. Mirvan said, that as I was actually engaged on a visit to Lady Howard, who had only consented to my leaving her for a few days, she could not think of returning without me.
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

And good historians skip over, as stagnant water and dead sea, calm narrations, to return to seditions, to wars, to which they know that we invite them.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Accustomed to treat the poet as a divinity, she could not tolerate the familiarity of these petty folk.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

How great Dionysus must be among you, when the Delian god deems such charms necessary to cure you of your dithyrambic madness!"—To one in this frame of mind, however, an aged Athenian, looking up to him with the sublime eye of Æschylus, might answer: "Say also this, thou curious stranger: what sufferings this people must have undergone, in order to be able to become thus beautiful!
— from The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Next day I had a pleasant dinner with the favourite, though she told me that, not having seen the duke, she could not tell me how he would take my pleasantry, which her mother resented very much.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

“As to her younger daughters, she could not take upon her to say—she could not positively answer—but she did not know of any prepossession; her eldest daughter, she must just mention—she felt it incumbent on her to hint, was likely to be very soon engaged.”
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

She could not sweep, because it blistered her hands, which, in fact, were long and delicate; she could not think of putting them into hot dish-water, and for that reason preferred washing the dishes in cold water; she required a full hour in the morning to make her toilet; she was laced so tightly that she could not stoop without vertigo, and her hoops were of dimensions which seemed to render it impossible for her to wait upon table; she was quite exhausted with the effort of ironing the table-napkins and chamber-towels;—yet she could not think of 'living out' under two dollars a week.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 98, December, 1865 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics by Various

107 CHAPTER XIII TUNNELING OUT What awoke Dorothy she could not tell.
— from Dorothy Dale's Promise by Margaret Penrose

It's just possible that Nature deserves some credit, not to mention Amy Mathewson.
— from Mrs. Red Pepper by Grace S. (Grace Smith) Richmond

Poor Alice was grieved when she saw the little creature come tumbling to the earth, and declared she could not touch it.
— from The South Sea Whaler by William Henry Giles Kingston

All was dark within, but whether or not Mrs. Johnstone sat there in the darkness she could not tell.
— from Two Sides of the Face: Midwinter Tales by Arthur Quiller-Couch

Be you, in truth, this dull, slight, cloudy naught, The more fool I, so great a fool to adore; But if you're that high goddess once I thought, The more your godhead is, I lose the more.
— from 1914, and Other Poems by Rupert Brooke

When she was alone, those days, she could not throw her mind back to the ugly, brutish past, so potently was the influence of the East growing upon her being.
— from A Bed of Roses by Walter Lionel George

Just when the master stroke would be delivered she could not tell, but she was prepared to have it descend suddenly at any moment.
— from The Bachelors: A Novel by William Dana Orcutt

Anita, showing some little trace of feeling now that Cleek had gone to wash his hands and was no longer there to occupy her thoughts, placed a deep, soft chair near the window, and would not yield until the violet-clad figure of the mourner sank down into the depths of it and leaned back with its shrouded face drooping in silent melancholy.
— from Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces by Thomas W. Hanshew

But the river itself, too active to submit so early to the shackles of approaching [Pg 77] winter, went rushing along in its course, now quietly, with a deep, dark, sullen current, now thundering over rocks in wild, tempestuous rapids that made the heart thrill with its force and power.
— from Grit A-Plenty: A Tale of the Labrador Wild by Dillon Wallace