In the morning to the office and Commissioner Pett (who seldom comes there) told me that he had lately presented a piece of plate (being a couple of flaggons) to Mr. Coventry, but he did not receive them, which also put me upon doing the same too; and so after dinner I went and chose a payre of candlesticks to be made ready for me at Alderman Backwell’s.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

He could feel the little hot veins on his forehead standing out, and his terror had hardened on him like plaster.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

Quedóse un rato meditabundo, sosteniendo el manteo con ambas manos cruzadas sobre el abdomen, fija la vista en el suelo, con los anteojos de oro deslizándose suavemente 24 hacia la punta de la nariz, saliente y húmedo el labio inferior, y un poco fruncidas las blanquinegras cejas.
— from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós

I had left Paris for a month, and I had neither heard of Madame d’Urfe nor of Costa.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

And it was no doubt a feeling of the weakening influence on art, as an expressive force, of the elaborate realisations of the modern school, that prompted Puvis de Chavannes to invent for himself his large primitive manner.
— from The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed

And it is possible—but this is merely a suggestion—that the greater or less mechanical facility with which the vibrating apparatus of the human larynx passes from one state of vibration to another, may have been a primary cause of the greater or less pleasure produced by various sequences of sounds.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

In his long progress from Mantua to Beneventum, a vile and promiscuous multitude of Italians was enlisted under the holy standard: 33 the priest and the robber slept in the same tent; the pikes and crosses were intermingled in the front; and the martial saint repeated the lessons of his youth in the order of march, of encampment, and of combat.
— 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

“I pray you, good sir,” said the parson, “permit yourself this once to be admonished by her ladyship: peradventure, by communing with young Madam Sophia, she will effect more than you have been able to perpetrate by more rigorous measures.”
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

One of his last poems, written there on his thirty-sixth birthday, a few months before he died, expresses his own view of his disappointing life:
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

She was ruined; but the ball, and Mr. Ashley—these still awaited her; so presently she worked herself up to some anticipation of enjoyment, and, having thrown on her cloak, was turning down her light preparatory to departure, when her eye fell on the bill lying open on her dresser.
— from The House in the Mist by Anna Katharine Green

[85] This line is from the Inachus of Sophocles (one of his lost plays).
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

The roan was still grazing, paying no attention to a figure who was kneeling on the limb-supported platform and turning over the gear Drew had left piled there.
— from Ride Proud, Rebel! by Andre Norton

"How long has she been here, little pickle?"
— from Capricious Caroline by Effie Adelaide Rowlands

I enjoyed the society of agreeable people with a gusto few possess; I can also put up with the association with those of a different stamp, feeling sensibly how much more I am on a level with them, and how little pretension I have to find myself among the others.
— from Arthur O'Leary: His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands by Charles James Lever

In the warmest phrase of passion he besought me to tell him how long I meant to continue his lingering probation; and protested, that he was no longer able to endure my delays.
— from Discipline by Mary Brunton

She had never seen Roger March ill in her life, but she had a prophetic vision of how he looked, pale and grey, with a gentle stoicism, a stern patience, and he was alone in an adobe hut among the far-off hills of the Northwest.
— from The Whirl: A Romance of Washington Society by Foxcroft Davis