With a view to enhance the value of his company, and sound her sentiments at the same time, he became more reserved than usual, and seldomer engaged in her parties of music and cards; yet, in the midst of his reserve, he never failed in those demonstrations of reverence and regard, which he knew perfectly well how to express, but devised such excuses for his absence, as she could not help admitting.
— from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. (Tobias) Smollett

But apart from these causes of fallacy, I am strongly disposed to think that where transcendent geniuses are concerned the numbers anyhow are so small that their appearance will not fit into any scheme of averages.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James

Therefore I must dare all, as befitted my name, for in my case he was not inclined to derive 'Wagner'
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

This has been a gloomy, frigid, ungenial summer, but of late it seems to mend; I hear the heat sometimes mentioned, but I do not feel it: "Praeterea minimus gelido jam in corpore sanguis Febre calet sola.—" I hope, however, with good help, to find means of supporting a winter at home, and to hear and tell at the Club what is doing, and what ought to be doing in the world.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

Idiot that I am, though I have been trying to find it out for five years, I never found it out.”
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

The tribrach in the third foot is rare, and is not found in Terence.
— from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane

Of the which the first [gifts] are goods of Nature: for in our First making God gave us as full goods as we might receive in our spirit alone, [4] —and also greater goods; but His foreseeing purpose in His endless wisdom willed that we should be double.
— from Revelations of Divine Love by of Norwich Julian

I never forget that I am a Caarter, suh,—and you must never forget it either.”
— from Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman by Francis Hopkinson Smith

"As I have told you, we never forgive injustice."
— from Beatrice Boville and Other Stories by Ouida

The language is extremely sublime, and not at all to be understood by the vulgar: the sentiments are such as would make no figure in ordinary words; but such is the art of the expression, and the thoughts are elevated to so high a degree, that I question whether the discourse will sell much.
— from The Tatler, Volume 1 by Steele, Richard, Sir

I had two reasons for eating it now: first, I was hungry and thirsty; secondly, one of the first signs of fear is a disinclination, I might say inability, to swallow food, and fear of my captors was the last thing I intended to exhibit.
— from A Prisoner of the Khaleefa: Twelve Years Captivity at Omdurman by Charles Neufeld

The great lawyer, Sir William Blackstone, says— Accurately and strictly speaking, there is no foundation in nature or in natural law why a set of words on parchment should convey the dominion of land.
— from Britain for the British by Robert Blatchford

“And that excursion, that ramble, or whatever be the name for it, you were to take together?”
— from The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly by Charles James Lever

Noticing that the actinic cloud, as he called it, is not formed instantly, but after a delay of a few seconds, in his experiments, he reasoned as though it would follow from this that the formation of the actinic cloud behind a comet’s head in space might be a process extending its action in distance from the head at a rate considerably less than that at which light travels, yet still fast enough to account for the exceedingly rapid formation of the tail of Newton’s comet, and of other similar tails.
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, December 1882 A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture. Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle by Chautauqua Institution

They are not found in every shell, nor of the same size and shape in any two.
— from The Parables of Our Lord by William Arnot

Shall the greatest tidal wave of all time pass them by, and they not feel it for a moment?
— from The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 by Various