I tell you that Toby Crackit has been hanging about the place for a fortnight, and he can't get one of the servants in line.' 'Do you mean to tell me, Bill,' said the Jew: softening as the other grew heated: 'that neither of the two men in the house can be got over?' 'Yes, I do mean to tell you so,' replied Sikes.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

She heard one of our men, Harry, who is no better than he should be, speak freely to me; I think he called me his pretty Pamela, and took hold of me, as if he would have kissed me; for which, you may be sure, I was very angry: and she took him to task, and was as angry at him as could be; and told me she was very well pleased to see my prudence and modesty, and that I kept all the fellows at a distance.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

The Kil d mox in their habits Customs manners dress & language differ but little from the Clatsops, Chinnooks and others in this neighbourhood are of the Same form of those of the Clatsops with a Dore at each end & two fire places i, e the house is double as long as wide and divided into 2 equal parts with a post in the middle Supporting the ridge pole, and in the middle of each of those divisions they make their fires, dotes Small & houses Sunk 5 feet H2 anchor
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

Johnson, who thought that 'all was false and hollow,' despised the honeyed words, and was even indignant that Lord Chesterfield should, for a moment, imagine that he could be the dupe of such an artifice.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their holiday clothes.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

Time insensibly abated the pride of the conquerors and the patience of the vanquished; and the boldest citizen was taught, by experience, that he might suffer more injuries than he could inflict.
— 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

Their merit is to have collected, edited, and preserved the existing monuments of Greek literature.
— from The New Gresham Encyclopedia. A to Amide Vol. 1 Part 1 by Various

I believe, after all, he got it chiefly from Nature, who had poured some of her music into this honest conceited soul, as she had been known to do into other narrow souls before his.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

Formerly, the conditions and results of physiological exhaustion were considered more important than healthy conditions and their results, and this was owing to the suddenness, fearfulness, and mysteriousness of the former.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

In purchasing mules, you must look well to the age, form, height, eyes, size of bone and muscle, and disposition; for these are of more importance than his color.
— from The Mule A Treatise on the Breeding, Training, and Uses to Which He May Be Put by Harvey Riley

He said these bummers only paid fifty cents a meal, and there was no use of anybody else paying more, if they had cheek enough to play it on the landlord.
— from Peck's Compendium of Fun Comprising the Choicest Gems of Wit, Humor, Sarcasm and Pathos of America's Favorite Humorist by George W. (George Wilbur) Peck

To try to give an idea of the anguish endured by a woman who might be said to be the spoilt child of civilization, would be to attempt to say how many imaginings the heart can condense into one thought.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

The slight contraction of his Lordship's brow might indicate that he could have borne to be deprived of the pleasure of an interview with Mr. Westcombe.
— from Under One Sceptre, or Mortimer's Mission: The Story of the Lord of the Marches by Emily Sarah Holt

This is the secret of the marvellous industry that has converted even the barren sands and marshes of these districts into one continuous garden.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850 by Various

" So King Cadmus dwelt in the palace, with his new friend Harmonia, and found a great deal of comfort in his magnificent abode, but would doubtless have found as much, if not more, in the humblest cottage by the wayside.
— from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The first pair of legs answers, as I believe from reasons hereafter to be assigned, to the outer pair of maxillipods in the higher crustacea; and the other four legs to the first two pair of thoracic limbs in these same crustacea; this being the case, the highly remarkable position of the mouth in the larva, either between the bases of the two posterior pair of legs, or at least posteriorly to the first pair, together with the probable functions of the spiny points springing from the basal segments of the two hinder pair of true thoracic limbs, forcibly bring to mind the anomalous structure of the mouth being situated in the middle of the under side of the thorax, in Limulus,—that most ancient of crustaceans, and therefore one likely to exhibit a structure now embryonic in other orders.
— from A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) The Lepadidae; Or, Pedunculated Cirripedes by Charles Darwin

The young man, however, was self-confident, and his subsequent career proved most incontestably that his confidence was not misplaced.
— from The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4) by John Charles Dent

Yet at last it came to the ears of the old chief that a strange young man insisted that he could save the girl; so the chief sent for him, and said, "They tell me that you think you can deliver my daughter from death.
— from Algonquin Legends of New England by Charles Godfrey Leland