I have just delivered a lot of goods, and I shall be paid a handsome commission on them—Mlle. Michonneau,” he went on, seeing that the elderly spinster was scrutinizing him intently, “have you any objection to some feature in my face, that you are making those lynx eyes at me?
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

He composed his earliest works while very young, and unacquainted with that world which he attempted to paint; and although a genius independent and boldly daring, he was nevertheless influenced in various ways by the models which he saw in the already mentioned pieces of Lessing, by the earlier labours of Goethe, and in Shakspeare, so far as he could understand him without an acquaintance with the original.
— from Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature by August Wilhelm von Schlegel

Nay, more—a man’s littleness, if he pervert his gifts, does not increase in direct ratio with his relative capacities; but I feel that I am justified in applying here the mathematical law of gravitation, and in saying that his littleness—measured on God’s measure of mankind—increases as the square of his distance above the average capacity of his race.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 4, October 1852 by Various

The pretty, black-eyed gipsy girl whom I have mentioned on a former occasion as the sibyl that read the fortunes of the general, endeavoured to wheedle that doughty warrior into their interests, and even made some approaches to her old acquaintance, Master Simon; but was repelled by the latter with all the dignity of office, having assumed a look of gravity and importance suitable to the occasion.
— from Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists by Washington Irving

There's a man held prisoner back yonder by a lot of Germans, and I shot one of them and knocked another down—and we've got to get him free...."
— from The Destroyer: A Tale of International Intrigue by Burton Egbert Stevenson

Is it not dreadful that at the very vestibule of any attempt to execute the pretended law of God and its sentences to hell we are interrupted by one case in every three as exceptional?
— from The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 by Thomas De Quincey

They had got into Farmer Roe's apple orchard and had eaten a lot of green apples, in spite of the fact that Mother Chipmunk had told Jimmy Chipmunk, her oldest, that he and the rest of the children should not eat green apples.
— from Doctor Rabbit and Brushtail the Fox by Thomas C. (Thomas Clark) Hinkle

For not the delicate reed that Pan did play To partial Midas at the match of old, Nor yet Apollo’s lyre, with chords of gold, That more than won the crown he lost that day; Nor even the Orphean lute, that half set free— Oh why not all?—the lost Eurydice— Were fit to join with thee; Much less our instruments of meaner sound, That track thee slowly o’er enchanted ground, Unfit to lift the train thy music leaves, Or glean around its sheaves!
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 6, December 1850 by Various