As Mr Headstone's wife you would be occupying a most respectable station, and you would be holding a far better place in society than you hold now, and you would at length get quit of the river-side and the old disagreeables belonging to it, and you would be rid for good of dolls' dressmakers and their drunken fathers, and the like of that.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

There were one or two, however, who were very strange-looking creatures, with flushed faces and extraordinary clothes; some were military men; not all were quite young; one or two were middle-aged gentlemen of decidedly disagreeable appearance, men who are avoided in society like the plague, decked out in large gold studs and rings, and magnificently “got up,” generally.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Alas!” replied the Castilian, “that justice is no longer done to the wretched Zelos; his honours are blasted, and his reputation canker-bitten by the venomous tooth of slander.” He then proceeded to unfold his misfortunes, as they have already been explained in the former part of these memoirs; at the recapitulation of which, the heart of Melvil, being intendered by his own calamities, was so deeply affected, that he re-echoed the groans of Don Diego, and wept over his sufferings with the most filial sympathy.
— from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. (Tobias) Smollett

To Professor Jevons is due the great credit of having emphatically pointed out[ 16 ] how the genius of discovery depends altogether on the number of these random notions and guesses which visit the investigator's mind.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James

He had entitled the story “Adventure,” and it was the apotheosis of adventure—not of the adventure of the storybooks, but of real adventure, the savage taskmaster, awful of punishment and awful of reward, faithless and whimsical, demanding terrible patience and heartbreaking days and nights of toil, offering the blazing sunlight glory or dark death at the end of thirst and famine or of the long drag and monstrous delirium of rotting fever, through blood and sweat and stinging insects leading up by long chains of petty and ignoble contacts to royal culminations and lordly achievements.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London

A sitter varies very much in the impression he gives on different days, and the artist must in the early sittings, when his mind is fresh, select the aspect he means to paint and afterwards work largely to the memory of this.
— from The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed

Our country gods, the relics, and the bands, Hold you, my father, in your guiltless hands: In me ’tis impious holy things to bear, Red as I am with slaughter, new from war, Till in some living stream I cleanse the guilt Of dire debate, and blood in battle spilt.’
— from The Aeneid by Virgil

Hilary, in the gush of youthful spirits and promotion; in the glow of duty done and lofty standard satisfied; through all the pride of money paid by the nation he belonged to; and even the glory of saying good things in a language slightly known to him;—Hilary caught from time to time those grand reproachful eyes, and felt that they quite spoiled his dinner.
— from Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore

'Kiah Morse was no advocate for your dozy, drawling singing, that one may do at leisure, between sleeping and waking, I assure you; indeed, he got entirely out of the graces of Deacon Dundas and one or two other portly, leisurely old gentlemen below, who had been used to throw back their heads, shut up their eyes, and take the comfort of the psalm, by prolonging indefinitely all the notes.
— from The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings by Harriet Beecher Stowe

[26] Sir W. Codrington, who acted with great gallantry at the Alma, and who proved himself a most careful and excellent Brigadier and a zealous General of Division, denied at the time, in a letter which came under my notice, that he was at all discomposed by the untoward events of the 8th of September.
— from The British Expedition to the Crimea by Russell, William Howard, Sir

Some minds go wool gathering or day dreaming, and flit from one thing to another in a desultory manner.
— from How to Study by George Fillmore Swain

By the time these remarks have been made the steward is on the deck again, and dinner is ready: and about two hours after dinner comes tea; and then there is brandy-and-water, which he eagerly presses as a preventive against what may happen; and about this time you pass the Foreland, the wind blowing pretty fresh; and the groups on deck disappear, and your wife, giving you an alarmed look, descends, with her little ones, to the ladies’ cabin, and you see the steward and his boys issuing from their den under the paddle-box, with each a heap of round tin vases, like those which are called, I believe, in America, expectoratoons , only these are larger.
— from The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book by William Makepeace Thackeray

Thus it continued until he became a mere ghost of dead days, an occasional, living reminder of an ancient system of education or method of class-room work long since relegated to that dusty storehouse where are heaped "old things" that have served their usefulness, flung aside to make room for papier maché manikins and varnished maps of pasteboard with the mountains raised to scale and the winding streams indented.
— from Ann Arbor Tales by Karl Edwin Harriman

The police-inspector asked a few questions and then made a search of the room which resulted in the discovery of quite sufficient proof of the guilt of Deede Dawson and of Walter Dunsmore.
— from The Bittermeads Mystery by E. R. (Ernest Robertson) Punshon

she got ober dem dying a'rs, and jumped as high as a hopper-grass.
— from The Wit of Women Fourth Edition by Kate Sanborn