But I am very much mistaken if she missed a word of this, or lost a look of mine as I received it with the utmost pleasure, and honoured by Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, felt older than I had done since I left Canterbury.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

whose condition, being compared to our own, makes it seem more agreeable and honourable.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

Dispositions of this kind are: marches in separate masses and columns, the formation of advance guards, and flanking columns, also the grouping of reserves intended to serve as supports for more than one strategic point; the concentration of several Corps from widely extended cantonments, &c. &c.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

And, Mr. Marlow, if she makes as good a wife as she has a daughter, I don't believe you'll ever repent your bargain.
— from She Stoops to Conquer; Or, The Mistakes of a Night: A Comedy by Oliver Goldsmith

For this purpose bands of people roam through the streets knocking on doors, firing guns, beating drums, blowing on horns, ringing bells, clattering pots and pans, shouting and hallooing with might and main, in short making all the noise it is possible for them to raise.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

The doctrine of justification by faith—a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort—has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God.
— from The Pursuit of God by A. W. (Aiden Wilson) Tozer

But the mischief is that until peace is made and you come into the peaceful enjoyment of your kingdom, the poor squire is famishing as far as rewards go, unless it be that the confidante damsel that is to be his wife comes with the princess, and that with her he tides over his bad luck until Heaven otherwise orders things; for his master, I suppose, may as well give her to him at once for a lawful wife."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

This persecution had been much less severely felt in Spain than in Galatia; a difference which may, in some measure account for the contrast of their regulations.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

I expected every wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the ship fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; in this agony of mind, I made many vows and resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life in this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these any more.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

And this, the bed, where every morning I stretch my arms for thee, and find thee not, and have yet to live through the day, and on which I now write this letter to thee—for, I who used to rise with the sun, am now too dispirited not to endeavour to cheat the weary day—I have made them place nearer to the window; and I look out upon the still skies every night, and have made a friend of every star I see.
— from Godolphin, Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

A family of simple minerals, including stilbite, mesotype, analcime, and some others, usually found in the trap or volcanic rocks.
— from Principles of Geology or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of Geology by Lyell, Charles, Sir

"Hadn't we better tell him what a good man the Major is?" said Mary, alarmed at the idea of a struggle in which her lover's life might be endangered, "and try to coax him to take our side?"
— from Horse-Shoe Robinson: A Tale of the Tory Ascendency by John Pendleton Kennedy

But I am a mother; I should make a poor jailer.
— from The Lily of the Valley by Honoré de Balzac

Youatt, who wrote twenty-five years after Aiton, says, "The breed has been much improved since Mr. Aiton described it."
— from Herd Record of the Association of Breeders of Thorough-Bred Neat Stock Short Horns, Ayrshires and Devons by Various

The disheartening intelligence, that Cornwallis had reinforced the British army, and the darkness of night, may, in some measure, account for the conduct of the militia in the battle of Camden, for they gave way early in the action, thereby throwing the whole of the British troops entirely upon the two Maryland brigades, who maintained the contest obstinately against superior numbers, at one time making a partially successful attempt to use the bayonet.
— from Memoirs of the Generals, Commodores and other Commanders, who distinguished themselves in the American army and navy during the wars of the Revolution and 1812, and who were presented with medals by Congress for their gallant services by Thomas Wyatt

“Methinks in such matters a woman is the best judge,” said the girl naively.
— from The Duke of Stockbridge: A Romance of Shays' Rebellion by Edward Bellamy

But the translation was willing to go further than this: it added to the Roman comedy what Echard thought English comedy excelled in, “humour”— “In some places we have had somewhat more of Humour than the Original, to make it still more agreeable to our Age . . . .”
— from Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) by Lawrence Echard