This said, he sat; and expectation held His look suspense, awaiting who appeared To second, or oppose, or undertake The perilous attempt.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

In his sermons and essays he is wonderfully simple and direct; in his controversial writings, gently ironical and satiric, and the satire is pervaded by a delicate humor; but when his feelings are aroused he speaks with poetic images and symbols, and his eloquence is like that of the Old Testament prophets.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

She called then and he said: "My brother Samuel and I have spent an entire day in examining these papers and we believe that your claim to a right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment is valid.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

Yet, in spite of his shabby and even absurd appearance, his voice had a sharp crackle, and his manner a quick intensity which commanded attention.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

There, overtopping the elegant native huts, stands an enormous corrugated iron shed, built on piles, but with the space between [ 196 ] the floor and the ground filled up carefully with white coral stones.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

Hereupon Ahab began to be sorry for the things he had done, and to repent of them; and he put on sackcloth, and went barefoot 36 and would not touch any food; he also confessed his sins, and endeavored thus to appease God.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

If I have sinned against every one, yet all forgive me, too, and that's heaven.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For though Pitt did not care for joviality, being a frigid man of poor hearth and appetite, yet he considered that to be hospitable and condescending was quite incumbent on his station, and every time that he got a headache from too long an after-dinner sitting, he felt that he was a martyr to duty.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Take, for example, the horse on which some quiet old country gentleman is accustomed to travel; how soberly and evenly he jogs along, picking his way over the ground.
— from The Naturalist in La Plata by W. H. (William Henry) Hudson

He wrote to his mother from Burlington, Vermont, September 16: “I have arrived in safety, having passed through the White Hills, stopping at Ethan Crawford’s house, and climbing Mt. Washington.
— from The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Frank Preston Stearns

Here start and end most of the great religious processions for which Manila is so [ 130 ] noted.
— from The Philippine Islands by Ramon Reyes Lala

[437] is levied on the nature and source of his salary, and even the smallest wage is thus subject to an income tax.
— from Italy, the Magic Land by Lilian Whiting

After all, one engaged a detective for his or her shrewdness and efficiency, not for suavity and polish.
— from Piccadilly Jim by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

Then, still higher, still and ever higher, did it roll until it finally reached what seemed to be the very fringe of heaven.
— from The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Volume 4 by Émile Zola

She had such an exalted opinion of his work that she easily fell into the habit of sacrificing herself to it.
— from The Westerners by Stewart Edward White

He could turn his hand to anything; and being, as we have said, an energetic man, he did turn his hand to almost everything.
— from Snowflakes and Sunbeams; Or, The Young Fur-traders: A Tale of the Far North by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne