The matchmaker dropped a tear, laughed, and, in token of her consent, cAlinked glasses with Stytchkin.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Loath am I, therefore, to have this cord wound round me; but in order that ye may not doubt my courage, I will consent, provided one of you put his hand into my mouth as a pledge that ye intend me no deceit.' "
— from The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson by Snorri Sturluson

Fortunately, a letter arrived in the morning requiring his instant attendance in the City about the sale of some stock, of which he was trustee.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

Padre Camorra, who had already forgotten about Paulita, saw what was meant and laughing his clownish laugh, asked in turn, “Whom does this other figure resemble, Ben-Zayb?” It was an old woman with one eye, with disheveled hair, seated on the ground like an Indian idol, ironing clothes.
— from The Reign of Greed by José Rizal

"To the barrow!" cry several; whom he, lest a worse thing befal him, obeys: nevertheless one wiser Patriot barrowman, arriving now, interposes his "arretez;" setting down his own barrow, he snatches the Abbe's; trundles it fast, like an infected thing; forth of the Champ-de-Mars circuit, and discharges it there.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

Apart from the one fundamental nastiness the luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it so many other nastinesses in the form of doubts and questions, adds to the one question so many unsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort of fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of the contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand solemnly about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their healthy sides ache.
— from Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Red earths are found in abundance in many places, but the best in only a few, for instance at Sinope in Pontus, in Egypt, in the Balearic islands of Spain, as well as in Lemnos, an island the enjoyment of whose revenues the Senate and Roman people granted to the Athenians.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio

There were two great aloes, in tubs, on the turf outside the windows; the broad hard leaves of which plant (looking as if they were made of painted tin) have ever since, by association, been symbolical to me of silence and retirement.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

"No longer am I the presumptuous lad who came here a short while ago: not for nothing have I attained my twenty-third year.
— from Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

My spirits fell lower and lower as I thought of these things—and the view of the lonesome little bay, when I looked about to rouse myself, only served to make me feel more uneasy still.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

With her we sat a good while, merry in discourse, and so away, Luellin and I to my Lord's, and there dined.
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1661 N.S. by Samuel Pepys

Houdin, the conjurer, educated the prehensibility of his son’s mind by teaching him, in progressive lessons, to be able to recapitulate the contents of a shop window after a single look at it; there is the first stage of a scout’s training, viz.
— from The Matabele Campaign Being a Narrative of the Campaign in Suppressing the Native Rising in Matabeleland and Mashonaland, 1896 by Baden-Powell of Gilwell, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, Baron

She was driven round to the library, and is to call for us in half an hour.”
— from Miss Crespigny by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The road ran along the top of the beach, skirting the shore all the way, and the forest came right up to the side of it, and made it beautifully shady, but it was in such a terrible state of holes and ruts, crumbling down here and there on the beach side, and overgrown with bushes on the forest side, that it looked as if the sea and the forest between them would swallow it up pretty soon.
— from On Foreign Service; Or, The Santa Cruz Revolution by T. T. (Thomas Tendron) Jeans

The darkness of unwisdom is the absorption of consciousness in the personal life, and in the things seen by the personal life.
— from The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Book of the Spiritual Man by Patañjali

" "I honour the king," rejoined O'Connor, "as truly as any man here, seeing that my father lost all in the service of his illustrious sire, but I need some more satisfactory assurance of his delegated authority than the bare assertion of a violent man, of whom I know absolutely nothing, and until you show me some instrument empowering you to act thus, I will not acknowledge your competency to subject me to an examination, and still resolutely protest against your detaining me here.
— from The Cock and Anchor by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Come, Landlord, as I think you honest, and suspect you only intended to gratify a little foolish curiosity— Landlord .
— from The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 by Charles Lamb

For every man or woman who transgresses the social law and is therefore called immoral—of course after being found out—there are a hundred or more who break the moral law every hour of their waking lives.
— from The Missionary by George Chetwynd Griffith

in which the lack of rational [pg 204] meaning of the universe, and of life anyhow, is the burden that weighs upon one—you remember Tolstoy's case.
— from The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James

Most of them have become known in the course of this history; various characters, of whom more than one may be differently judged, according to whether we view them in private life and in their confidential relations, or as public men, authors or otherwise.
— from Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent (vol. 2 of 2) by Alfred von Reumont