At the office all the afternoon, where every moment business of one kind or other about the fire-ships and other businesses, most of them vexatious for want of money, the commanders all complaining that, if they miss to pay their men a night, they run away; seamen demanding money of them by way of advance, and some of Sir Fretcheville Hollis’s men, that he so bragged of, demanding their tickets to be paid, or they would not work: this Hollis, Sir W. Batten and W. Pen say, proves a very..., as Sir W. B. terms him, and the other called him a conceited, idle, prating, lying fellow.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to reap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be ungrateful to our benefactors."
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

It is a structure which I have endeavoured to make as near to regularity as I could, and which must be seen in its full extent, and in proper succession.
— from The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 05 Miscellaneous Pieces by Samuel Johnson

I am very much astonished not to receive a letter from you or from any one else, and this astonishment is shared by all who know me.
— from Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Complete by Filson Young

But, though Cranstoun ‘nowise knew who followed him,’ the four men already named, two Ruthvens, a Moncrieff, and Eviot, were in the fray, though there was some uncertainty about Eviot.
— from James VI and the Gowrie Mystery by Andrew Lang

Pray don't ever ask me again not to rob a man of his religious belief, as if you thought my mind tended to such robbery.
— from George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 2 (of 3) by George Eliot

But they had no effect; Mrs. Kelland was persuaded that the child had been spoilt by learning, and in truth poor Lovedy was a refractory scholar; she was too lively to bear the confinement patiently; her mind was too much awake not to rebel against the dulness, and her fingers had not been brought into training early enough.
— from The Clever Woman of the Family by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

Some have formed their prognostic from the livid, black, and cadaverous countenance; others from the heavy, dull, fixed, or flaccid state of the eyes; from the dilated pupil; the foaming at the mouth and nostrils, the rigid and inflexible state of the body, jaws, or extremities; the intense and universal cold, etc.
— from Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented by William Tebb

It was impossible to go through the mills, and notice the respectable appearance and becoming and modest deportment of the "factory girls," without forming a very favorable estimate of their character and position in society.
— from A Visit to the United States in 1841 by Joseph Sturge

Ganivet claims that the deepest moral element in Spanish 46 character is stoicism, "not the brutal and heroic stoicism of Cato, nor the serene and majestic stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, nor the rigid and extreme stoicism of Epictetus, but the natural and humane stoicism of Seneca."
— from Spanish Highways and Byways by Katharine Lee Bates

So many memories, and nothing to remember, and before me, before me—a long, long road, and no goal....
— from Fathers and Children by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Loud bangs on the body follow, inflicted by the hands with such violence as to make a noise that resounds all over the ring.
— from Wrestling and Wrestlers Biographical Sketches of Celebrated Athletes of the Northern Ring; to Which is Added Notes on Bull and Badger Baiting by Jacob Robinson