But what did M. Danglars say to this outburst on the part of the procureur?” “Oh, he laughed, and in that singular manner so peculiar to himself—half-malicious, half-ferocious; he almost immediately got up and took his leave; then, for the first time, I observed the agitation of my grandfather, and I must tell you, Maximilian, that I am the only person capable of discerning emotion in his paralyzed frame.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

While this was going on, Grandma Nichols, who had always adhered to the good old puritanical custom of dining exactly at twelve o'clock, began to wonder why dinner was not forthcoming.
— from 'Lena Rivers by Mary Jane Holmes

But granting all this, why should the whole character of marriage be changed on account of possible cases of deficient evidence?
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849 by Various

The art of portraying characters; of describing events; of compressing, arranging, and selecting great masses of heterogeneous facts, of conducting many different chains of narrative without confusion or obscurity; of preserving in a vast and complicated subject the true proportion and relief, will tax the highest literary skill, and no one who does not possess some, at least, of these gifts in an unusual measure is likely to attain a permanent place among the great masters of history.
— from Historical and Political Essays by William Edward Hartpole Lecky