It was to him as if light streamed from her, and dazzled his eyes; but then he had only just opened them, as he awoke from his sleep.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

The great spider was lying asleep when the Lion found him, and it looked so ugly that its foe turned up his nose in disgust.
— from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model.
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

Then her teacher calls her an incorrigible little sermonizer, and she laughs at herself.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

On one occasion after the overture in question had been played, I heard an Italian lady say, with her eyes half closed, in a way in which female Wagnerites are adepts: " Come si dorme con questa musica! "
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap came off and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the splash subsided, I could see him and Israel lying side by side, both wavering with the tremulous movement of the water.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Very, very slowly, in that special half hour an inscrutable little smile printed itself experimentally across the right hand corner of the Senior Surgeon's upper lip.
— from The White Linen Nurse by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

If, therefore, he were at this time out of health and in low spirits, his power of self-comman
— from Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume V. by Walter Scott

Then something happened and I lost sight of her.
— from Winnie Childs, the Shop Girl by A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson

But what is the edging of blacker smoke that hangs along its lower side, and which you may trace down into the thicket of hazel? ’
— from Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 by Charles Herbert Sylvester

“In the full grown male the bill is about half an inch long, straight, somewhat blunt, broad and flat at the base.
— from The Natural History of Cage Birds Their Management, Habits, Food, Diseases, Treatment, Breeding, and the Methods of Catching Them. by Johann Matthäus Bechstein

In the meantime his uncle had died; and he found himself, on his arrival in London, so destitute even of a friend to whom he could refer for a recommendation, that he with difficulty obtained first the place of an usher to a school, and afterwards that of assistant in the laboratory of a chemist.
— from Lives of the English Poets From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's Lives by Henry Francis Cary