Drank at the old house, and so home, and then to the office a little, and so home to supper and to bed. 19th.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

R is for the—no, I know it begins with some other letter, and she hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Thence to dinner, where my wife got me a pleasant French fricassee of veal for dinner, and thence to the office, where vexed to see how Sir W. Batten ordered things this afternoon (vide my office book, for about this time I have begun, my notions and informations encreasing now greatly every day, to enter all occurrences extraordinary in my office in a book by themselves), and so in the evening after long discourse and eased my mind by discourse with Sir W. Warren, I to my business late, and so home to supper and to bed. 8th.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

He said, He would go to bed betimes, that he might be up as soon as it was light; and so he took leave of me, and said, He would not love me, if I got up in the morning to see him go; which would but make us both loath to part, and grieve us both all day.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

Thence with mighty content homeward, and in my way at the Stockes did buy a couple of lobsters, and so home to dinner, where I find my wife and father had dined, and were going out to Hales’s to sit there, so Balty and I alone to dinner, and in the middle of my grace, praying for a blessing upon (these his good creatures), my mind fell upon my lobsters: upon which I cried, Odd zooks! and Balty looked upon me like a man at a losse what I meant, thinking at first that I meant only that I had said the grace after meat instead of
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

and gave a look askance— Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
— from Alice in Wonderland A Dramatization of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" by Alice Gerstenberg

The lady in the coach, amazed and terrified at what she saw, ordered the coachman to draw aside a little, and set herself to watch this severe struggle, in the course of which the Biscayan smote Don Quixote a mighty stroke on the shoulder over the top of his buckler, which, given to one without armour, would have cleft him to the waist.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

You may judge a little of this when I tell you that my absence has deprived me of my usual source of income by my profession; that the state of the University is such that I shall probably leave, and shall have to move into new quarters; that my family is dispersed, requiring my care and anxieties under every disadvantage; that my engagements were such with Russia that every moment of my time was necessary to complete my arrangements to fulfill the contract in season; and, instead of finding my associates ready to sustain me with counsel and means, I find them all dispersed, leaving me without either the opportunity to consult or a cent of means, and consequently bringing everything in relation to the Telegraph to a dead stand.
— from Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals In Two Volumes, Volume II by Samuel Finley Breese Morse

Well, she was poor, but not so poor as all that—as long as she had the use of her senses.
— from Crying for the Light; Or, Fifty Years Ago. Vol. 1 [of 3] by J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie

Parzival vanquishes him, grants him his life, and sends him to Arthur’s Court.
— from The Mediaeval Mind (Volume 1 of 2) A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages by Henry Osborn Taylor

They are a smart lot, and Sir Herbert, though a shrewd business man, was putty in the hands of a clever or designing woman!"
— from In the Onyx Lobby by Carolyn Wells

I bore a day and a half of his silence and neglect; then I could endure it no longer, and showed him the letter.
— from A Flat Iron for a Farthing; or, Some Passages in the Life of an only Son by Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

" Brown laughed and slapped his thigh.
— from The Bride of Mission San José: A Tale of Early California by John Augustine Cull

Msala made an oration lasting fully half an hour, and licked his lips and slapped his thighs in thorough enjoyment of his own eloquence.
— from Tom Burnaby: A Story of Uganda and the Great Congo Forest by Herbert Strang

“And this insolent mockery of fate is carried even into my love affair,” said he to himself.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

I have, however, seen a dog, on suddenly meeting a friend, not only wag his tail, but curl up the corners of his lips, and show his teeth, as if delighted and amused.
— from History of English Humour, Vol. 1 With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour by A. G. K. (Alfred Guy Kingan) L'Estrange

[†] “The fox, that wes in full gret dout, “Lukit about sum hoill to se; “Bot nane ysche thar couth he se, 670 “Bot quhar the man stude sturdely.
— from The Bruce by John Barbour