‘We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I know,’ I replied; ‘and I dare say we say and think a good deal that is rather foolish.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Then, going on: "Salts," he said, "fill the sea in considerable quantities, professor, and if you removed all its dissolved saline content, you'd create a mass measuring 4,500,000 cubic leagues, which if it were spread all over the globe, would form a layer more than ten meters high.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

I set the extinguisher on the flame, receiving as I did so a slap on my hand and a petulant ‘cross thing!’
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

I waited on the door-step to let him go by, and looked round, as I did so, at the parlour window.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Varvara ran to the window, and rushing about in distress, shouted to the cook with all her might, straining her voice: “Sto-op, Stepanida, sto-op!
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

From what has been said, it is clear that all moral conceptions have their seat and origin completely a priori in the reason, and that, moreover, in the commonest reason just as truly as in that which is in the highest degree speculative; that they cannot be obtained by abstraction from any empirical, and therefore merely contingent, knowledge; that it is just this purity of their origin that makes them worthy to serve as our supreme practical principle, and that just in proportion as we add anything empirical, we detract from their genuine influence and from the absolute value of actions; that it is not only of the greatest necessity, in a purely speculative point of view, but is also of the greatest practical importance, to derive these notions and laws from pure reason, to present them pure and unmixed, and even to determine the compass of this practical or pure rational knowledge, i.e., to determine the whole faculty of pure practical reason; and, in doing so, we must not make its principles dependent on the particular nature of human reason, though in speculative philosophy this may be permitted, or may even at times be necessary; but since moral laws ought to hold good for every rational creature, we must derive them from the general concept of a rational being.
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant

He plunged through the wooded breast of the island, flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel filled with rough ice to another island, gained a third island, curved back to the main river, and in desperation started to cross it.
— from The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Worse still: his portrait is missing from his room, and is discovered ‘salement placarde a la porte des lieux d’aisance’!
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

My pursuers were still well behind me, but struggling up resolutely, and in deadly silence.
— from Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker

As he recalled his former encounter with the Ahaggar leader, the other had been neither friendly nor antagonistic to the Reunited Nations team Crawford had headed in their role as itinerant desert smiths.
— from Border, Breed Nor Birth by Mack Reynolds

He took me up with a slightly exaggerated air of relief, and I dare say we could have kept the subject going for ten minutes if it had been necessary, but he had hardly begun his reply before the three women for whom we had been waiting came into the room together.
— from The Jervaise Comedy by J. D. (John Davys) Beresford

I led the animal into the open air, and then jumped on his back, shaking the reins as I did so, but as he never stirred, I touched him lightly with a switch I had picked up in his stable.
— from The Arabian Nights Entertainments by Andrew Lang

She retreated an inch, declining: she waited for him to answer her question.
— from Stand Fast, Craig-Royston! (Volume II) by William Black

No; I must reap as I did sow.
— from Poems by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Amos Lawrence once said: "Young man, base all your actions upon a sense of right, and in doing so, never reckon the cost."
— from Hidden Treasures; Or, Why Some Succeed While Others Fail by Harry A. Lewis

Mr. Waddy Thompson, then a Representative in Congress, and subsequently Minister to Mexico, advocated the passage of the resolutions; and, in doing so, said that Mr. Adams, in negotiating the Florida treaty, actually ceded to Mexico the whole of Texas, a province that was part and parcel of this Union.
— from Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams Sixth President of the Unied States With the Eulogy Delivered Before the Legislature of New York by William Henry Seward

"'Yes, I can read, and I did see the name,' stammered Fritz; 'still I didn't—' "'You did
— from A Round Dozen by Susan Coolidge