But, as for me, I declare my ignorance; and, as Monsieur Jourdain has said so well, I only wish that the repast were more worthy of being offered to you.
— from The Middle-Class Gentleman by Molière

That’s just how she started and just how she came up smiling timidly when all this happened before,” thought Natásha, “and in just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her.”
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

And when Prester John had sure tidings that Chinghis was really coming against him with such a multitude, he still professed to treat it as a jest and a trifle, for, quoth he, "these be no soldiers."
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

Jurgis half shouted, and he took a step toward the child.
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

He turned away from the others, who probably… and spoke nearer to, so as the others… in case they… —Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen’s ear, are accused of ruining.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

— JOY, HIGH SPIRITS, LOVE, TENDER FEELINGS, DEVOTION.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

Nay next we behold carbuncled swollen Jourdan himself shew copper-face, with sabre and four pistols; affecting to talk high: engaging, meanwhile, to surrender the Castle that instant.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

I had even written one, The Travelling Companion , which was returned by an editor on the plea that it was a work of genius and indecent, and which I burned the other day on the ground that it was not a work of genius, and that Jekyll had supplanted it.
— from Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays by Robert Louis Stevenson

'No, James,' he said, 'you shall be a great man.
— from The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 With Translations and Index for the Series by Steele, Richard, Sir

Wright, Lacroix, Luchaire, Justin H. Smith, Viollet-le-Duc, and Chéruel the acknowledgments are very specific.
— from Life on a Mediaeval Barony A Picture of a Typical Feudal Community in the Thirteenth Century by William Stearns Davis

Charlie Jones held Singleton's broken revolver.
— from The After House by Mary Roberts Rinehart

“Russia,” wrote the Novoe Vremya about April 20, “cannot permit the protectorate over Korea which Japan has secured for herself by the conditions of the treaty.
— from The Russo-Japanese Conflict: Its Causes and Issues by Kan'ichi Asakawa

Jacob could not at first believe the good news his sons brought; but when he saw the waggons which Joseph had sent to carry him and the little ones, he said, "It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive; I will go and see him before I die."
— from Mother Stories from the Old Testament A Book of the Best Stories from the Old Testament that Mothers can tell their Children by Anonymous

'Jennie,' he said slowly, 'are you playing with me again?' The swift anger that blazed up in her face, reddening her cheeks, dried the tears.
— from A Woman Intervenes by Robert Barr