Then without further remark, she threw herself on her couch, and closing her eyes remained motionless; so that but for the deep sighs that burst from her, it would have seemed that she slept.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"You certainly have enough reading matter," said Jack.
— from Over the Pass by Frederick Palmer

and with all her motherhood shining in her eyes, Ruth Makepeace started for the parlor.
— from A Beautiful Possibility by Edith Ferguson Black

I dread that blood!—no more—this day Is ours, though her eternal ray Must shine upon our grave.
— from Talkers: With Illustrations by John Bate

"She says," begins Will before he has even reached Mother's side and his whisper is awesome, "Gammer says that Margery is more than any ailin', she is."
— from A Warwickshire Lad: The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare by George Madden Martin

Well, he didn’t say anything—the funny part—he was reading the paper and I doubt if he even recalled me saying it.
— from Warren Commission (14 of 26): Hearings Vol. XIV (of 15) by United States. Warren Commission

A harmless elderly relative murmurs something sentimental about the mud on the floor being sacred earth, like that the Crusaders brought back from Jerusalem, and the inevitable explosion takes place.
— from Home Fires in France by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Everybody who has ever read Mr. Story's "Roba di Roma" knows what a terrible power it is which the owner of the evil eye exercises.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works by Oliver Wendell Holmes

I cannot be baffled in my love for you; no woman has ever before touched the secret spring of my heart, no voice has ever reached my soul—yours is music to me; and, Mrs. Desmonde, I need great love and sympathy; I am not all I want to be; my lot in life has been in some respects very hard to bear; I never knew my mother's love, and when old enough to desire the companionship man needs, I had an experience which killed the flower of my affection—I thought its roots were as dead as its leaves, until I met you.
— from The Harvest of Years by Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell