He liked the way Pat had tucked him in, and he liked his eyes.
— from Bliss, and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield

The Honourable John Yates, this new friend, had not much to recommend him beyond habits of fashion and expense, and being the younger son of a lord with a tolerable independence; and Sir Thomas would probably have thought his introduction at Mansfield by no means desirable.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

The incessant quivering, in which every fibre of her frame participated, had thrown her into a stupefied reverie in which her arms worked on independently of her consciousness.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

When he is at last perfectly safe from error and reduced to speechless sensibility, he will perceive, however, that he is also washed clean of every practical belief: he would declare himself universally ignorant but for a doubt whether there be really anything to know.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Her letter to Raymond gave no clue for discovery; it assured him, that she was in no danger of wanting the means of life; she promised in it to preserve herself, and some future day perhaps to present herself to him in a station not unworthy of her.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Then the piebald horse turned himself into a bald-headed man, opened the golden casket, and cut off the heads of the seven birds.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

His remote impressions of the robes and coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers, whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective Mr. Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some dangerous secret without knowing what it is.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Other people had to have interpreters at every turn, but not the Thugs; they could talk together, no matter how far apart they were born, for they had a language of their own, and they had secret signs by which they knew each other for Thugs; and they were always friends.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

Let me only persuade him that his interference at this moment will save him inevitable trouble and wretchedness and responsibility hereafter, and he will bestir himself for his own sake.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

“Well, I suppose it does, but our prince here thinks he is as important a person as the queen of England, and does exactly as he likes.”
— from The Rajah of Dah by George Manville Fenn

It was at one of their earliest meetings—at one of the heterogeneous dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think “literary”—that the young man who chanced to sit next to her, and of whom it was vaguely rumoured that he had “written,” had presented himself to her imagination as the sort of luxury to which Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably have treated herself as a crowning folly.
— from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

But she had known also that he, in his courtesy, had been altogether unaware of any such intention on her part, and that she would now present herself to him in an aspect very different from that in which she had hitherto been regarded.
— from The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope

She pressed him to her in a passion of desire to make him altogether happy, to protect him from feeling too much.
— from The Pastor's Wife by Elizabeth Von Arnim

That disinterestedness, that impartiality, that serenity which permitted him to "hover impartially above all objects" deserted him.
— from Madame Bovary: A Tale of Provincial Life, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Gustave Flaubert

He further tells, that “St. Patrick presented himself to him in a vision, with an angelicall brightnes, and having a golden diadem on his head,” and told him he paid him a visit, to prevent Winwaloe, who desired to see him, “so tedious a journey by sea and land.” St. Patrick in this interview foretold St. Winwaloe so much, that the father of his monastery released him with the other monks before-mentioned, that they might become hermits; for which purpose they travelled, till, wanting a ship, St. Winwaloe struck the sea with his staff, which opened a passage for them, and they walked through singing, and dryshod, “himself marching in the front, the waters on both sides standing like walls.” Father Cressy says, that St. Winwaloe never sat in the church; that “every day he repeated the hundred and fifty psalms;” that to his bed he had neither feathers nor clothes, “but instead of feathers he strewed under him nutshells, and instead of blankets, sand mingled with pebbles, and two great stones under his head;” that he wore the same clothes night and day; that his bread was made with half of barley and half of ashes; that his other diet was a mixture of meal and cabbage without fat; and that “he took this refection once, only in two, and sometimes three dayes.”
— from The Every-day Book and Table Book. v. 2 (of 3) or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac by William Hone

“He knows that the Government is robbing him, knows that we landed proprietors have robbed him long since, robbed him of the land which should be the common property of all, and then, if he picks up dry wood to light his fire on that land stolen from him, we put him in jail, and try to persuade him that he is a thief.
— from Resurrection by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Then he dashed at the piano and played a lot of music so lively that it would have shocked the church people had they heard it, and Grace lounged in an easy-chair, with her eyes half closed, looking the picture of dreamy contentment.
— from Caleb Wright: A Story of the West by John Habberton

Having arranged his plans, he threw himself into an armchair with a more easy mind than he had experienced for many months past.
— from The Champdoce Mystery by Emile Gaboriau