"You will not if I can help it," says I. "Go on," says he, "or I'll have the divil making garters of your limbs tonight."
— from The Playboy of the Western World: A Comedy in Three Acts by J. M. (John Millington) Synge

With true greatness of soul, he only glanced at the wooden clock on the wall, and said in a perfectly calm but forcible manner: “Five and twenty minutes past eight, Winnie.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad

Stephen took his place silently on the step below the group of students, heedless of the rain which fell fast, turning his eyes towards her from time to time.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

What if in wild amazement, and affright, Or while we speak within the direfull grasp Of Savage hunger, or of Savage heat? Eld.
— from The Poetical Works of John Milton by John Milton

I had played a cautious but a winning game at Dresden, the result of which had been the gain of some hundreds of ducats, so I was able to start for Leipzig with a letter of credit for three thousand crowns on the banker Hohman, an intelligent old man of upwards of eighty.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

He had heard, he said, that no one had ever got a kingfisher's nest out perfect, and that the British Museum, or the Government, or somebody, had offered 100 pounds to any one who could bring them a nest and eggs not damaged.
— from Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes

One farewell look, and the door had closed upon her—the great gulf of separation had opened between us—the image of Laura Fairlie was a memory of the past already.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The captured Americans had barely been sent to quarters in convents and hospitals before a Quebec merchant sent them a gift of several hogsheads of porter.
— from Canada: the Empire of the North Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom by Agnes C. Laut

Then he overheard the voices of the Crows, and one of them was saying: "Aw, go on, shove him over."
— from The Dozen from Lakerim by Rupert Hughes

With all this, his knowledge of human, and especially of Biggar human nature, the ins and outs of its little secret ongoings, the entire gossip of the place, was like a woman's; moreover, every personage great or small, heroic or comic, in Homer—whose poems he made it a matter of conscience to read once every four years—Plautus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Tacitus, and Lucian, down through Boccaccio and Don Quixote, which he knew by heart and from the living Spanish, to Joseph Andrews, the Spectator, Goldsmith and Swift, Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Ferrier, Galt and Sir Walter—he was as familiar with as with David Crockat the nailer, or the parish minister, the town-drummer, the mole-catcher, or the poaching weaver, who had the night before leistered a prime kipper at Rachan Mill, by the flare of a tarry wisp, or brought home his surreptitious grey hen or maukin from the wilds of Dunsyre or the dreary Lang Whang.
— from Horae subsecivae. Rab and His Friends, and Other Papers by John Brown

For generations, outdoor sleeping has occasionally been used as a health measure in certain favorable climates and seasons.
— from How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science by Irving Fisher

That day, the moment my little boys went to school, I left my work, and, without waiting for gloves or shadows, hurried over the hills, not to see "that vile wretch," but to win a soul.
— from Stories Worth Rereading by Various

Little size and middle size and giant size, short and tall, slender and thick, broad-leafed, narrow-leafed, rough-barked, smooth-barked, dark green, bright green, one solid hue, or spangled or variegated with many-coloured flowers, trees that bore nuts, trees that bore fruit, and trees starkly idle and useless to a frugivorous folk!
— from The Wanderers by Mary Johnston

Security ushers ruin; proud contempt Of an enemy three parts vanquish'd, with desire And greediness of spoil, have often wrested A certain victory from the conqueror's gripe.
— from The Plays of Philip Massinger, Vol. I by Philip Massinger

Some were fantastically attired in short gowns, such as I imagine were worn by the dancing girls of sacred history, others had kirtles of a single bright color, others of many shades intermingled, while others still were dressed in gauze-like fabrics of pure white.
— from Etidorhpa; or, The End of Earth. The Strange History of a Mysterious Being and the Account of a Remarkable Journey by John Uri Lloyd