it has all fled, like a gibbering troop of ghosts, like the phantasms of a dying brain!
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

That's the boy; see him kick; he hits out with his fists like a good one.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

The menace is that when the education and liberty necessary to human existence are denied by Spain to the Filipinos, then they will seek [ 97 ] enlightenment abroad, behind the mother country’s back, or they will secure by hook or by crook some advantages in their own country, with the result that the opposition of purblind and paretic politicians will not only be futile but even prejudicial, because it will convert motives for love and gratitude into resentment and hatred.
— from The Philippines a Century Hence by José Rizal

At length, she advised me to put an advertisement, myself, in the paper, stating my qualifications, &c. ‘Music, singing, drawing, French, Latin, and German,’ said she, ‘are no mean assemblage: many will be glad to have so much in one instructor; and this time, you shall try your fortune in a somewhat higher family in that of some genuine, thoroughbred gentleman; for such are far more likely to treat you with proper respect and consideration than those purse-proud tradespeople and arrogant upstarts.
— from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

And Sir Agrabaine wedded Dame Laurel, a fair lady and great, and mighty lands with great riches gave with them King Arthur, that royally they might live till their lives' end.
— from Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Malory, Thomas, Sir

In the centre of the tavern was a partition like that in a Jewish school; one portion, divided into long and narrow rooms, was reserved exclusively for ladies and gentlemen who were travelling; the other formed one immense hall.
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

His intellectual content seemed to submit passively to it, and it fitted like a glove everything that had ever preceded it in his life.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

However, I had read “Tom Jones,” and “Roderick Random,” and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in England had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk implies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our own nineteenth century—in which century, broadly speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverable in English history—or in European history, for that matter—may be said to have made their appearance.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Come, shelter, shelter: I have remov’d Falstaff’s horse, and he frets like a gumm’d velvet.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world.
— from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

"That's why," he said, "the devil is painted with horns and feet like a goat's, because he is the brute element in man."
— from The Confession: A Novel by Maksim Gorky

‘The wicked,’ observed Selina, ‘flourish like a green bay tree.’
— from Madame Midas by Fergus Hume

I know exactly what you all are now thinking of; whether you will draw the prize in the forthcoming lottery, and get exactly the epoch and the character which suit you.
— from Tancred; Or, The New Crusade by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

Mrs. Vand stood at the window yelling, and clapping her hands like a fiend, and the whole vast fields of wheat flared like a gigantic bonfire.
— from The Solitary Farm by Fergus Hume

Looking into a shop, I saw a stout fellow sewing lace on a bonnet for a foreign lady; and going on to the landing-place, behold, all the ferry-boats were rowed by women, and from a passage-boat at the wharf
— from The Middle Kingdom, Volume 1 (of 2) A Survey of the Geography, Government, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese Empire and its Inhabitants by S. Wells (Samuel Wells) Williams

It also has a large agricultural sector featuring livestock and grain.
— from The 2008 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

“I was trying to imagine,” he continued, seeing her blush and hang her head, “how you would look in silks and velvets; got up, in fact, like a grand demoiselle.
— from Matt: A Story of A Caravan by Robert Williams Buchanan