The dawn breaks and spreads, the news of the storm goes about the house, and the little and the big, in wraps and blankets, flock to the window and press together there, and gaze intently out upon the great white ghost in the grounds, and nobody says a word, nobody stirs.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

On the table were a few books, a large, square, crystal bottle of some novel perfume, a plain ground-glass astral (not solar) lamp with an Italian shade, and a large vase of resplendently-blooming flowers.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

If what is foiled in me is really poetic genius and not simply a tendency toward perpetual motion, it would not help me if in heaven, in lieu of my dreamt-of epics, I were allowed to beget several robust children.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

“Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of the Guards?” asked Napoleon sternly.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Having sought and obtained an audience of the superintendent during the noontide recreation, I told her I had a prospect of getting a new situation where the salary would be double what I now received (for at Lowood I only got £15 per annum); and requested she would break the matter for me to Mr. Brocklehurst, or some of the committee, and ascertain whether they would permit me to mention them as references.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

neptia ; in the place of Lat. neptis , a granddaughter, a niece; see BH, § 32.
— from A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 by A. L. (Anthony Lawson) Mayhew

His career as a secret agent had come to an end in a way no one could have foreseen; only, now, perhaps he could manage to get a night’s sleep at last.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad

His emergence in the financial, political and social spheres has been so complete and spectacular since the war, that his place, power and purpose in the world are being given a new scrutiny, much of it unfriendly.
— from The International Jew : The World's Foremost Problem by Anonymous

You know I'm no good, and never shall do anything in the world.
— from A True Friend: A Novel by Adeline Sergeant

“There's nothing to be good ABOUT now, silly,” said Peter.
— from The Railway Children by E. (Edith) Nesbit

Fritz, in the meantime, had had two or three trials how his new fox (which he had actually found on the table) could gallop; and now stated that he seemed a wildish sort of brute; but, no matter, he felt sure he would soon get him well in order; and he set to work to muster his new squadron of hussars, admirably equipped, in red and gold uniforms, with real silver swords, and mounted on such shining white horses that you would have thought they were of pure silver too.
— from The Serapion Brethren, Vol. I. by E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus) Hoffmann

Since then, her memory is wholly faded out and gone; and now she writes letters to the school-mates who had been dead forty years, and wonders why they neglect her and do not answer.
— from Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 4 (1886-1900) by Mark Twain

His armour was rent and gashed, and no sword was in the scabbard at his side, and his helm was gone, and now as he fell a bandage slipped from his arm, and slowly the red stream from a great wound ran among the sweet sedges wherewith the floor was strewn.
— from King Olaf's Kinsman A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in the Days of Ironside and Cnut by Charles W. (Charles Watts) Whistler

Unless each step he criticizes, The step as good as no step he will call.
— from Faust; a Tragedy, Translated from the German of Goethe by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Our fare was good, although not so good, perhaps, as it ought to have been, in return for the enormous cost; and I liked the few companions with whom I most commonly mixed.
— from Shelley at Oxford by Thomas Jefferson Hogg

I think I see him now as he wished us good-night—a resplendent figure in his green embroidered coat, his crimson and gold waistcoat, his dark blue knickerbockers, white gaiters and new sandals, bowing himself backwards through the little door with simple dignity, his tall lean form slightly bent by age—a splendid type of the Montenegrin of the old regime.
— from Through the Land of the Serb by M. E. (Mary Edith) Durham

Coordinates, in projective Geometry, are not spatial magnitudes, but convenient names for points 118 106.
— from An essay on the foundations of geometry by Bertrand Russell

Your old, fallen walls shall get a new name, and the gates of your Jerusalem shall get a new style.
— from Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Third Edition) by Samuel Rutherford

Dr. G., who has charge of the editorial department of one of the most extensively circulated magazines in the United States, says translations from French and German are not so well liked in magazines as original matter, and anything to be translated for his magazine he does as a recreation from more serious duties.
— from The Employments of Women: A Cyclopædia of Woman's Work by Virginia Penny