I had also the honour of being acquainted (never mind how) with a certain gentleman (never mind whom).
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

On an eminence, in one of the most sequestered parts of these woods, was a rustic seat, formed of the trunk of a decayed oak, which had once been a noble tree, and of which many lofty branches still flourishing united with beech and pines to over-canopy the spot.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

He accused him of being a nuisance to men by crowing in the nighttime and not permitting them to sleep.
— from Aesop's Fables Translated by George Fyler Townsend by Aesop

“It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s.
— from A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens

“There, sir—and there!”’ I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes—I swept his hair from his brow, and kissed that too.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

He represented that, after he left England with Count Laski, the mob had pillaged his house at Mortlake, accusing him of being a necromancer and a wizard; and had broken all his furniture, burned his library, consisting of four thousand rare volumes, and destroyed all the philosophical instruments and curiosities in his museum.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

He undertook the supervision of Juliette’s arrangements as well as his own, bought antique Norman furniture, which he turned to various uses, manufactured carpets and curtains out of Juliette’s old theatre frocks, designed panels and mantelpieces, and the many incongruous articles which now decorate the Musée Victor Hugo, and which his friend aptly called “a poetical pot-pourri of art.”
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

I cannot quit this Head without observing that Pindar was a great Genius of the first Class, who was hurried on by a natural Fire and Impetuosity to vast Conceptions of things and noble Sallies of Imagination.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

And the division of labour which required the carpenter and the shoemaker and the rest of the citizens to be doing each his own business, and not another’s, was a shadow of justice, and for that reason it was of use?
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

"He did not exactly ride away, as Sir Bever did," he went on; "but he made up his mind that the most honourable course would be to lock up the secret of his love in his own breast, and not burden that bright young life with his troubles.
— from Mollie's Prince: A Novel by Rosa Nouchette Carey

This month contracts will be given out for the fitting of nine public schools with shower-baths where we had one before, and notice is given that that one will be open to the people on Sunday mornings.
— from The Battle with the Slum by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

"If," said Mr. Stubbs, looking exceedingly grave, "if, I say, we take the first soliloquy of Hamlet—almost the first words he utters—we shall find a striking allusion to his habit of body; and not only shall we be struck by the allusion, but, I contend, the whole force and meaning of the passage are lost, unless the speaker can lay his hands upon a goodly paunch, as he exclaims, 'Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt.
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 13, No. 365, April 11, 1829 by Various

By reason of her inexperience of life, it was impossible for Miriam to analyze her own being, and note intelligently the modifications it underwent.
— from The Emancipated by George Gissing

Pigeons and sparrows built their nests within sight of my windows; and by going early to the roof I could see the sun rise, and in the evening I could watch it go down behind the hills of Belmont as now I watch it from my lookout here on Mullein Hill.
— from Summer by Dallas Lore Sharp

The inmost soul of him was very piteous, harrowed often by a new dread—the dread of dying.
— from Marcella by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

I found myself in a tolerable room facing the street, and garnished with two pictures of rocks and rivers, with a comely flight of crows, hovering in the horizon of both, as natural as possible, only they were a little larger than the trees.
— from Pelham — Volume 03 by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

One clean, wholesome girl will shake a man's faith in baseness, torture him with a vivid sense of his own backslidings, and now that passion's scales were fallen from his eyes, Molyneux appreciated at their full worth the naïve mixture of innocence and womanly wisdom, the health, strength, and wholesomeness of character that set Helen apart from his light acquaintance.
— from The Settler by Herman Whitaker

Between these two was, as it were, standing, a great mountain, which continued in the same form near a quarter of an hour; after which, the mountain still remaining, there appeared several strange shapes one after another, issuing out of the said mountain, about the middle of the right side thereof: the first seemed to be formed like a Crokedile, with his mouth wide open; this continued a very short space, and, by degrees, was transformed into the form of a furious Bull; and, not long after, it was changed into the form of a Lyon; but it continued so a short time, and was altered into a Bear, and, soon after, into a Hog, or Boar, as near as those could guess who were spectators.
— from Chronicles of London Bridge by Richard Thompson

They freely enter the houses of Brāhmans and non-Brāhman castes, and are not considered as carrying pollution.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 2 of 7 by Edgar Thurston