And, not indeed in these words, yet to this purpose, spake I much unto Thee: and Thou, O Lord, how long?
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

But, though poor, we were gentlefolks, and not to be sneered out of these becoming appendages to our rank; and so would march up the aisle to our pew with as much state and gravity as the Lord Lieutenant’s lady and son might do.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

said my uncle Toby ——A train of a fiddle-stick!—quoth my father—which follow and succeed 43 one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle.—I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, mine are more like a smoke-jack.——Then, brother Toby, I have nothing more to say to you upon that subject, said my father.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

"He kissed me under the ash trees on Cossethay hill—do you think it was wrong?"
— from The Rainbow by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

Palmerston, by the Queen's desire, insisted on my returning to the F.O., and I felt that, though most unwilling to accept the offer, I had no sufficient plea for declining it.
— from Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. In Two Volumes. Volume II. by Henry Reeve

Archdeacon Maynard used to advocate the one way, and impress it on his missionaries black and white.
— from Cinderella in the South: Twenty-Five South African Tales by Arthur Shearly Cripps

The union of many of these minor drains forms occasionally a large one, and the points of the hills which meet upon them afford the only means of crossing them.
— from Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales by John Oxley

The people seemed at length to rely more upon themselves and their own industry than on the specious promises of trading politicians, and Mr. O'Reardon, whose functions, I fear, were not above reproach in the matter of secret information, began to fear lest some fine morning he might be told his occupation was gone, and that his employers no longer needed the fine intelligence that could smell treason, even by a sniff; he must, he said, do something to revive the memory of his order, or the chance was it would be extinguished forever.
— from Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume I. by Charles James Lever

This is the way the traders still travel in Tibet; they march until they are tired, or until they find a nice grassy spot; they then off saddles, turn their animals loose, light a fire under some adjacent tree, and halt for the night; thus the longest possible distance can be performed every day, and the five days from Ta-li to Yung-Ch'ang would not be by any means an impossibility.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2 by Rustichello of Pisa

said my uncle Toby ——A train of a fiddle-stick!—quoth my father—which follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle.—I declare, quoth my uncle Toby , mine are more like a smoak-jack.———Then, brother Toby , I have nothing more to say to you upon that subject, said my father.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

I have lost three of my upper teeth, and two of my lower, and I am learning now to speak with my lips shut, so as to hide the gap."
— from The Cornet of Horse: A Tale of Marlborough's Wars by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

This heavy-headed revel, east and west, Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations; They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish frase Soul our addition: and indeed it takes From our achievements, though performed at hight, The pith and marrow of our attribute.—Hamlet.
— from The Red Acorn by John McElroy