Awakened rudely in the middle of the night, and relieved of his post as Minister like the sentinels of the Assembly, the worthy man, astounded, and rubbing his eyes, muttered, "Eh! then the President is a ——.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

Describing a characteristic incident in one of the strange confused battles Hinde says: "Wordy war, which also raged, had even more effect than our rifles.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

However great the service you rendered him, Erik may end by forgetting it; and you know that nothing can restrain Erik, not even Erik himself.
— from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

The long emulation of the successors of Artaxerxes and Constantine increased his reluctance to appear as a suppliant in a rival court; but he weighed the forces of the Romans, and prudently considered that the neighborhood of Syria would render his escape more easy and their succors more effectual.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

The latter was soon heard to mumble in a ruffled voice while he rubbed his eyelids: "My eyes burn me.
— from The Iron Arrow Head or The Buckler Maiden: A Tale of the Northman Invasion by Eugène Sue

Caesar will think that I am repudiating him entirely, more even than when I declined a place among his twenty land commissioners.
— from Cicero: Letters to Atticus, Vol. 2 of 3 by Marcus Tullius Cicero

She raised her eyebrows, made eyes at the wings, smiled with a smile that seemed to curdle on her moon-face, made exaggerated gestures which must certainly have called to mind the café-concert but for the majestic honesty which shone in her: this mother of a family played the part of the giddy girl, youth, passion: and Schumann's poetry had a faint smack of the nursery.
— from Jean-Christophe, Volume I by Romain Rolland

In these days, till the evening came, Lucius Mason never made his way into his mother's sitting-room, which indeed was the drawing-room of the house,—and he and Mrs. Orme, as a rule, hardly ever met each other.
— from Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope

[379] In a letter to Casaubon he says 'vitam et res humanas et medias earum turbas per contemplationes sanas et veras instructiores esse volo.'
— from A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) by Leopold von Ranke