'This is not the conduct I should have expected from you, sir;' said she, 'I did not expect to see you in my house, after you had been informed, that your visits were no longer agreeable, much less, that you would seek a clandestine interview with my niece, and that she would grant one.' Valancourt, perceiving it necessary to vindicate Emily from such a design, explained, that the purpose of his own visit had been to request an interview with Montoni, and he then entered upon the subject of it, with the tempered spirit which the sex, rather than the respectability, of Madame Montoni, demanded.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

JEWKES, 'You have been very careful and diligent in the task, which, for reasons I shall hereafter explain, I had imposed upon you.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

161 Amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably led me into this digression——The funeral sermon upon poor Le Fever, wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy.—I take notice of it the more, because it seems to have been his favourite composition——It is upon mortality; and is tied length-ways and cross-ways with a yarn thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general review, which to this day smells horribly of horse drugs.——Whether these marks of humiliation were designed,—I something doubt;——because at the end of the sermon (and not at the beginning of it)—very different from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote—— Bravo! ——Though not very offensively,——for it is at two inches, at least, and a half’s distance from, and below the concluding line of the sermon, at the very extremity of the page, and in 162 that right hand corner of it, which, you know, is generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it justice, it is wrote besides with a crow’s quill so faintly in a small Italian hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the place, whether your thumb is there or not,—so that from the manner of it, it stands half excused; and being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted almost to nothing,—’tis more like a ritratto of the shadow of vanity, than of V ANITY herself—of the two; resembling rather a faint thought of transient applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the composer; than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon the world.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

There were not so many papers about, as I should have expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that I should not have expected to see,—such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

I cried, seizing my cap, with an astonishingly free-and-easy air, which was the last thing I should have expected of myself.
— from Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He spoke of the pension with more warmth than, upon such a subject, I should have expected from a philosopher.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

My traffic had hitherto succeeded so well with me, that I thought, by selling my goods when we arrived at Montserrat, I should have enough to purchase my freedom.
— from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African Written By Himself by Olaudah Equiano

But, afraid to go back and afraid to go forward; seeing what she fled from, in the sky-glare of the lights of the little town before her, and leaving a confused horror of it everywhere behind her, as if she had escaped it in every stone of every market-place; she struck off by side ways, among which she got bewildered and lost.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

"My dog," I said, "has eaten one of your chickens."
— from Happy Days by A. A. (Alan Alexander) Milne

“Look at it,” said he; “examine it closely.
— from The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green

Well acquainted with the writings of the Italian jurists and the practice of the Italian states, he expounded the view that the fisheries and the sovereignty in the British seas pertained to the crown of England, and that foreigners should be compelled to pay tribute for the liberty of fishing within them.
— from The Sovereignty of the Sea An Historical Account of the Claims of England to the Dominion of the British Seas, and of the Evolution of the Territorial Waters by Thomas Wemyss Fulton

"Isn't it strange how easy it is to be good when no one worries you.
— from The Captives by Hugh Walpole

Hers has been a long history of struggle, and frequently of apparent defeat; but out of it she has ever risen victorious, though her victories are different in character from the triumphs of the world, because they are so silent and so peaceful that they are only known by their results.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 23, April, 1876-September, 1876. A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science by Various

"Yes," Rosalind had answered, "it is almost as beautiful as the Strand!" If I'd known her better, I should have exclaimed, "You dear!"
— from The Quest of the Golden Girl: A Romance by Richard Le Gallienne

they had no interest in shutting his eyes.
— from Tales from Shakespeare by Charles Lamb

"I've loved watching those three together, because it is all going as I should have expected."
— from Sir Harry: A Love Story by Archibald Marshall

Nothing in it surprised him, even as a child.
— from The Underworld The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner by James C. Welsh