Oh!—to speak truth, and drop that tone of a false calm which long to sustain, outwears nature's endurance—I underwent in those seven weeks bitter fears and pains, strange inward trials, miserable defections of hope, intolerable encroachments of despair.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

In the spring they pulled the house down, for, as people said, it was a ruin.
— from Andersen's Fairy Tales by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

By this good ground, I was fain to pawn my rapier last night for a poor supper; I had suck'd the hilts long before, am a pagan else: Sweet honour— Know.
— from Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson

For, as Polonius says in his excellent lecture, a lecture to which I am glad to have the opportunity of expressing my obligations, one of the first qualities of apparel is its expressiveness.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde

However, as it became dark, and I could no longer see, I fell asleep; I was soon aroused by a piercing shriek, as from a person suffering in his dreams, and he suddenly threw his head back violently.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

In the room on his right there followed a painful silence; in the room on his left his sister began to cry.
— from Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Sometimes it was a scramble over the moors, between thickets of golden gorse and stretches of heather so deep and long that to lie in it was to bury oneself like a bee in a bed of purple fragrance, or a hard climb would [145] take them to the summit of some neighbouring hill, where, watching the sun sink from a primrose sky into a pearly, shimmering sea, they would all grow a little silent and quiet, even the roughest spirits restrained in spite of themselves by the sight of that indescribable majesty and calm which marks the parting of the day.
— from Bosom Friends: A Seaside Story by Angela Brazil

But when He finds a soul penetrated with a lively faith, He pours into it His graces and favors plentifully: there they flow like a torrent, which, after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course, when it has found a passage, spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance .
— from The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life by Lawrence, of the Resurrection, Brother

As I understand it, pitch is obtained from tar, boiled down, and tar is a black, viscous liquid obtained by the distillation of wood and coal, so this residuum which we see is the third step in one of Nature’s great caldrons; a process millions of years in forming, a process still in operation.
— from Gardens of the Caribbees, v. 2/2 Sketches of a Cruise to the West Indies and the Spanish Main by Ida May Hill Starr

What we wish the reader to understand is this: that a medicine used for any particular symptom in one form of disease, if it be a sanative agent, is equally good for the same symptom in every form.
— from The American Reformed Cattle Doctor Containing the necessary information for preserving the health and curing the diseases of oxen, cows, sheep, and swine, with a great variety of original recipes, and valuable information in reference to farm and dairy management by George H. Dadd

Mr. Gregory left yesterday for a protracted stay in the deep-sea fishing grounds."
— from El Diablo by Brayton Norton

The further a pendulum swings in one direction, the further will it swing in the other, when released.
— from The Problems of Psychical Research Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal by Hereward Carrington

[12] in sight, north or south or due east, nor a wisp of trailing smoke from any passing steamer: I got an impression of silent, unbroken immensity which seemed a fitting prelude to the solitudes into which my mission had brought me.
— from Ravensdene Court by J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

In short, we can only have a plane film, or we shall only find a plane surface in our cell, when on either side thereof we have equal pressures or no pressure at all.
— from On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson