Then changing from a frown to a smile—“No, do not tell me—I do not want to know what you mean.—Where is my father?—When are we to begin dancing?” Emma could hardly understand him; he seemed in an odd humour.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

Beyond the fortifications through which Athos had made a breach in order to get out, and which were composed of fagots, planks, and empty casks, heaped up according to all the rules of the strategic art, they found, swimming in puddles of oil and wine, the bones and fragments of all the hams they had eaten; while a heap of broken bottles filled the whole left-hand corner of the cellar, and a tun, the cock of which was left running, was yielding, by this means, the last drop of its blood.
— from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

When, however, they raised him, and set him upon his feet, behold, all on a sudden his eye changed; he understood everything that had happened, stroked his beard, and said with a strong voice: “Well!
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

MDCXC CONTENTS THE EPISTLE TO THE READER ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMANE UNDERSTANDING IN FOUR BOOKS By John Locke Quam bellum est velle confiteri potius nescire quod nescias, quam ista effutientem nauseare, atque ipsum sibi displicere.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

the old regime of France the parish priest of each church had usually every Sunday, at sermon time, to announce more than one religious fast or feast for the coming week, which the poor at least were expected to observe.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

Miss Petowker grasped the collector’s hand, but emotion choked her utterance.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

But since the reign of Philip and Mary, the denomination of the English coin has undergone little or no alteration, and the same number of pounds, shillings, and pence, have contained very nearly the same quantity of pure silver.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

C. Footnote 1: Essay concerning Human Understanding , Bk II.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

The evidence of the entire company, however, united in proving that my grandmother never had an idea of any such order, and that it was a misapprehension on the part of the servants.
— from Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 1 (of 3) by Barrington, Jonah, Sir

The blaze in his son's eyes contradicted his unnatural calmness.
— from The Sins of the Children: A Novel by Cosmo Hamilton

The boy of twenty had already mastered the secret of elegiac verse, which even Catullus had used stiffly and awkwardly, and writes it with an ease, a colour, a sumptuousness of rhythm which no later poet ever equalled.
— from Latin Literature by J. W. (John William) Mackail

"Do no speak so loud, everyone can hear us, and they will take us for two lovers quarrelling."
— from Bohemians of the Latin Quarter by Henri Murger

"It's hard to see how anyone else could have used his rifle after he cleaned it, since he admits that he locked it up and kept the key on him.
— from The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story by Bryce, Charles, Mrs.

Civilians, equally confident, harped upon a system of national granaries, and asked what imbecility of the national intellect had prevented us building them before?
— from Swords Reluctant by Max Pemberton

[Pg 72] And for each congregation he urged an order of procedure much nearer that of apostolic times than that which the Reformed Church, at his own instance, afterwards instituted in Scotland.
— from John Knox by A. Taylor (Alexander Taylor) Innes

No, sir, we've got to stick to the pump, and pray for daylight and fine weather," and, having no more to say to me, or a sudden emotion checking his utterance, he pulled his head out and disappeared in the obscurity.
— from A Marriage at Sea by William Clark Russell