When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and she withdrew the handkerchief with which she had been hiding her face, her eyes met Dorothea's as helplessly as if they had been blue flowers.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Go and dine with Possano, as you are his accomplice in the horrible attempt he made to murder me.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Soon as I come out of the Mill to-night, I hastened to hear what was said of Stephen—for I know wi’ pride he will come back to shame it!—and then I went again to seek Mr. Bounderby, and I found him, and I told him every word I knew; and he believed no word I said, and brought me here.’
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

But their fate was still in their own hands; and if they had courage to despise the vain terrors of an impotent republic, it was easy to convince the world, that those who were masters of the arms, were masters of the authority, of the state.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

His sin was expiated,—the curse was gone from him; and in the hour when he had shed blood dearer to him than his own, a prayer, the first for years, went up to Heaven from the lips of Reuben Bourne.
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sometimes, too, he appeared in the habit of Venus.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

The nobleman commented briefly on these diverse kinds of love, but when he came to the love of God he began to soar, and I was greatly astonished to see Marcoline shedding tears, which she wiped away hastily as if to hide them from the sight of the worthy old man whom wine had made more theological than usual.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

That evening, when Amelia came tripping into the drawing-room in a white muslin frock, prepared for conquest at Vauxhall, singing like a lark, and as fresh as a rose—a very tall ungainly gentleman, with large hands and feet, and large ears, set off by a closely cropped head of black hair, and in the hideous military frogged coat and cocked hat of those times, advanced to meet her, and made her one of the clumsiest bows that was ever performed by a mortal.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Next, he wished to see a little of the working of a flour-mill, having an idea that he might combine the use of one with corn-growing.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out his pocketbook.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Maurice's habitual caution was, perhaps, on this occasion, a disadvantage to him, but he would have violated the rules of war, and what seemed the dictates of common sense, had he not secured a basis of operations, and a possibility of retreat, before plunging with his army into the heart of a hostile country.
— from History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce — Complete (1584-1609) by John Lothrop Motley

She was glad enough to leave her affairs in the hands of Messrs Stacey, Morris & Binns.
— from Miss Arnott's Marriage by Richard Marsh

He had an idea that he had met her before; he recognized that grave assured air of being worthy to be loved without the obligation of taking notice of the loving.
— from Slaves of Freedom by Coningsby Dawson

This morning it seems Susan, who I think is distracted, or however is since she went from me taught to drink, and so gets out of doors 2 or 3 times a day without leave to the alehouse, did go before 5 o'clock to-day, making Griffin rise in his shirt to let her out to the alehouse, she said to warm herself, but her mistress, falling out with her about it, turned her out of doors this morning, and so she is gone like an idle slut.
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 22: May/June 1663 by Samuel Pepys

[39] M. de Lamennais—the founder of the most religious school of thinkers in modern France, from whom such men as Count Montalembert, Père Lacordaire, and Maurice Guérin, drew their earliest inspiration—asks, "Do you know what it is that makes man the most suffering of all creatures?" and replies, "It is that he has one foot in the finite and the other in the infinite, and that he is torn asunder , not by four horses, as in the horrible old times, but between two worlds ."
— from Expositor's Bible: The Book of Ecclesiastes by Samuel Cox

The men were variously distributed, some on signal service, many as clerks at the various headquarters, assistants in the hospitals, teamsters, etc., thus materially weakening the regiment in point of numbers by these heavy details.
— from The Campaign of the Forty-fifth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia "The Cadet Regiment" by Charles Eustis Hubbard

I know that in spring the grass under the orange trees is spotted with purple flowers, and that crimson vetch incarnadines the hills, as though Lady Macbeth had dipped her little hand into their multitudinous green; the hedges bloom with rosemary and scarlet geranium, the banks with sweet pea and brilliant mesembryanthemum, and the rough places are full of asphodel; there are a few eucalyptus trees and now and then a solemn row of cypresses; we may pass a hut of grey thatch and perhaps a few horses or a sprinkling of tethered goats; sometimes we see a herd of bullocks tended by a boy who page 152 p. 152 has come out this morning in black sheep-skin leggings up to his hips, and I think he learnt his song from happy nightingales that set the April moonlight to music.
— from Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions by Henry Festing Jones

It was founded on a set of men whose chiefs he disgusted and displaced, without having obtained, without having even asked the consent or sounded the acquiescence of those who were to remain, and whose passions he had left to be worked upon by their several leaders: and, as if forgetting that the sole foundation of his own authority lay in his ascendant in the House of Commons, and in his popularity, he abandoned the one and risked the other; vainly presuming that he could dictate from the House of Peers, where he had no interest, and which required far different oratory from that in which his strength lay.
— from Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, Volume 2 (of 4) by Horace Walpole

If any of those twenty thousand exiles who have this year trod the weary way between Petersburg and Tomsk, and on again to the far-off districts of Siberia, should hear of the coming of this gentle woman, strong only in her love for them, I think it would kindle a spark of hope again in their hearts.
— from The Argosy Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 by Various

If a Wagogo hunter is unsuccessful, or is attacked by a lion, he attributes it to his wife’s misbehaviour at home, and returns to her in great wrath.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer