"You know as well as I that it does make a difference with nearly everyone, so don't ruffle up like a dear, motherly hen, when your chickens get pecked by smarter birds.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Detected as the Bully of humility, who had built his windy reputation upon lies, and in his boastfulness had put the honest truth as far away from him as if he had advanced the mean claim (there is no meaner) to tack himself on to a pedigree, he cut a most ridiculous figure.
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

With sudden-flaring manes Those two great beasts rose upright like a man, Each gript a shoulder, and I stood between;
— from Idylls of the King by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

Odin had a ship, which he called Skidbladner, 126 in which he sailed over wide seas, and which he could roll up like a cloth.
— from The Younger Edda; Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson

Enthroned in a big chair behind the improvised stockade, he issued his orders in a deep veiled rumble, unmoved, like a deaf man, in the flying rumours.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

But I doubt whether any one can commend his prudence; for receiving unexpected letters, and especially from an emperor, it might have fallen out that the deferring to read them might have been of great prejudice.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Prince Andrew and the officer rode up, looked at the entrenchment, and went on again.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

He took up his burden again, and returned upstairs, looking about him and trying to account for the blood-spot.
— from The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

And ye shall see, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall rise up like a herb; and the hand of the Lord shall be known by His worshippers, and He shall threaten the contumacious.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

I have sworn to go and have my fortune told," and as Mrs. Samuels's eye, with a careless and ingenuous air, rested upon Lady Adela's name above the tent, she smiled inwardly at the thought that what that astute lady might possibly prophesy would also perhaps come true if, as well as prophesying, she eventually brought her intelligence to bear upon its accomplishment.
— from The Arbiter: A Novel by Bell, Florence Eveleen Eleanore Olliffe, Lady

There the wonders of the magnetic sleep grew more and more wonderful every day; the patients acquired the gift of prophecy; their vision extended over all the surface of the globe; they could hear and see with their toes and fingers, and read unknown languages, and understand them too, by merely having the book placed on their stomachs.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

Great numbers of people gathered round us, laughing at us and expressing great contempt and derision.
— from Fifty-two Stories of the British Navy, from Damme to Trafalgar. by Alfred H. (Alfred Henry) Miles

It may be that the King noticed signs of their courtship, for Sir Thomas Seymour was promptly sent on an embassy to Flanders in company with Dr. Wotton, and subsequently with the English contingent to the Emperor’s army to France, where he remained until long after Henry’s sixth marriage.
— from The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History by Martin A. S. (Martin Andrew Sharp) Hume

| Do not allow the left hand to go moving across the body from side to side, or to move to the front to pick up the reins; except occasionally when turning to the left, when it may be useful to loop thus:— Hold the off-side reins under little and third fingers of the right hand; then take hold of the near-lead rein with the forefinger some three inches away from left hand; and holding it tight bring it up as much as possible towards the body, at the same time quickly passing the left hand down so as to catch the near-lead rein in front of the right forefinger with the left thumb; then bring the left hand back to its original position, and you have a good loop, and the wheelers are checked from rushing the corner by the lower part of the right hand pressing on the off reins.
— from Hints on Driving by C. Morley (Charles Lewis William Morley) Knight

This body is not a gland any more than is the uterus, but both organs being quantitatively, and hence functionally different, I here once more venture to call down an interpretation of the part from the unfrequented bourne of comparative anatomy, and turning it to lend an interest to the accompanying figures even with a surgical bearing, I remark that the prostatic or rudimentary uterus, like a germ not wholly blighted, is prone to an occasional sprouting or increase beyond its prescribed dimensions--a hypertrophy in barren imitation, as it were, of gestation.
— from Surgical Anatomy by Joseph Maclise

"Can I have the essay that you read us last April, on the origin of woman?" asked Keren-happuch unexpectedly.
— from The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

[258] It is another of the attributes of the tables, that although they are fashioned out of the hardest stone, they can still be rolled up like a scroll.
— from The Legends of the Jews — Volume 3 by Louis Ginzberg

One prolonged roar of rifle shook the afternoon; we carried no artillery, and the Rebel battery, until its capture, raked us like an irrepressible demon, and at every foot of the intrenchments a true man fought both in front and behind.
— from Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War by George Alfred Townsend