L’Impertinent, who got us a seat and told me a ridiculous story how that last week he had caused a simple citizen to spend; L80 in entertainments of him and some friends of his upon pretence of some service that he would do him in his suit after a widow.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

He spoke the verses aloud from the first lines till the music and rhythm suffused his mind, turning it to quiet indulgence; then copied them painfully to feel them the better by seeing them; then lay back on his bolster.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Menander’s answer had this meaning, who being reproved by a friend, the time drawing on at which he had promised a comedy, that he had not yet fallen in hand with it; “It is made, and ready,” said he, “all but the verses.”—[Plutarch, Whether the Athenians more excelled in Arms or in Letters.]—Having contrived the subject, and disposed the scenes in his fancy, he took little care for the rest.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

To this misfortune a recent shipwreck had been added, in which he had lost upwards of two millions of sesterces; not that he minded the loss but, destitute of a train of servants he could not keep up his proper dignity!
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

`Set your mind at rest,’ says he, `I will stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque myself.’
— from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

'Set your mind at rest,' says he, 'I will stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque myself.'
— from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Set your friend’s mind at rest,” said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be discerned.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Since the attempts at rising and the barricades of the morning a rigorous supervision had been organized.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

I have always been exceedingly polite; but at this period, coupled with the politeness I had acquired from my maternal education, there woke in me a restless, suspicious hastiness of temper which I probably inherited from my father.
— from My Memoirs, Vol. II, 1822 to 1825 by Alexandre Dumas

"He couldn't make up his mind," answered Rimrock, "so he stayed there till he starved to death.
— from Rimrock Jones by Dane Coolidge

Menander's answer had this meaning, who being reproved by a friend, the time drawing on at which he had promised a comedy, that he had not yet fallen in hand with it; "It is made, and ready," said he, "all but the verses.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Volume 05 by Michel de Montaigne

Robert, who, perhaps, without this conversation would not have thought particularly of making any return, said he should like to do something for her very much.
— from Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young Or, the Principles on Which a Firm Parental Authority May Be Established and Maintained, Without Violence or Anger, and the Right Development of the Moral and Mental Capacities Be Promoted by Methods in Harmony with the Structure and the Characteristics of the Juvenile Mind by Jacob Abbott

Whilst this violent, noisy, and bloody scene was passing on the Greve, several men, barricaded behind the gate of communication with the garden, replaced their swords in their sheaths, assisted one among them to mount a ready saddled horse which was waiting in the garden, and like a flock of startled birds, fled in all directions, some climbing the walls, others rushing out at the gates with all the fury of a panic.
— from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas

Through innumerable controversies with scientific men in the public journals, magazines and reviews, she has presented in awful array, the abuses of unlimited and uncontrolled experimentation on the continent of Europe, and the arguments in favor of total repression.
— from Vivisection by Albert Leffingwell

And still they came, winter as it was, for when a man’s soul is starving, what does he care for meat and roof so he can but get that nobler hunger fed?
— from Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc — Volume 1 by Mark Twain