Several times, when fortune pressed most harshly, he thought he would end his troubles; but with a change of weather, or the arrival of a quarter or a dime, his mood would change, and he would wait.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

Again and again he recurred to the fact that if he could be assured that society was freed from Professor Moriarty he would cheerfully bring his own career to a conclusion.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

I bent down to his face, put my hand through the rent in his blouse.
— from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

A very few particulars may have been borrowed from Zaleucus (Cic. de Legibus), and Charondas, who is said to have first made laws against perjury (Arist.
— from Laws by Plato

This feat pleased me highly, as his body was very heavy, and it took all my strength to drag him half a mile.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

Do you, in the first place, mind her breaking with Vyse?” “Mr. Beebe, I’m thankful—simply thankful.”
— from A Room with a View by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

My dear father was a little uneasy about his habit, for appearing at chapel next day, because of Misses Darnford and the servants, for fear, poor man, he should disgrace my master; and he told me, when he was mentioning this, of my master's kind present of twenty guineas for clothes, for you both; which made my heart truly joyful.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

It won't cost much, and I'd rather have those fearless practical men here than all the rubes you could deputise.
— from The Daughter of Anderson Crow by George Barr McCutcheon

He said 12 per cent; then I found out how I had 193.png Pg 177 exchanged my money, and for paper money he didn’t take any per cent.
— from The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Volume 1, 1917-1918 by Various

Whatever Walpole's final purposes may have been, there was nothing to alarm any one in the scheme which he was presently to introduce.
— from A History of the Four Georges, Volume I by Justin McCarthy

We were beyond British ground, on the opposite bank, [ 151 ] where any one guiding Europeans is threatened with punishment: we had expected a guide to follow us, but his non-appearance caused us to delay for some hours; four roads, or rather forest paths, meeting here, all of which were difficult to find.
— from Himalayan Journals — Complete Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc. by Joseph Dalton Hooker

He thanked me with easy politeness for this trifling favour, praised my horse, and then took occasion to extol the happiness and the power of the rich, and fell, I scarcely know how, into a sort of conversation with himself, in which I merely acted the part of listener.
— from The Marvellous History of the Shadowless Man, and The Cold Heart by Adelbert von Chamisso

"In the first place, monsieur," he said, "disabuse your mind of the idea that when monsieur your secretary went out to fetch Señor Herrera that night, Señor Herrera didn't know to whose rooms he was coming.
— from An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay by Grant Allen

Mother says we can’t make it a mere surprise party, for people must have real food, and I think it would be more pleasure to all of us than presents and knicknacks.”
— from Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

It was a great consolation, truly, to me, to know that I held the place, in his household, of a piece of furniture, a block; that my kingdom lay among the kitchen utensils, the accessories of my toilet, and the physicians’ prescriptions; that our conjugal love had been assimilated to dinner pills, to veal soup and white mustard; that Madame de Fischtaminel possessed my husband’s soul, his admiration, and that she charmed and satisfied his intellect, while I was a kind of purely physical necessity!
— from Petty Troubles of Married Life, Complete by Honoré de Balzac