No unknown; no persecuted descendant of a man of high degree; but the weak, imbecile son of a poor, petty tradesman.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

You are to leave the keys on coming away in the main hall of the house, where the proprietor may get them on his entering the house by means of his duplicate key.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

He was not a free tenant, could acquire no property, and his lord’s consent was needed for the marriage of his daughters.
— from English Villages by P. H. (Peter Hampson) Ditchfield

The feeble monarch resigned the possession of Sicily; offered, as the annual mark of his dependence, a crown of gold of the weight of three hundred pounds; and promised to supply, at the requisition of his sovereign, three thousand Gothic auxiliaries, for the service of the empire.
— 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

My uses cry to me, I must serve my turn Out of mine own; his days and times are past, And my reliances on his fracted dates Have smit my credit.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

His greatcoat, his splendid greatcoat, made of his dead mother’s cloth dress, with a splendid calico lining, gone for drink at the tavern!
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

It is far simpler and easier,” she added, looking at Oblonsky with the same encouraging smile with which at court she encouraged youthful maids of honor, disconcerted by the new surroundings of the court.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

His second work was the ‘Life of Q. Pomponius Secundus,’ in two Books, a person by whom he had been particularly beloved.—These books he composed as a tribute which was justly due to the memory of his deceased friend.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

Odin further resembled Apollo in that he, too, was god of eloquence and poetry, and could win all hearts by means of his divine voice; he was like Mercury in that he taught mortals the use of runes, while the Greek god introduced the alphabet.
— from Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas by H. A. (Hélène Adeline) Guerber

To this end they set, during the night, a mark on his door, and at drinking-parties they managed to have the can sent past him.
— from Secret Societies of the Middle Ages by Thomas Keightley

Now we drew near to the strange ship, and it seemed to Owen and me, as we stood side by side on the after deck beside Thorgils at the helm, that we saw here and there among the men on her deck the sparkle of arms as she lifted and swayed to the waves.
— from A Prince of Cornwall A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex by Charles W. (Charles Watts) Whistler

It was long past mid-day when I opened my eyes again on the scene, Mary was gone, but darling Mamma was ardently examining my manly cock, feeling how stiff it was still, and gently frigging it with the softest possible up and down motion of her delicate hand, covering and uncovering the ruby-coloured head as her hand moved the skin.
— from Forbidden Fruit: Luscious and exciting story, and More forbidden fruit; or, Master Percy's progress in and beyond the domestic circle by Anonymous

Filippo, who had up till now taken small thought of anything except numbers and talent, soon began to feel, as so many others have done before and since, the extreme difficulty of getting any cohesive action from a force which, split up into many small bodies, gave its [182] allegiance to six or seven separate commanders, all of equal merit, and all claiming, on their records, the right to administer the whole.
— from Italian Yesterdays, vol. 2 by Fraser, Hugh, Mrs.

“He caused himself to be carried from the scene of his loss and misery, and conveyed to a quiet residence on the sea-coast; not in the hope of recovering his peace of mind or happiness, for both were fled for ever; but to restore his prostrate energies, and meditate on his darling object.
— from The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, v. 1 (of 2) by Charles Dickens

She had been the queen of them all then, reigning by right of her beauty and intellect no less than by her wealth and high position—best of all, queen of her husband's heart—and as the thought of all that she had been "came o'er the memory of her doom," the dethroned queen sprang from her chair and paced the floor again, burning with passionate resentment, stirred to her soul's deepest depths with the bitter leaven of scorn, not less a queen to-day though despoiled of her kingdom.
— from The Senator's Bride by Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.

In my uncle's estimation, my politics had been always healthy, no doubt; and although he had on more than one occasion hinted, with sarcastic wit, that such a lady's-man must, of his devoir, be a 'gallant champion of the Salic law,' and dropped something rude and ill-natured about my English blood,—still, that was only in his dyspeptic moods; his temper was sure to improve, I fancied, with his political and material digestion.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 11, September, 1858 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

That the Duke's marrying of his daughter was a practice of his, thereby to raise his family; and that it was done by indiscreet courses.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys

And you make a great deal too much of his dulness.
— from The Hall and the Grange: A Novel by Archibald Marshall

He was likewise buried in his church, and by the pope's command an epitaph 798 was written on his tomb, wherein the memory of his devotion might be preserved for ever, and the readers or hearers thereof might be stirred up to give themselves to religion by the example of what he had done.
— from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Bede, the Venerable, Saint