It was a pleasure, simply to listen to the sound of the language, before I could attach any meaning to it.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

Yet I was as perfectly satisfied in my own mind as I could be of anything, that I was going to gather up, in a day or two, or at furthest a week or two, silver enough to make me satisfactorily wealthy—and so my fancy was already busy with plans for spending this money.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

Whilst I was at Paris, Saint Lambert arrived there from the army.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Paraiyans are said to be very particular about omens, and, if, when a Paraiyan sets out to arrange a marriage with a certain girl, a cat or a valiyan (a bird) crosses his path, he will give up the girl.
— from Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston

It was a petition signed Diana Capilet, and it begged that the King would order Bertram to marry her whom he had deserted after winning her love.
— from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

“Indeed, while the condition actually existing in the Massim area suggests that there was no slow mingling of the invaders with a previous stock, the geographical features of the territory of the Western Papuo-Melanesians with its hills, mountains and swamps, are such that invaders could not have speedily overrun the country, nor failed to have been influenced by the original inhabitants …” 3 I shall assume that the reader is acquainted with the quoted work of Dr. Seligman, where a thorough account is given of all the main types of Papuo-Melanesian sociology and culture one after the other.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

He said, “it was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life.”
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

She tried to be calm and indifferent, but it was a palpable sham.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

I was a poor slave girl, only fifteen years old.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. (Harriet Ann) Jacobs

It was a pleasantly secluded estate, and Borrow's wife had £450 a year.
— from George Borrow and His Circle Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters of Borrow and His Friends by Clement King Shorter

All round and about, ready to pounce on it, were a perfect swarm of pirates.
— from The Boyhood of Great Inventors by A. Fraser Robertson

Without it was abject poverty, starvation.
— from The Man from Jericho by Edwin Carlile Litsey

What would I do if I were a professional soldier? MAN.
— from Arms and the Man by Bernard Shaw

Congressman Van Wyck conjectured that it was a private speculation until Collector Barney refused to grant a clearance, and that then it was turned over to the Government.
— from The Life of Lyman Trumbull by Horace White

We were all sorry, even those that liked to drink themselves, for this was the only fault we could detect in our chief officer, and it was a pretty serious one, as it turned out.
— from Charlie Codman's Cruise: A Story for Boys by Alger, Horatio, Jr.

" All this time Mr Bell had been taking notes and making sketches for his journal; but when these young Englishmen described their good fortune, it excited him and caused him and May to desire to do as they had done, so they arranged to join in with the four Americans, in work and profit, sharing equally.
— from A Claim on Klondyke: A Romance of the Arctic El Dorado by Edward Roper

If it was, it was a poor shot, it went high overhead and crashed into the woods beyond.
— from Personal Reminiscences of the War of 1861-5 In Camp—en Bivouac—on the March—on Picket—on the Skirmish Line—on the Battlefield—and in Prison by W. H. (William Henry) Morgan