Why is that? I am a poet, madam, a poet in soul, and might be getting a thousand roubles at a time from a publisher, yet I am forced to live in a pig pail.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We have got at the right address at last, though it is written in strange characters truly, and might have been scrawled with the blunt handle of the spade the writer better knows the use of, than a pen.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

He glanced about the room, and the thought of packing was burdensome.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London

The Epping men told them again, that they, indeed, said they were sound and free from the infection, but that they had no assurance of it; and that it was reported that there had been a great rabble of people at Walthamstow, who made such pretences of being sound as they did, but that they threatened to plunder the town and force their way, whether the parish officers would or no; that there were near two hundred of them, and had arms and tents like Low Country soldiers; that they extorted provisions from the town, by threatening them with living upon them at free quarter, showing their arms, and talking in the language of soldiers; and that several of them being gone away toward Rumford and Brentwood, the country had been infected by them, and the plague spread into both those large towns, so that the people durst not go to market there as usual; that it was very likely they were some of that party; and if so, they deserved to be sent to the county jail, and be secured till they had made satisfaction for the damage they had done, and for the terror and fright they had put the country into.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

"Thy pleasant gardens which were round about thee; ... the ravenous wolf hath gnawn at the roots, and the trees can yield thee no fruit.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole

We may add, that the soul can the more easily escape from this air, which I have often named, and break 28 through it, because nothing is swifter than the soul; no swiftness is comparable to the swiftness of the soul, which, should it remain uncorrupt and without alteration, must necessarily be carried on with such velocity as to penetrate and divide all this atmosphere, where clouds, and rain, and winds are formed, which, in consequence of the exhalations from the earth, is moist and dark: but, when the soul has once got above this region, and falls in with, and recognizes, a nature like its own, it then rests upon fires composed of a combination of thin air and a moderate solar heat, and does not aim at any higher flight; for then, after it has attained a lightness and heat resembling its own, it moves no more, but remains steady, being balanced, as it were, between two equal weights.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

On reaching a spot of open ground alongside the road, and near the shore of the lake, the carriage stopped.
— from The Free Lances: A Romance of the Mexican Valley by Mayne Reid

Neither do they threaten all equally, nor any of them peremptorily, 'But that continuing after the publication of this their declaration, obstinately and habitually in these courses (plainly declaring they intended no hurt to them if they would hold up their hands) they would repute them as enemies to God and the reformation, and punish them as such, according to their power, and the degree of their offence; withal leaving room for civil and ecclesiastical satisfaction, before lawful and settled judicatories, for the offences of such persons, as their power may nor reach,' &c.
— from A Hind Let Loose Or, An Historical Representation of the Testimonies of the Church of Scotland for the Interest of Christ. With the True State Thereof in All Its Periods by Alexander Shields

I saw even him start at the suddenness of the thing—he raised his head upright, still glancing down over the front of the crag, with the spread hand lifted, and the side of his face half-turned toward the party within earshot behind, where the Governor and the rest apparently kept together out of respect, no doubt watching both Napoleon's back and the ship of war far beyond.
— from The Green Hand: Adventures of a Naval Lieutenant by George Cupples

They first set to work to get the rocket-stands and rockets up to the embankment; and very fatiguing work it was to the men, for they had to carry them through a swamp, into which they sank up to their knees, and then a considerable distance over rough and uneven ground, among thick reeds and brushwood.
— from Our Sailors: Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign by William Henry Giles Kingston

Then my wife did fix her looks in the direction they ran; and sure enough she saw, apparently quite close beyond the line formed by the rising ground above the rocks, a huge serpent, gliding gracefully through the waves, having evidently performed the action of turning round.
— from The Romance of Natural History, Second Series by Philip Henry Gosse

The man, however, did not even glance at the ruin at his feet.
— from The Road to Understanding by Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

Relieve the water as you go along, then rebandage, and by the third application you will have removed most of the water from the extremities.
— from Anatomy and Embalming A Treatise on the Science and Art of Embalming, the Latest and Most Successful Methods of Treatment and the General Anatomy Relating to this Subject by Albert John Nunnamaker

"Now, gentlemen," cried Quimbleton, "though we follow a lost cause, and even though the gooseberry and the raisin and the apple be doomed, let us see it through with gallantry!
— from In the Sweet Dry and Dry by Bart Haley