This, added he, gave me a glorious pretence to search you; and I have been vexing myself all night, that I did not strip you garment by garment, till I had found them.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

Their Sins, we may presume were never so troublesome to their Memories, as now, that inevitable Destruction seem’d to threaten them, without the least Glympse of Comfort or Alleviation to their Misery; for, with what Face could Wretches who had ravaged and made so many Necessitous, look up for Relief; they had to that Moment lived in Defiance of the Power that now alone they must trust for their Preservation, and indeed without the miraculous Intervention of Providence, there appeared only this miserable Choice, viz.
— from A General History of the Pyrates: from their first rise and settlement in the island of Providence, to the present time by Daniel Defoe

"Indeed, I don't feel any more anxious now than I did before.
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

By and by came by Mr. Coventry, and so we broke off; and he and I took a turn or two and so parted, and then my Lord Sandwich came upon me, to speak with whom my business of coming again to-night to this ende of the town chiefly was, in order to the seeing in what manner he received me, in order to my inviting him to dinner to my house, but as well in the morning as now, though I did wait upon him home and there offered occasion of talk with him, yet he treated me, though with respect, yet as a stranger, without any of the intimacy or friendship which he used to do, and which I fear he will never, through his consciousness of his faults, ever do again.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

‘Do you think I can’t understand you as well as if I had seen you,’ pursued my aunt, ‘now that I DO see and hear you—which, I tell you candidly, is anything but a pleasure to me?
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Even Johnny Russell’s muse availed not, though it deserved a better fate.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete by Various

He made the mistake of grabbin' holt of me and callin' me a name that I don't purpose to have nobody usin' on me.
— from Old Judge Priest by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb

I am Ram Lal, a true man, and no trafficker in drugs and potions."
— from The Bronze Bell by Louis Joseph Vance

I have been fighting the Indians for several years, and I must admit now that I don't know anything about them, and I will confess that I was like "the Missouri"; I had to be shown before I believed.
— from Capt. W. F. Drannan, Chief of Scouts, As Pilot to Emigrant and Government Trains, Across the Plains of the Wild West of Fifty Years Ago by William F. Drannan

I never meet a negro that I do not feel like asking his forgiveness for the wrongs that my race has inflicted on his.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll

It marks a new tendency in Dewey's speculation.
— from John Dewey's logical theory by Delton Thomas Howard

"We never shall agree, except that I am willing to believe that you know more about nonsense than I do.
— from Half-Hours with Jimmieboy by John Kendrick Bangs

"I hope you do know more about nursing than I do, Carter," replied Tom very quietly.
— from The Young Engineers in Colorado; Or, At Railroad Building in Earnest by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock