"Dr. John," I began, "Love is blind;" but just then a blue subtle ray sped sideways from Dr. John's eye: it reminded me of old days, it reminded me of his picture: it half led me to think that part, at least, of his professed persuasion of Miss Fanshawe's naïveté was assumed; it led me dubiously to conjecture that perhaps, in spite of his passion for her beauty, his appreciation of her foibles might possibly be less mistaken, more clear-sighted, than from his general language was presumable.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

I like to see other people muddled now and then, because my own occasional dulness is relieved by a good solid background of stupidity in my neighbors.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works by Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Well, men," said Bill Breakstone quietly, "was the story our young friend here told such stuff as dreams are made on, or did it really happen?"
— from The Quest of the Four: A Story of the Comanches and Buena Vista by Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler

Mr. Roane, of Virginia, asks,—"Is there an intelligent man who does not know that this excess of slavery is increasing, and will continue to increase in a ratio which is alarming in the extreme, and must overwhelm our descendants in ruin?
— from An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans by Lydia Maria Child

Then he said, with his hand smoothing the wet coat of his mule, which at any other time would have resented the touch with a squeal, but now did not heed him: "It minds me of one day in Rome when I was a lad there, at college, learning.
— from A King's Comrade A Story of Old Hereford by Charles W. (Charles Watts) Whistler

Seated in my office one day I recalled that years before I had read in the Congressional Record an account of a speech delivered in the United States Senate by James Smith, upholding in terms of highest praise the famous Hay-Pauncefote Treaty.
— from Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him by Joseph P. (Joseph Patrick) Tumulty

341 After having hurriedly greeted De Luca and Marietta, our old domestic, I rapidly resumed my weary way to overtake my companions on the road towards Serravalle.
— from The Flying Spy by Camillo De Carlo