I was getting bewildered; he so crowded on my mind his list of nature’s eccentricities and possible impossibilities that my imagination was getting fired.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

You have not the smallest chance of moving me.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Wherever such conditions obtain, much may be said in favor of concentrating school activity upon books.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

I, too, have felt the chilling blight Their shadows cast on me, My thought by day—my dream by night— Was of my own country.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

This fiction is disproved by the silence of contemporaries; nor can it be restored by a spurious character of Messina, (Muratori,
— 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

Mar. 2.22; new in species, character, or mode, Mat. 26.28, 29. Mar. 14.24, 25.
— from A Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament by William Greenfield

You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler papers, to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the adventure of the man with the twisted lip.
— from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

What could I do but invoke a silent blessing on Miss Mills’s head, and store Miss Mills’s address in the securest corner of my memory!
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

It required great caution to hide the joy I felt when the title of the book reached my ears, and snatching it from the silk mercer, I bought all the papers and pamphlets from the boy for half a real; and if he had had his wits about him and had known how eager I was for them, he might have safely calculated on making more than six reals by the bargain.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Mrs. Bell, who like a watchful hen-mother was apparently seeing nothing, and yet all the time was tenderly brooding over the little chick whom she hoped was soon about to take flight from the parent nest, saw at a glance that her chick looked nothing at all beside that superior chicken of Mrs. Meadowsweet's.
— from The Honorable Miss: A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town by L. T. Meade

Yet, having at command a very skillful corps of millwrights, machinists, and millers, detailed principally from the Fourth Iowa and Thirty-sixth Illinois volunteer regiments, we soon got matters in shape, and were able to send such large quantities of flour and meal to the front, that only the bacon and small parts of the ration had to be brought forward from our depot at Rolla.
— from Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, General, United States Army — Volume 1 by Philip Henry Sheridan

Yet there were not, I think, two distinct sides to Hood’s nature, as some of the earlier critics said, to account for the mysterious pathos welling up from the founts of his wit, but rather a unique single, capable of many manifestations seemingly distinct and diverse, and even antagonistic, but all alike, whether grave or gay, imaginative or practical, comic or tragic—phases only of a homogeneous soul.
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, April 1883 by Chautauqua Institution

Then an improvement of the social condition of mankind must be introduced, since the level of morality depends upon social conditions.
— from The Quest of the Historical Jesus A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede by Albert Schweitzer

The tears of the singer had no effect upon the inflexible monarch, and it was only by giving up a portion of her salary (so at least runs this anecdote of dubious authenticity) that she could obtain M. Mara's liberation.
— from History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time With Anecdotes of the Most Celebrated Composers and Vocalists of Europe by H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland) Edwards

There was a stray puff of wind to westward; there was a sudden cry of men mortally hurt, of horses suddenly tortured.
— from White Ashes by Alden Charles Noble

Four years later, in the year 109, M. Junius Silanus, colleague of Marius, met the same barbarians, who had now crossed the Rhine, in the new province of South Gaul, and was in his turn defeated.
— from The Gracchi Marius and Sulla Epochs of Ancient History by A. H. (Augustus Henry) Beesly

—A dry fall wind warm for the season, characteristic of many mountainous regions.
— from Meteorology: The Science of the Atmosphere by Charles Fitzhugh Talman

Maj. Jingo returned, after a fruitless search for Triangle's mad dog, and just as he entered the hall, the Irish girl came rushing down stairs, crying— "O! murther, murther!
— from The Humors of Falconbridge A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes by Falconbridge

The departure of the Norton Wards and Sir Christopher on Monday morning left Arthur alone with the family party at Hilsey Manor.
— from A Young Man's Year by Anthony Hope