‘For indeed,’ he added, ‘we knew that they’d go away to-day, but not that they’d go so early, or so quietly.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

Nay better still, our heroic Parlement, getting suddenly enlightened on several things, declares that, for its part, it is incompetent to register Tax-edicts at all,—having done it by mistake, during these late centuries; that for such act one authority only is competent: the assembled Three Estates of the Realm!
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

[“Probing mortal hearts with cares.”—Virgil, Georg., i. 23.] ‘Twere pity that any part of their greatness should escape our sense and knowledge.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

I wish only to show that this is not incredible, and that the immense plates of baleen in the Greenland whale might have been developed from such lamellae by finely graduated steps, each of service to its possessor.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

Similarly, with a 253 certain parade of references to history and to out-of-the-way writers, he gave scant evidence of solid learning.
— from Studies in Contemporary Biography by Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount

He learnt from it that the writer had been constrained by Sir John Killigrew to give such evidence of Sir Oliver's conversion to Islam as had enabled the courts to pronounce Sir Oliver as one to be presumed dead at law, granting the succession to his half-brother, Master Lionel Tressilian.
— from The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini

But, as far as could be guessed, he suffered internally, and no effort made to relieve did him any good, so every one seemed to agree that it was much better to let him alone, or let him be moody in peace, hoping that in time the mood would change; but it changed not till the middle of that day, when, as Helen was sitting working in Lady Davenant’s room, while she was writing, two quick knocks were heard at the door.
— from Tales and Novels — Volume 10 Helen by Maria Edgeworth