Whenas he knew that all were asleep and it seemed to him time either to give effect to his desire or to make his way by high emprise
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

Farewell gayety, ease, those happy turns of expressions, which formerly even made my faults escape correction.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

But as such multitudes of those very officers died through whose hands it was distributed, and also that, as I have been told, most of the accounts of those things were lost in the great fire which happened in the very next year, and which burnt even the chamberlain's office and many of their papers, so I could never come at the particular account, which I used great endeavours to have seen.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

Every ideal, before it could be embodied, had to pre-exist in some other embodiment; but as when the ultimate purpose of the cosmos is considered it seems to lie beyond any given embodiment, the highest ideal must somehow exist disembodied.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Rose Waterford cast down her eyes demurely to give greater effect to her reply.
— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

Then, knowing that it rested with him alone to tell, he proceeded: "Gentle ladies mine, it appeareth to me that this day hath been given up to Kings and Soldans and the like folk; wherefore, that I may not remove overfar from you, I purpose to relate to you of a marquess, not an act of magnificence, but a monstrous folly, which, albeit good ensued to him thereof in the end, I counsel not any to imitate, for it was a thousand pities that weal betided him thereof.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

The Representative Gambon exclaimed to him,— "Now then, speak, M. Dupin, the Left does not interrupt you.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

And Nadenka is sympathetically distressed on my account, but the conviction that a man passionately in love with her is sitting opposite is obviously a source of the greatest enjoyment to her.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Azuma-zi, however, shirked the discussion of his gods, even though he was kicked for it.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

“Be good enough to hurry yourself a little, monsieur monk.”
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised narrative, partly from curiosity, and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate, if it were in my power.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

He had not met in all the journey a better locality for the study of glacial effects than here.
— from Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence by Louis Agassiz

The chapelmaster appears, upon pretty good evidence, to have removed hither from the Fischer house in the Rheingasse, where he is said to have lived many years and even to have carried on a trade in wine, which change of dwelling may have taken place in 1767.
— from The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume I by Alexander Wheelock Thayer

The authorities did not entirely prohibit duelling until the use of foils as a recreation gave encouragement to hostile encounters.
— from Non-Criminal Prisons English Debtor's Prisons and Prisons of War; French War Prisons; American War Prisons with References to Those of Other Lands by Arthur Griffiths

But while Bippo and Pedros were more anxious than ever to leave the section with its dreadful memories behind them, neither dare give expression to his thoughts, and the German and American were not made of the stuff which yields when first exposed to the fire.
— from The Land of Mystery by Edward Sylvester Ellis

Among the works ascribed to Musaeus he held that nothing was genuine except the hymn to Demeter composed for the Lycomids; some of the verses which passed under the name of Musaeus he set down as forgeries of Onomacritus.
— from Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History Selected from His Commentary on Pausanias' 'Description of Greece,' by James George Frazer

When the large circle within the walls was filled with the swaying crowd, and while the buzz of expectation hummed around, the blast of a trumpet was suddenly heard, and, with a loud bang, the wooden gates flew open, and in cantered, with lashing tail and glowing eye, the heavy form of the bull.
— from The Sunny South: An Autumn in Spain and Majorca by John William Clayton

By it the whole of my property goes to Gerald, excepting three hundred a year to Julia, and the same amount yearly to yourself."
— from A Woman's Burden: A Novel by Fergus Hume

On March 4, 1912, a colored girl entered the hallway with a white man.
— from Commercialized Prostitution in New York City by George J. (George Jackson) Kneeland