‘The fact is, we avoid mentioning the subject; and my unsettled prospects and indifferent circumstances are a great consolation to them.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

“‘Tis true; man, as you know,” said Aramis, “is a strange animal, made up of contradictions.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

My stool was such a tower of observation, that as I watched him reading on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and following up the lines with his forefinger, I observed that his nostrils, which were thin and pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a singular and most uncomfortable way of expanding and contracting themselves—that they seemed to twinkle instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

This disagreement is the only one that has ever taken place between the count and countess, who are still as much united, although married more than twenty years, as on the first day of their wedding.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

In real life we often see a man under the influence of rage, or fear, or indignation, or beside himself with jealousy, or with some other out of the interminable list of human passions, begin a sentence, and then swerve aside into some inconsequent parenthesis, and then again double back to his original statement, being borne with quick turns by his distress, as though by a shifting wind, now this way, now that, and playing a thousand capricious variations on his words, his thoughts, and the natural order of his discourse.
— from On the Sublime by active 1st century Longinus

SYN: Assert, maintain, uphold, clear, support, defend, claim, substantiate, justify, establish.
— from A Complete Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms or, Synonyms and Words of Opposite Meaning by Samuel Fallows

Now, my dear friend Garrick, whom I have so much cause to esteem and honour—(why, or wherefore, ’tis no matter)—can it escape your penetration—I defy it—that so many play-wrights, and opificers of chit-chat have ever since been working upon Trim ’s and my uncle Toby ’s
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

Howsoever that may be, I have as yet seen nothing but his favourable side, and my uncle, who frequently confers with him, in a corner, declares he is one of the most sensible men he ever knew—He seems to have a reciprocal regard for old Squaretoes, whom he calls by the familiar name of Matthew, and often reminds of their old tavern-adventures: on the other hand, Matthew’s eyes sparkle whenever Quin makes his appearance—Let him be never so jarring and discordant, Quin puts him in tune; and, like treble and bass in the same concert, they make excellent music together—.
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

Rich from commerce and their maratime situation, [502] and, in the case of Lyons, from their command of internal navigation, the wealthy merchants and manufacturers of those cities foresaw the total insecurity of property, and in consequence of their own ruin, in the system of arbitrary spoliation and murder upon which the government of the Jacobins was founded.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

After some time, the old tradesman bred up two of his sons to his business, and the young men having learned to write, brought books into the counting-house, things their father had never used before; but the old man kept to his old method for all that, and would cast up a sum, and make up an account with his spoons and his drawers, as soon as they could with their pen and ink, if it were not too full of small articles, and that he had always avoided in his business.
— from The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) by Daniel Defoe

The settlement on Borneo by the enterprise and intelligence of Mr Brookes has given our commerce, a sudden and most unexpected footing in this queen of the Indian Ocean.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. by Various

A young New York business man, his pretty sweetheart, his sentimental stenographer, and his fashionable sister are mixed up in a misunderstanding that surpasses anything in the way of comedy in years.
— from The Boss of Wind River by A. M. (Arthur Murray) Chisholm

The attacks would come, and many of Mr. Jefferson's friends thought it better they should come at once, and occupy the first week or two of the session, than to be scattered through the whole session and mixed up with all its business.
— from Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850 by Thomas Hart Benton

Although it is my belief that the coöperative principle is essentially sound and must ultimately dominate our business life, yet it will need to find means of giving larger incentive to its managers if it is to compete with the best individual business men.
— from The Farmer and His Community by Dwight Sanderson

When the destruction of corpuscles is slower, a mild, usually nonfatal, type of the disease is called forth, which is only witnessed late in autumn or more rarely in July and the early part of August.
— from Special Report on Diseases of Cattle by Dr. (Benjamin Tilghman) Woodward

“We had a gang fight down ’round Xivray that lasted a day or so and made us lose quite a number of the fellows.
— from What Outfit, Buddy? by T. Howard (Thomas Howard) Kelly

The floor was covered with a thick Babylonian carpet, soft as moss under the foot.
— from An Egyptian Princess — Complete by Georg Ebers

Kingcote was silent, and moved uneasily on his chair.
— from Isabel Clarendon, Vol. 2 (of 2) by George Gissing

You say a good deal about the Book of Mormon, which your son has found, and you believe much of what he tells you, yet we cannot bear the thoughts of losing you, and they do wish—I wish, that if you do believe those things, you would not say anything more upon the subject—I do wish you would not." "Deacon Beckwith," said I, "if you should stick my flesh full of faggots, and even burn me at the stake, I would declare, as long as God should give me breath, that Joseph has got that Record, and that I know it to be true.
— from History of the Prophet Joseph, by His Mother by Lucy Smith