Miss Fanny Squeers carefully treasured up this, and much more conversation on the same subject, until she retired for the night, when she questioned the hungry servant, minutely, regarding the outward appearance and demeanour of Nicholas; to which queries the girl returned such enthusiastic replies, coupled with so many laudatory remarks touching his beautiful dark eyes, and his sweet smile, and his straight legs—upon which last-named articles she laid particular stress; the general run of legs at Dotheboys Hall being crooked—that Miss Squeers was not long in arriving at the conclusion that the new usher must be a very remarkable person, or, as she herself significantly phrased it, ‘something quite out of the common.’
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not universal, must be admitted by every one who will look at some venomous snakes, at some fishes, and at
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

I sat down at night upon my bedside, and resolved that I would not go to sleep till I had fixed its title.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

The grammarian of Alexander seems, as is not unusual, much better acquainted with this mysterious transaction, and more assured of the guilt of Plautianus than the Roman senator ventures to be.]
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

The law for time and for eternity is, “I have declared Thy name unto My brethren and will declare it.”
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Paul to the Colossians and Philemon by Alexander Maclaren

I do not understand men, but am not averse to learning something of their ways.
— from The Little Red Foot by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

Now they do not use many bricks about Edinburgh; but there are exceptions, especially in the direction of Leith, and this was the place where they made the exceptions.
— from Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City: His Progress and Adventures by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

I love him so dearly that I turn the whole night upon my bed, and cannot close my eyes, nor sleep.
— from French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France by Marie, de France, active 12th century

Cats do not usually mind being alone.
— from Among the Night People by Clara Dillingham Pierson

It used, when I was a bachelor especially, when I often spent my Sundays alone, to be my frequent Sunday habit to number up my blessings, and I assure you it is a most useful practice; e.g. , that I had been born in Great Britain, in such a century, such a part of it, such a rank in life, such a class and character of parents, then my personal privileges.
— from Private Papers of William Wilberforce by William Wilberforce

As the surging crowd of Jugurtha's soldiery swept over the doomed city, massacring every Numidian of adult age, the claim of nationality made by the protesting merchants was not unnaturally met by a thrust from the sword.
— from A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate by A. H. J. (Abel Hendy Jones) Greenidge