His face was ashy pale, beads of perspiration shone upon his brow, and his hands shook until the hunting-crop wagged like a branch in the wind.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

See where she comes, and brings your froward wives As prisoners to her womanly persuasion.
— from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

" For that in naming his father's house he does not mean that of his immediate father, but that of Aaron, who first was appointed priest, to be succeeded by others descended from him, is shown by the
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

But, in order to leave him such free wages, after paying such a tax, the price of labour must, in that place, soon rise, not to twelve shillings a week only, but to twelve and sixpence; that is, in order to enable him to pay a tax of one-fifth, his wages must necessarily soon rise, not one-fifth part only, but one-fourth.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

“When my father, with a pistol in his hand, was once on the point of committing suicide, had anyone then said, ‘This man deserves his misery,’ would not that person have been deceived?” “Yes; but your father was not allowed to fall.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

The sliding doors also had windows, furnished with a paper slide to exclude cold, and another covered with gauze to keep out the dust while letting in the air.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

He observed while he was on board the Admirall, when the fleete was at Portsmouth, that there was a faction there.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Father was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy business behind him, which mother carried on with Mr. Hardy, the foreman; but when Mr. Windibank came he made her sell the business, for he was very superior, being a traveller in wines.
— from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

At that Alsi's face went ashy pale, and I did not rightly know why at the time, but it seemed more in anger than aught else.
— from Havelok the Dane A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln by Charles W. (Charles Watts) Whistler

Mr Mitchell was the sort of man who never knows, after twenty years' intimate friendship, whether a person takes sugar or not.
— from Love at Second Sight by Ada Leverson

The city of Brussels, with its fine houses and noble churches, its famous hôtel-de-ville, and 350 fountains, was a pleasant town to live in.
— from Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan and Lorraine, 1522-1590 by Julia Cartwright

Do you know, Furlong, that when we approached them first with a proposition for a renewal for a hundred and fifty years they held us up!
— from Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich by Stephen Leacock

The products of that period compare favourably with any potters' work in the world.
— from The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg

Can Oxford that did ever fence the right Now buckler falsehood with a pedigree?
— from The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth by William Shakespeare

I could see that from this moment he would be filled with a passionate pity ever so little qualified by a sense of the girl’s fatuity and folly.
— from Embarrassments by Henry James

The last statement was made simultaneously with the first notes of a song which floated out through the opened French windows, and proved to Mr. Neuchamp—a fair connoisseur—that his hostess had a fresh, true, soprano voice, and rather unusual execution.
— from A Colonial Reformer, Vol. 1 (of 3) by Rolf Boldrewood

The better future which Americans propose to build is nothing if not an idea which must in certain essential respects emancipate them from their past.
— from The Promise of American Life by Herbert David Croly