The letter was as follows: “DEAR NANCY, “As I found it impossible to mention to you what, I am afraid, will be no less shocking to you, than it is to me, I have taken this method to inform you, that my father insists upon my immediately paying my addresses to a young lady of fortune, whom he hath provided for my—I need not write the detested word.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

He had eaten no food since midday, he told me early in his narrative, and I found some mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the room.
— from The War of the Worlds by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Put the question in this way:—Which has a more pure being—that which is concerned with the invariable, the immortal, and the true, and is of such a nature, and is found in such natures; or that which is concerned with and found in the variable and mortal, and is itself variable and mortal?
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

This answer they at once agreed was highly noble and in fact the best possible.
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 2 by Emperor of Rome Julian

No, alas, I found it,
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Second , the opportunity this book offers for oral and written exercises by substituting the numerous “Variants”—a practically new and important feature—in the footnotes for the original expressions in the text.
— from Heath's Modern Language Series: The Spanish American Reader by Ernesto Nelson

But the Australian aboriginal’s pictures of animals were nicely accurate in form, attitude, carriage; and he put spirit into them, and expression.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

Thus his criticism is not an independent function to be respected as such; it plays the role of handy-man to his emotional attitude and is guided by his resistance.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

The distance here in question is that taken along the southern coast of Arabia from the straits to Kesem, the ancient Cane, through which passes now, as in former times, the greater part of the perfumes collected in Hadramaut and Seger.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) Literally Translated, with Notes by Strabo

The name of D’Artagnan was not altogether new to Mazarin, who, although he did not arrive in France before the year 1634 or 1635, that is to say, about eight or nine years after the events which we have related in a preceding narrative, * fancied he had heard it pronounced as that of one who was said to be a model of courage, address and loyalty.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

Not always, indeed; for in many of the scenes he is busily brooding and thinking throughout, and we share his mind while he joins in the talk.
— from The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock

The road wound up the hill from the village nestling at its foot and dipped again out of sight farther on.
— from He Comes Up Smiling by Charles Sherman

It was time to go home to supper now, and I felt very friendly towards it, having been hard at work for some hours, with only the voice of the little rill, and some hares and a pheasant for company.
— from Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore

These are numerous and interesting, from their historical associations.
— from Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 2 (of 2) by George Ticknor Curtis

de Tencin is not an interesting figure to contemplate from a moral standpoint.
— from The Women of the French Salons by Amelia Gere Mason

When the infant seeks nourishment at its mother's breast it does not analyze its food.
— from The Faith of Our Fathers by James Gibbons

The belief in a mysterious relation between ghosts and insects, or rather between spirits and insects, is a very ancient belief in the East, where it now assumes innumerable forms,—some unspeakably horrible, others full of weird beauty.
— from Kotto: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs by Lafcadio Hearn

All his life he had realised that his senses brought to him merely a more or less interesting set of sham appearances; that space, as men measure it, was utterly misleading; that time, as the clock ticked it in a succession of minutes, was arbitrary nonsense; and, in fact, that all his sensory perceptions were but a clumsy representation of real things behind the curtain—things he was for ever trying to get at, and that sometimes he actually did get at.
— from Four Weird Tales by Algernon Blackwood

“I told him it was in his power, and that I would not ask it for any creature living, but—’ He put his hand upon my lips, told me he knew what I was going to say, and begged me not to say it; but I, hoping to carry it off playfully, kissed his hand, and putting it aside said, ‘I must ask, and you must grant this to my mother.’
— from Tales and Novels — Volume 10 Helen by Maria Edgeworth