The reason is that, in hearing our own language spoken, we quickly and unconsciously fill out what we really hear with inferences to what the man must be saying, and we never realize that we have not heard the words we have merely inferred.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

Cranly smiled and said kindly: —The captain has only one love: sir Walter Scott.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

This was bad for us, for, being "flying light," with little more than ballast trim, we were in no condition for showing off on a taut bowline, and had depended upon a fair wind, with which, by the help of our light sails and studding-sails, we meant to have been the first at the anchoring-ground; but the Ayacucho was a good league to windward of us, and was standing in, in fine style.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

Neererhe drew, and many a walk travers’d Of stateliest Covert, Cedar, Pine, or Palme, Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen Among thick-wov’n Arborets and Flours Imborderd on each Bank, the hand of Eve : Spot more delicious then those Gardens feign’d Or of reviv’d Adonis , or renownd Alcinous , host of old Laertes Son, Or that, not Mystic, where the Sapient King Held dalliance with his faire Egyptian Spouse.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

And on the left hand of our line shall the men be whom the Swedish king gave us, together with all the people who came to us in Sweden; and they shall have the third banner.
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son ,--that is, of Ulysses, whom he entertained
— from Flowers and Flower-Gardens With an Appendix of Practical Instructions and Useful Information Respecting the Anglo-Indian Flower-Garden by David Lester Richardson

So, when Peden, watching Morgan calculatively, shifted a little to get himself out of line so he would not stand a barrier between his gun-slingers and their target and longer block the opening of operations to clear the hall of this upstart, Morgan let him go.
— from Trail's End by George W. (George Washington) Ogden

The capitalists, to whom a new field was here opened of lucrative speculation unattended by trouble or risk, sometimes augmented in this way their landed property; sometimes they left to the farmer, whose person and estate the law of debt placed in their hands, nominal proprietorship and actual possession.
— from The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) by Theodor Mommsen

Ere he wished me good-bye, he offered one last suggestion.
— from Clara Vaughan, Volume 2 (of 3) by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore

Already we have our own little secrets and private compacts and understandings.
— from The Prairie Child by Arthur Stringer

It was proposed to go at once to the houses of others long suspected of like cruelties to their slaves.
— from Strange True Stories of Louisiana by George Washington Cable

XIII—Miss Charlotte Hunsicker, one of last season's débutantes.
— from The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow by Anna Katharine Green

Then with a view to regaining the lead and opening another and more promising vein, she asked him his opinion of Lady Selden's last novel, Love in a Marsh ; and when he confessed ignorance she paused a moment, fork in hand, her small wrinkled face looking almost as bewildered as when, three minutes before, her rashness had well-nigh brought her face to face with Gregory of Tours as a topic of conversation.
— from Robert Elsmere by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

'If only we could stay up here a good long time we'd bring lots of things from home, and paint pictures for the walls, and put them in cork frames, and I really believe, if I tried, I could make up one of those hearthrugs out of little scraps of cloth all pinched up and sewn on, like Nancy made last winter for her sister's wedding present.'
— from A Terrible Tomboy by Angela Brazil