After this the chairs pushed themselves up, but no people came, until all at once he beheld fingers, which handled knives and forks, and laid food on the plates, but with this exception he saw nothing.
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

Mr. Lillyvick laid down his knife and fork, and looked round the table with indignant astonishment.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

"A party for the Blenkers—the Blenkers?" Mr. Welland laid down his knife and fork and looked anxiously and incredulously across the luncheon-table at his wife,
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

I know that we must keep apart for a long while; cruel tongues would force us apart, if nothing else did.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

I gave them a searching glance, and thought they looked like true Sicarii, ready to kill anyone for a little money.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

I dispatched my Dinner as soon as I could, with my usual Taciturnity; when, to my utter Confusion, the Lady seeing me quitting 2 my Knife and Fork, and laying them across one another upon my Plate, desired me that I would humour her so far as to take them out of that Figure, and place them side by side.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

She answered: "We are well, my kindred and friends are living, but it is uncertain what any one's lot may be till their last day."
— from The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson by Snorri Sturluson

which gilds our sepulchre and embalms our name.” “Glory?” continued Rebecca; “alas, is the rusted mail which hangs as a hatchment over the champion's dim and mouldering tomb—is the defaced sculpture of the inscription which the ignorant monk can hardly read to the enquiring pilgrim—are these sufficient rewards for the sacrifice of every kindly affection, for a life spent miserably that ye may make others miserable?
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

They will never think of the quintet; Shatov and Kirillov and Fedka and Lebyadkin, and why they killed each other—that will be another question for them.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He did not behave well by the old man, though not so bad as they said at first; but he coaxed the girl to go away with him, without her father's knowledge; and for a long time Farmer Graves thought he had seduced her, and it well-nigh broke his heart.
— from The Forgery; or, Best Intentions. by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

Wyvern dropped his knife and fork, and looked at her fixedly.
— from A Secret of the Lebombo by Bertram Mitford

Muggins ( Dr. ), a sapient physician, who had the art “to suit his physic to his patients’ taste;” so when King Artaxaminous felt a little seedy after a night’s debauch, the doctor prescribed to his majesty “to take a morning whet.
— from Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol. 3 A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

Seized in a snowy kiss, and fair As lily in the argent rise Of dawn, like whitest poem there Its beauty lay before mine eyes, Bright in its pallor lustreless, Reposing on a velvet bed, Its fingers, weighted with their dress Of jewels, delicately spread.
— from Enamels and Cameos and other Poems by Théophile Gautier

Hearing this, Zo laid down her knife and fork, and looked over her shoulder.
— from Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time by Wilkie Collins

These three scenes, as no such reader will need to be told or reminded, are the two first soliloquies of the Gaoler’s Daughter after the release of Palamon, and the scene of the portraits, as we may in a double sense call it, in which Emilia, after weighing against each other in solitude the likenesses of the cousins, receives from her own kinsfolk a full and laboured description of their leading champions on either side.
— from A Study of Shakespeare by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Rodzianko kept alive for a long time the idea of the Fourth Duma or of the Assembly of all Dumas as the foundation of the power of the State.
— from The Russian Turmoil; Memoirs: Military, Social, and Political by Anton Ivanovich Denikin

Mr. Falkirk laid down his knife and fork, and looked across the table.
— from The Gold of Chickaree by Susan Warner