Her manners showed good sense and good breeding; they were neither shy nor affectedly open; and she seemed capable of being young, attractive, and at a ball without wanting to fix the attention of every man near her, and without exaggerated feelings of ecstatic delight or inconceivable vexation on every little trifling occurrence.
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

for there is a sad poverty of variety in species, the trees being chiefly of one monotonous family—redwood, pine, spruce, fir—and so, at a near view there is a wearisome sameness of attitude in their rigid arms, stretched down ward and outward in one continued and reiterated appeal to all men to “Sh!—don’t say a word!—you might disturb somebody!” Close at hand, too, there is a reliefless and relentless smell of pitch and turpentine; there is a ceaseless melancholy in their sighing and complaining foliage; one walks over a soundless carpet of beaten yellow bark and dead spines of the foliage till he feels like a wandering spirit bereft of a footfall; he tires of the endless tufts of needles and yearns for substantial, shapely leaves; he looks for moss and grass to loll upon, and finds none, for where there is no bark there is naked clay and dirt, enemies to pensive musing and clean apparel.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

you [pg 185] are a child indeed; a child of the second childhood, old boy; you are beginning to dote and drule, I'm afraid."
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

(In severe cases of beriberi Yano and Nemoti have recently reported that the blood contains an increase of urea, and that its excretion is frequently disturbed.)
— from Scurvy, Past and Present by Alfred F. Hess

Mr. Wilfley said cheerily: “Oh, Blount, you are too conscientious.”
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

As the conqueror walked over the field, he observed that the greatest part of the slain consisted of beardless youths; and listened to the flattering reply of his vizier, that age and wisdom would have taught them not to oppose his irresistible arms.
— 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

For, to my thinking, it is a good tale, and infinitely more mirthful than this of the killing time, which presently it has been my lot to tell, though Sandy had no part in it, seeing that he abode until the coming of the Prince in the stony castle of Blackness, yet not greatly ill-done to, being tended there by his wife.
— from The Men of the Moss-Hags Being a history of adventure taken from the papers of William Gordon of Earlstoun in Galloway by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

Being Set at meat Scratch not neither Spit Cough or blow your Nose except there's a Necessity for it Chapter viii.
— from George Washington's Rules of Civility Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway by George Washington

The various tidae of the neighbourhood are admitted to the larder of Stizus ruficornis and of the Mantis-hunting Tachytes on the sole condition of being young and tender.
— from More Hunting Wasps by Jean-Henri Fabre

But your heart is so cold only because your brain is so dull; because, for instance, you cannot comprehend how a woman who, from childhood up, has been lapped in visions of future splendor, and has seen her life's dream almost realized, when this dream at once scatters like light mist, and she, with her high-wrought feelings and pampered taste, with her cherished pretensions to beauty and luxury, is about to be given over to a coarse, commonplace existence--that such a woman of necessity must catch at the wretched reflection of the brilliant reality that is irrecoverably gone; that the beloved of princes can afterwards be nothing else than a stage princess.
— from Hammer and Anvil: A Novel by Friedrich Spielhagen

We declared our intention of paying everything in gold; the credit of the house rose higher than ever, when suddenly, who should come over but yourself.
— from The Desultory Man Collection of Ancient and Modern British Novels and Romances. Vol. CXLVII. by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

In what a position will he stand if he fracture a lamp? One’s hair may be cut to any length,—it may be even shaved clean off; but your nose.—And then a few weeks,—a few months at farthest, and your hair has grown again: but your nose, like your reputation, can only stand one assault.
— from Nuts and Nutcrackers by Charles James Lever

But the silly copy of Brut y Brenhinoedd , in a modern hand there, is not worth talking of.—How do you know it is the same with the Bodleian? I presume, that the Brut y Brenhinoedd , in Llyfr Coch , is not the original translation from the Bretonic copy; for I think it mentions Galfrid’s translation in the conclusion of it.—But it is many years since I saw it.
— from Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards by Evan Evans