It was quite dark when they reached home, and they entered the house in much trepidation, fearing a volley of angry words from Mrs. Colwyn.
— from A True Friend: A Novel by Adeline Sergeant

‘“So I take the privilidge of the day, Mary, my dear—as the gen’l’m’n in difficulties did, ven he valked out of a Sunday—to tell you that the first and only time I see you, your likeness was took on my hart in much quicker time and brighter colours than ever a likeness was took by the profeel macheen (wich p’raps you may have heerd on Mary my dear) altho it does finish a portrait and put the frame and glass on complete, with a hook at the end to hang it up by, and all in two minutes and a quarter.”’
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

As Emily St. Aubert was not only the nearest, but the sole relative, this legacy descended to her, and thus explained to her the whole mystery of her father's conduct.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

When a man, aspiring to be a philosopher, advances the doctrine that not only is "Life in its simplest form"—the animal life—"the correspondence of certain inner physico-chemical actions with certain outer physico-chemical actions," but that " each advance to a higher form of Life consists in a better preservation of this primary correspondence"; and when, proceeding further, and to be explicit, he asserts that not only "the physical," but also "the psychical life are equally " but "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations"; and when, still further to insult man, and to utter his insult in the most positive, extreme, and unmistakable terms, he asserts "that even the highest achievements of science are resolvable into mental relations of coexistence and sequence, so coördinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of coexistence and sequence that occur externally,"—that is, that the highest science is the attainment of a perfect cuisine; in a word, when a human being in this nineteenth century offers to his fellows as the loftiest attainment of philosophy the tenet that the highest form of life cognizable by man is an animal life, and that man can have no other knowledge of himself than as an animal, of a little higher grade, it is true, than other animals, but not different in kind, then the healthy soul, when such a doctrine is presented to it, will reject it as instantaneously as a healthy stomach rejects a roll of tobacco.
— from Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer by Jesse Henry Jones

What expectations must have been formed of his abilities to encourage the hope, that a single man could save, and restore, the empire of the East!
— 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

Only the person who adopted this last mode of concealing the ravages of time had to be most careful to keep his mouth full of oil all the time he applied the eggs to his venerable locks, else his teeth as well as his hair would be dyed raven black, and no amount of scrubbing and scouring would avail to whiten them again.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

The voice that had been music to him, and the eyes that had been light, fell coldly on his senses.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

"But for divines in this day—when the profession of Christianity is attended with no peril, when its practice, even, demands no sacrifice, save that preference of duty to enjoyment which is the first law of cultivated humanity—to repeat the language, profess the feelings, inculcate the notions, of men who lived in daily dread of such awful martyrdom, and under the excitement of such a mighty misconception; to cry down the world, with its profound beauty, its thrilling interests, its glorious works, its noble and holy affections; to exhort their hearers, Sunday after Sunday, to detach their heart from the earthly life, as inane, fleeting, and unworthy, and fix it upon heaven, as the only sphere deserving the love of the loving or the meditation of the wise,—appears to us, we confess, frightful insincerity, the enactment of a wicked and gigantic lie.
— from Studies of Christianity; Or, Timely Thoughts for Religious Thinkers by James Martineau

But when she employs loving tact, especially in the improvement of her husband's habits and traits, even though he realizes it, he is at heart grateful for it, and proud of his wife's superiority in these points.
— from Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife by Marion Mills Miller

By way of contrasting the fineness of her own conduct with the coarseness of his, she did her best to exasperate him about Helen, applying terrible epithets to her and vowing, in a burst of tiger-like tragedy, she would destroy the beauty of this woman he had loved with vitriol, should their paths ever cross.
— from Cleo The Magnificent; Or, The Muse of the Real: A Novel by Louis Zangwill

Pinocchio, therefore, having approached the entrance to his throat, and, looking up, could see beyond the enormous gaping mouth a large piece of starry sky and beautiful moonlight.
— from Pinocchio: The Tale of a Puppet by Carlo Collodi

Think of Mordecai's years of care over and pride in his fair young cousin, and how many joys and soaring visions would perish with her, and then estimate the heroic self-sacrifice he exercised in urging her to her course.
— from Expositions of Holy Scripture Second Kings Chapters VIII to End and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Esther, Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes by Alexander Maclaren

A hot blaze would have caused very little smoke; and after all might not have accomplished the end they had in view.
— from Rocky Mountain Boys; Or, Camping in the Big Game Country by St. George Rathborne

A savage temper and a harsh, forbidding countenance made him a terror even to his closest followers.
— from Early European History by Hutton Webster

Then he hastily dressed himself and told Everard that he was off to make inquiries about Macka.
— from Gabrielle of the Lagoon: A Romance of the South Seas by W. H. (William Henry) Myddleton

"I do not say," [he adds], "that even the highest biblical ideal is exclusive of others or needs no supplement.
— from Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3 by Thomas Henry Huxley

We feel almost inclined here to go into a disquisition upon hats, and the evils they have entailed, for who has not suffered, and been thrust out of the pale of good living, or cut in the street—or taken for a loafer, and asked by some dandy to hold his horse, or by some matron to carry home her market basket, and all because of a “shocking bad hat.”
— from The Swamp Doctor's Adventures in The South-West Containing the Whole of The Louisiana Swamp Doctor; Streaks of Squatter Life; and Far-Western Scenes; In a Series of Forty-Two Humorous Southern and Western Sketches, Descriptive of Incidents and Character by John S. Robb