Day after day she shows him to me kneeling at her feet, pursuing her like her shadow.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

So the sensation dies off for the time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost child and a murder.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Young Ithacus advanced, defies the foe, Poising his lifted lance in act to throw; The savage renders vain the wound decreed, And springs impetuous with opponent speed!
— from The Odyssey by Homer

How many such impostors, false prophets, have lived in every king's reign?
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

"It simply means that some very careless and forgetful person has left his door-scraper lying about in the middle of the Wild Wood, just where it's sure to trip everybody up.
— from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

But one day at table with the duke and duchess, just as he was about to carry his resolution into effect and ask for their permission, lo and behold suddenly there came in through the door of the great hall two women, as they afterwards proved to be, draped in mourning from head to foot, one of whom approaching Don Quixote flung herself at full length at his feet, pressing her lips to them, and uttering moans so sad, so deep, and so doleful that she put all who heard and saw her into a state of perplexity; and though the duke and duchess supposed it must be some joke their servants were playing off upon Don Quixote, still the earnest way the woman sighed and moaned and wept puzzled them and made them feel uncertain, until Don Quixote, touched with compassion, raised her up and made her unveil herself and remove the mantle from her tearful face.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

As she led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the DISJECTA MEMBRA of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the neighbourhood; and before the doorstep at which she finally paused he looked up with an air of incredulous disgust.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Frank placed her little stand by her, with the German lamp upon it, in the way she liked to have it, and she read as follows:— THE BIRTHDAY.
— from Two Festivals by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen

He has addressed a scathing letter to the Telegraph , or rather released for publication his letter of resignation, which is a remarkable summing-up of the position.
— from H. P. Blavatsky; A Great Betrayal by Alice Leighton Cleather

"Is it small wonder that, though ill-feeling against the Earl of Brockelsby may have been deep, there was hatred, bitter, deadly hatred against the man who with false promises had led him into so hopeless a quagmire?
— from The Old Man in the Corner by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness

but no clothes, no books, no Cook, no Conway's portrait yet for poor H. L. P. Cook, books, and clothes were still in the Port of Bristol, as Mrs. Pennington writes on the 29th, waiting, as it appeared, for the captain to make up his freight; and might then be expected to take from four days to a fortnight—according to the wind—to make Penzance.
— from The Intimate Letters of Hester Piozzi and Penelope Pennington, 1788-1821 by Penelope Pennington

He had not [Pg 81] kept his wind; I flew past him like a whirlwind.
— from Miss Cayley's Adventures by Grant Allen

The problem or the parts of problems upon which the inquiry of an individual man is concentrated are often much narrower than the problems that occupied Faraday or Dalton, and yet the hard and fast lines that once divided physicist from chemist, or botanist from pathologist have long since gone.
— from An Englishman Looks at the World Being a Series of Unrestrained Remarks upon Contemporary Matters by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Then up to the fort rode a troop of dashing cavalry from Fort Prescott, Hank Leeson beside them, and every horse covered with foam.
— from Boys of The Fort; Or, A Young Captain's Pluck by Edward Stratemeyer

It was a paragraph on an inside page, modest and moderate enough in itself—for the frontier press has learned to know the army and not to defame it—but it stirred a sensation at Minneconjou its editor refused to start in town.
— from A Soldier's Trial: An Episode of the Canteen Crusade by Charles King

An earnest desire to procure tranquillity to the frontier, to stop the further effusion of blood, to arrest the progress of expense, to forward the prevalent wish of the nation for peace has led to strenuous efforts through various channels to accomplish these desirable purposes; in making which efforts I consulted less my own anticipations of the event, or the scruples which some considerations were calculated to inspire, than the wish to find the object attainable, or if not attainable, to ascertain unequivocally that such is the case.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

He was far more angry than he showed, for policy had laid a soft hand of reminder on his shoulder.
— from The Mormon Prophet by L. (Lily) Dougall