"In to the bank?" asked K., "I thought I was under arrest." K. said this with a certain amount of defiance as, although his handshake had not been accepted, he was feeling more independent of all these people, especially since the supervisor had stood up.
— from The Trial by Franz Kafka

A great ideal, the ideal of a national church, was pounding to pieces, like a ship in the breakers, and in the confusion of such an hour the action of the various sects was like that of frantic passengers, each striving to save his possessions from the wreck.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

" "Not as your doctoring does, eh, Kimble?—because folks forget to take your physic, eh?" said the Squire, who regarded physic and doctors as many loyal churchmen regard the church and the clergy—tasting a joke against them when he was in health, but impatiently eager for their aid when anything was the matter with him.
— from Silas Marner by George Eliot

You profess yourself to be one of the strong—because you carry in your pocket enough stuff to send yourself and, say, twenty other people into eternity.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad

For it has not power enough, so they say, to evaporate or exhaust the fountains of the Nile.
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 1 by Emperor of Rome Julian

I will go as soon as ever I can leave my bed, and will wait for you at Lyons; for as you have to perform expiatory sacrifices to Saturn in this place, you cannot come with me.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Shall I ever forget the manner in which those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and to hold mine!
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Her first look was at the box where she had seen the count the previous evening, so that she perceived Franz and Albert in the place of the very person concerning whom she had expressed so strange an opinion to Franz.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

You have lived two years in love, and now evidently your married life has reached the period when, in order to preserve equilibrium, so to speak, you ought to exercise all your patience. . . .”
— from The Duel and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Now, you see, I just put ’em straight through, sick or well.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Thuillier turned pale; ever since the seizure of his pamphlet, he fancied all sudden arrivals meant the coming of the police.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

If it did, they can float any length of time, and the Pacific has been like a mill pond ever since they started.
— from The Flying Girl and Her Chum by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

By the suffix -du(le]: Pe’ Egidi yol’ itadul andemai, puatsitatsi, If Père Egidi stays to sleep up there, he will fire a gun; ake Baidane (gatsi) ame boladu , the men will go to Baidane to leave the girl; muto yetadu, Labao gatsi ; I will go to Yule Is to take the sheep, ( muto , Fr. mouton).
— from The Mafulu: Mountain People of British New Guinea by Robert Wood Williamson

That the language of a people embodies, so to speak, in objective form the intellectual progress made by it is certainly true, and it will be well, therefore, to state briefly the actual and potential value of the Native speech as compared with that of the whites.
— from The Black Man's Place in South Africa by Nielsen, Peter, active 1922-1937

In conclusion, you urge upon me "the immediate withdrawal of the troops from the harbor of Charleston," stating that, "under present circumstances, they are a standing menace, which renders negotiation impossible, and, as our present experience shows, threatens speedily to bring to a bloody issue questions which ought to be settled with temperance and judgment."
— from The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 1 by Jefferson Davis

Fear and horror, and every kind of physical emotion, so to say, were impossible in the calmness and sweetness of the assurance of the Divine presence.
— from Trumps by George William Curtis

The French physician, Parise, eloquently says: "This sublime gift of transmitting life—fatal perogative, which man continually forfeits—at once the mainstay of morality by means of family ties, and the powerful cause of depravity—the energetic spring of life and health—the ceaseless source of disease and infirmity—this faculty involves almost all that man can attain of earthly happiness or misfortune, of earthly pleasure or of pain; and the tree of knowledge, of good and evil, is the symbol of it, as true as it is expressive." Dr. Adam Clarke was so impressed by the difficulty of the serpent having originally gone erect, that he thinks that nachash means "a creature of the ape or ourang-outang kind."
— from Bible Studies: Essays on Phallic Worship and Other Curious Rites and Customs by J. M. (Joseph Mazzini) Wheeler

They had laboriously thought out, each for himself, a theory of political economy, substantially the same with that which Adam Smith afterwards expounded.
— from The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 4 by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron