The stories had little or no meaning for me then; but the mere spelling of the strange words was sufficient to amuse a little child who could do almost nothing to amuse herself; and although I do not recall a single circumstance connected with the reading of the stories, yet I cannot help thinking that I made a great effort to remember the words, with the intention of having my teacher explain them when she returned.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

“And when shall you return?” “He did not say when.” Marius rose and said coldly:— “Cosette, shall you go?” Cosette turned toward him her beautiful eyes, all filled with anguish, and replied in a sort of bewilderment:— “Where?” “To England.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Icel. rábitar , Arabs, see CV; cp. OF. arrabi (BH).
— from A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 by A. L. (Anthony Lawson) Mayhew

Most men have no vocation; and society, in imposing on them some chance language, some chance religion, and some chance career, first plants an ideal in their bosoms and insinuates into them a sort of racial or professional soul.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Even as Indian ivory, if one stain it with sanguine dye, or where white lilies are red with many a rose amid: such colour came on the maiden's face.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

," Milton, Comus ), originally "firm" ("rype and sad corage," Chaucer: The Clerkes Tale , 164).
— from Revelations of Divine Love by of Norwich Julian

Her mohair shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long ago, her own property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she caught cold this winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

At the sides they were to be inscribed in Latin and Portuguese (to which James Barbot adds Arabic), with the name of the monarch who sent the expedition, the date of discovery, and the captain who made it; on the summit was to be raised a stone cross cramped in with lead."
— from Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2 by Burton, Richard Francis, Sir

Diana found a roll and some cream cheese in a roomy old cupboard that was flavoured with mice; and after making a very indifferent meal in the dusky chamber, she went out upon the balcony, and sat there looking down upon the lighted town.
— from Birds of Prey by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

Presently the reply, a similar cry, came from another point of the compass, traveling like the first on waves of air, until it died away in a savage undernote.
— from The Eyes of the Woods: A Story of the Ancient Wilderness by Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler

After a day's rest we pulled on and passed through the mining district of Weaver Creek and American River, and reached Sacramento River at Sacramento City, crossed the river on a ferry and camped for the night on the farther bank.
— from Recollections of a Pioneer by J. W. (J. Watt) Gibson

“Father will meet us in London at the end of our run, and Simmonds could come to us then.”
— from Cynthia's Chauffeur by Louis Tracy

Many cases suffering only mild symptoms for the first few seasons, annually become aggravated until severe spasmodic asthma is a regular, and sometimes continuous complication.
— from The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred and Fifty Thousand by Ray Vaughn Pierce

Before me rose a steep cliff, crowned with an old ruined fort or tower.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics by Various