I am with so much pleasure coming to you to breakfast; and, oh, sir, you will pardon praise from an old man, but you are blessed in your wife.”
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

His sense of dramatic situation was unrivalled, and, if he could not answer his own problems, he could at least put problems forth, and what more should an artist do?
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde

One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of bestowing this charity, and said to his sister, with a smile, “There is M. Géborand purchasing paradise for a sou.” When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by a refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which induced reflection.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The Prince paused for a moment or two, as though awaiting a reply; but none came, seeing that every man had his eyes bent upon the floor, and many of the audience had turned white in the face.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

Not long since, a soldier who was a prisoner, perceiving from a tower where he was shut up, that the people began to assemble to the place of execution, and that the carpenters were busy erecting a scaffold, he presently concluded that the preparation was for him, and therefore entered into a resolution to kill himself, but could find no instrument to assist him in his design except an old rusty cart-nail that fortune presented to him; with this he first gave himself two great wounds about his throat, but finding these would not do, he presently afterwards gave himself a third in the belly, where he left the nail sticking up to the head.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold hands.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Perfect place for a lookout.
— from Second Variety by Philip K. Dick

“I assume that a salary is the price paid for a commodity, and it ought to conform with the law of supply and demand.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

But since, in our own time, men have been able to traverse again the routes over which Marco Polo passed, fact after fact has been established, quite as he truthfully stated them centuries ago.
— from A History of the Philippines by David P. Barrows

They determined, therefore, to get their pushing poles first, and then to carry the squares one by one to the river, and, arranging them there, to embark soon after nightfall.
— from The Big Brother: A Story of Indian War by George Cary Eggleston

Some poison, prepared for a mischievous fox which had long troubled the little settlement, was discovered and
— from See America First by Charles J. Herr

Peter, Paul, Francis, and Jerome. Florence.
— from The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance With An Index To Their Works by Bernard Berenson

She writes very well, and then she says things that are pretty plain for a woman.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

The RINK , open and covered, has an area of 14,000 square feet, the surface is laid with Plimpton’s patent Pitch Pine Floor, and the Skates are in perfect condition.
— from Myers' Grand Hippodrome by Anonymous

Drawing-room comedy, pathetic pastoral, fantastic adventure, slum idyll and medieval romance, it was all one to Rankin.
— from The Divine Fire by May Sinclair

Houston alone, husbanding his scanty means, animating his raw levies, working, planning, providing for all, laid his trap with such shrewd forethought, that in less than two months he had sprung it upon Santa Ana and all his army, and on the banks of the San Jacinto, dictated terms of peace to his captive, the butcher of the Alamo and Goliad.
— from By-Ways of War: The Story of the Filibusters by James Jeffrey Roche

No wonder that the psalm pauses for a moment on that thought, and lets the notes of harp and horn impress it on the listeners!
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 2 Psalms XXXIX.-LXXXIX. by Alexander Maclaren