As Carrie listened to this and much more of similar familiar badinage among the men and girls, she instinctively withdrew into herself.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

Pardon me this presumption, and pardon me a greater still, if I ask you, whether my advice, my assistance, my presence, my absence, my death, or my tortures can bring you any relief?
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Firstly, they must allure the conversation By many windings to their clever clinch; And secondly, must let slip no occasion, Nor bate (abate) their hearers of an inch, But take an ell—and make a great sensation, If possible; and thirdly, never flinch
— from Don Juan by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

He thinks it consists in making a great show, in having great possessions, in doing things which attract a great deal of attention; but happiness would be strangled, suffocated in such an environment .
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

And perhaps in the case of the poor this graceful excess is excluded by prudence: for though a poor man might make a great sacrifice in a small gift we should call this generous but scarcely liberal; Liberality appears to require an external abundance in the gift even more than a self-sacrificing disposition.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

He had made a good speculation in the City, and was rather in a good humour that day, and chanced to remark the agitation under which she laboured.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

I was always fortunate in good health, and the master of my own passions; but all I saw in my equals was for me a good school in which I have acquired the knowledge of man, and learned the real road to happiness.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

"'I've made a great sacrifice,' I told the whip as I got in. '
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Taught by us, our children shall hereafter point out the places, and say, 'HERE, General Marion, posted to advantage, made a glorious stand in defence of the liberties of his country—THERE, on disadvantageous ground, retreated to save the lives of his fellow citizens.'
— from The Life of Francis Marion by William Gilmore Simms

They have engines to beat down walls and to make a great slaughter in an army.
— from A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 07 by Robert Kerr

He received a gratuity of L10 and a pension, and made a great sensation in Bristol by walking about the city dressed in fine silk garments.
— from Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Complete by Filson Young

"He gave me a good scare, I must vow."
— from Marching on Niagara; Or, The Soldier Boys of the Old Frontier by Edward Stratemeyer

And though it is not a life that admits of one doing much active good, some is always possible in this position, and then it is a life of great solitude, which is wholesome.
— from Miss Eden's Letters by Emily Eden

It seems to me we get the first word or line and then go blindly on making mistakes and grievously sinning in our ignorance, unknowing of the great beauty that awaits us in the perfect rendering of life's beautiful psalm.
— from The Harvest of Years by Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

Mosquitoes and gnats swarmed in thick clouds over the low lands and villages.
— from The Cossacks: A Tale of 1852 by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

6 To them, by many a grateful song In happier seasons vow'd, These lawns, Olympia's haunt, belong: Oft by yon silver stream we walk'd, Or fix'd, while Philomela talk'd, Beneath yon copses stood.
— from The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside by Mark Akenside