A woman was standing at her garden gate, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking eagerly up the road.
— from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

from the King and the Army, for fifteen or sixteen months’ interest; out of which he gains soundly, his expense being about L130,000 per annum; and hath no trouble in it, compared, as I told him, to the trouble I must have to bring in an account of interest.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Suelta, suéltame esa mano, Let go, let go of my hand, que aun queda el último grano for the last grain still hangs en el reló de mi vida.
— from Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla

Kamala felt it, her gaze sought his eyes.
— from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Once on the ground, she hardly ever rises spontaneously into the air."
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

When they entered the library they found the earl sitting in his usual place, and engaged in his usual evening occupation, which he sometimes called "the hard labor of doing nothing;" for, though he was busy enough in the daytime with a young man he had as secretary—his faithful old friend, Mr. Mearns, having lately died—still, he generally spent his evenings alone.
— from A Noble Life by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

In later times the beautiful dramatic poem of The Gentle Shepherd has exhibited rusticity without vulgarity, and elegant sentiment without affectation.
— from The Gentle Shepherd: A Pastoral Comedy by Allan Ramsay

As Pinkerton's incognito was strict, I had little opportunity to cultivate the lady's acquaintance; but I was informed afterwards that she considered me “the wittiest gentleman she had ever met.”
— from The Wrecker by Robert Louis Stevenson

The gamester shakes his elbow, and down go the glorious oak trees planted two hundred years ago, by some ancestor who loved the fresh smell o' the woods—away go—if entail does no forbid—thousands o' bonny braid acres, ance a' ae princely estate, but now shivered down into beggarly parshels, while the Auld House seems broken-hearted, and hangs down its head, when the infatuated laird dies or shoots himself.
— from Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards by William Andrew Chatto

George shuts his eyes tight at that sort of talk—but at the same time he thinks: Humbug!
— from Within the Tides: Tales by Joseph Conrad

Even the pasture land quite close to the town affords an unspeakably lovely view; gently sloping hills, either planted with homely trees or vines, or ploughed for corn, look down on pleasant valleys in which grow crops, or green fields are to be seen, and brooks are even flowing.
— from The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times by Alfred Biese

Here it is joined by the Maluti Mountains, a range which, bisecting the domains of the Basuto, and traversing them with its great spurs, has earned for the little state the title of the South African Switzerland.
— from History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government by Great Britain. War Office

With these words, the speaker tapped himself on the waistcoat to intimate that he was the Jem Groves so highly eulogized; sparred scientifically at a counterfeit Jem Groves, who was sparring at society in general from a black frame over the chimney-piece; and, applying a half-emptied glass of spirits and water to his lips, drank Jem Groves’s health.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

Gregory, suffocating, his eyes starting from their sockets, his mouth dribbling blood and froth, struggled with supreme desperation for the pistol.
— from Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas by Lloyd Osbourne