There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink With the three-thousandth curtsy; there the waltz, The only dance which teaches girls to think, Makes one in love even with its very faults.
— from Don Juan by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

His new source of trouble sprang from the not anticipated misfortune of Isabella Linton evincing a sudden and irresistible attraction towards the tolerated guest.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

“And do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost that had come in my way?”
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

Perhaps in course of time they settled down to a more orderly, if less exciting, mode of life than that to which they had hitherto been accustomed.
— from Border Raids and Reivers by Robert Borland

[52] up to half its former dimensions, which kicked out with indistinct movements of its lower extremities, which flapped with foreshortened strokes of the shadowy upper limbs, which altogether so contorted itself as to form the likeness of a thing all out of perspective, all out of proportion, and all most horribly reminiscent.
— from From Place to Place by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb

The naturally slow motion of its limbs enables the loris to approach its prey so stealthily that it seizes birds before they can be alarmed by its presence.
— from Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History, Antiquities and Productions, Volume 1 by Tennent, James Emerson, Sir

The Army, he charged, generally failed to see the connection between prejudice and national security; many of its leaders even denied that prejudice existed in the Army.
— from Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 by Morris J. MacGregor

I shall post my officers in line, each man keeping in sight the one behind and the one before him.
— from The Exploits of Juve Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantômas" Detective Tales by Pierre Souvestre

Del Rio was a nonentity; but de Vargas was a very stern reality—a man of infamous life, equally notorious for the delight he took in slaughtering his fellow-men and the facility with which he murdered the Latin language!
— from A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2) by Thomas M. (Thomas Martin) Lindsay

A century and a quarter, during which representatives were chosen because of actual or supposed aptitude, and retained in office during long periods—frequently for life—when nearly every industry was fostered, and none fathered, developed a people, the best paid, the best fed, the best clothed, the best housed, the best educated, enjoying more of the comforts of life, far more of its luxuries, enduring less hardships and privations, than any other in all history; but it is an even guess if, at the same time, we did not become more restless, discontented and unhappy.
— from Vanishing Landmarks: The Trend Toward Bolshevism by Leslie M. (Leslie Mortier) Shaw

Many individuals, animated by the fumes of inebriation, now loudly extolled that cause which they durst not avow when it required their open approbation and assistance; and, though they industriously avoided exposing their lives and fortunes to the chance of war in promoting their favourite interest when there was a possibility of success, they betrayed no apprehension in celebrating the memory of its last effort, amidst the tumult of a riot and the clamours of intemperance.
— from The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II. by T. (Tobias) Smollett

When I call up for myself this great march I see it all mapped out in landscapes, each of which I caught from some mountain, and each of which joins on to that before and to that after it, till I can piece together the whole road.
— from The Path to Rome by Hilaire Belloc

The naturally slow motion of its limbs enables the loris to [pg 13] approach its prey so stealthily that it seizes birds before they can be alarmed by its presence.
— from Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon by Tennent, James Emerson, Sir