But since, at moments which call for a hasty decision, a Russian is quick to discover what may conceivably be the best course to take, our coachman put away from him all ulterior reasoning, and, turning to the right at the next cross-road, shouted, “Hi, my beauties!” and set off at a gallop.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

Ralph was inclin'd to pursue the study of poetry, not doubting but he might become eminent in it, and make his fortune by it, alleging that the best poets must, when they first began to write, make as many faults as he did.
— from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

the man “Bat’h,” who emerged from foam vomited by a bull ( Malay Annals , p. 23), and who is regarded as the progenitor of the still existing Malay tribe (Bangsa Muntah Lĕmbu) of hereditary bards, to whom beef, milk, etc. are taboo 1 ; and the Indian prince “Mani Farendan” ( ibid. p. 110), who on his voyage to Malacca [ 674 ] was preserved from drowning by the alu-alu fish and the gandasuli tree, and on that account “forbade all his descendants to eat of the fish alu-alu or to wear the flower of the gandasuli .”
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

“My daughter,” continued Danglars, “when a father asks his daughter to choose a husband, he has always some reason for wishing her to marry.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

Sancho overheard him and said, "It is eight or ten days, brother growler, since I entered upon the government of the island they gave me, and all that time I never had a bellyful of victuals, no not for an hour; doctors persecuted me and enemies crushed my bones; nor had I any opportunity of taking bribes or levying taxes; and if that be the case, as it is, I don't deserve, I think, to come out in this fashion; but 'man proposes and God disposes;' and God knows what is best, and what suits each one best; and 'as the occasion, so the behaviour;' and 'let nobody say "I won't drink of this water;"' and 'where one thinks there are flitches, there are no pegs;' God knows my meaning and that's enough; I say no more, though I could."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Johnson, who thought that 'all was false and hollow,' despised the honeyed words, and was even indignant that Lord Chesterfield should, for a moment, imagine that he could be the dupe of such an artifice.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

The conversation ceased suddenly when Margaret re-entered the dining-room; her friends had been talking over her new friend, and had dismissed her as uninteresting.
— from Howards End by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

And Wilhelm could not explain why he only thought of the date on the coins at the last moment, instead of earlier; he said it just occurred to him, all of a sudden, like an inspiration, and he brought it right out without any hesitation, for, although he didn't examine the coins, he seemed, somehow, to know it was true.
— from The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories by Mark Twain

The body, still warm, was clothed in a strange uniform, but even when he noticed the spiked helmet lying a few inches further away, he did not realize what had happened.
— from The King in Yellow by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

Homer was not apt at words, but he could feel and he did feel.
— from Scattergood Baines by Clarence Budington Kelland

He showed his hands and feet and side marked with red—but there must have been conscious fraud on his part, for after his death no such scars could be found.
— from Cornish Characters and Strange Events by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

In manuscripts found after his death, he said: "I am like an ‚Æolian harp, which gives forth a few beautiful sounds and plays no tune."
— from The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England, Volume 2 (of 6) Mémoires d'outre-tombe, volume 2 by Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de

Then my friend asks, “How does it make you feel?”
— from My Year of the Great War by Frederick Palmer

On one occasion, I killed a horse by swimming him across the Joachim river, at its mouth, whilst he was warm and foaming from a hard day's ride.
— from The American Indians Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Even in these days when kings are two a penny, and there is a never-ending procession of Napoleons and Nelsons to the Guildhall to receive swords and freedoms and honorary degrees, the arrival of a Shah of Persia stirs the imagination of the man in the street.
— from If I May by A. A. (Alan Alexander) Milne