Guests are so exceedingly rare in this house that I and my dogs, I am willing to own, hardly know how to receive them.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The inn at Burford Bridge, with its arbours and green garden and silent, eddying river—though it is known already as the place where Keats wrote some of his Endymion and Nelson parted from his Emma—still seems to wait the coming of the appropriate legend.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

Because your own heart is good!” cried the ecstatic old gentleman, and, strangely enough, real tears glistened in his eyes.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For the truth is that there are many causes of the dissolution of states; which, like ships or animals, have their cords, and girders, and sinews easily relaxed, and nothing tends more to their welfare and preservation than the supervision of them by examiners who are better than the magistrates; failing in this they fall to pieces, and each becomes many instead of one.
— from Laws by Plato

I’ll go and see everything ready to give ’em a warm reception when they comes alongside.”
— from A Middy in Command: A Tale of the Slave Squadron by Harry Collingwood

Hugh rose from his seat, and walked twice across the room, then shook his head with a grieved and sorrowful expression, replying, "Ashby, you are wrong; but I, on my part, must say no word to shake your resolution.
— from Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

A stranger closed the eyes that settled into a cold unmeaning glare, and strange ears received the words that murmured from the white and half-closed lips.
— from Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People by Charles Dickens

Those whom we have ever seen radiant in health, in liveliness, in joy—so full of buoyancy and hope, they seem as if formed for sunshine alone, as if they could not live in the darkening clouds of woe or care; whose pleasures have been pure and innocent as their own bright beauty; who are as yet unknown to the whispering of inwardly working sin; full of love and gentleness, and sympathy, ever ready to weep for others, though for themselves tears are unknown; creatures, whose warm enthusiastic feelings bind them to every heart capable of generous emotions; those in whom we see life most beautified, most glad.
— from The Mother's Recompense, Volume 2 A Sequel to Home Influence by Grace Aguilar

“Then they have got another sub!” exclaimed Rawlins.
— from The Radio Detectives Under the Sea by A. Hyatt (Alpheus Hyatt) Verrill

“Gatesboro’ Arms,” “Spread Eagle,” “Royal Hotel,” “Saracen’s Head; very comfortable, centre of High Street, opposite the Town Hall,”—were shouted, bawled, whispered, or whined into his ear.
— from What Will He Do with It? — Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

And since his return, the said friar has published the statement that he came within sight of the said country, which I deny that he has either seen or discovered; but instead, in all that the said friar reports that he has seen, he only repeats the account I had given him regarding the information which I obtained from the Indians of the said country of Santa Cruz, because everything which the said friar says that he discovered is just the same as what these said Indians had told me: and in enlarging upon this and in pretending to report what he neither saw nor learned, the said Friar Marcos does nothing new, because he has done this many other times, and this was his regular habit, as is notorious in the provinces of Peru and Guatemala; and sufficient evidence regarding this will be given to the court whenever it is necessary.”
— from The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542. Excerpted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1892-1893, Part 1. by George Parker Winship

Hence we may observe, that, in all free governments, any subject exorbitantly rich has always created jealousy, even though his riches bore no proportion to those of the state.
— from Essays by David Hume