The talk can descend from generalities to personal inquiries, and need I say, that if you wish to know a young lady truly, you must see her at home, and by day light.
— from The Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness Being a Complete Guide for a Gentleman's Conduct in All His Relations Towards Society by Cecil B. Hartley

He can only avoid it by destroying the family, driving both sexes into sexless hives and hordes, and bringing up all children as the children of the state—like Oliver Twist.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

If the same scene were renewed before me now, I would take the same part; but I would strike harder and heavier, and brand him with such marks as he should carry to his grave, go to it when he would.’
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

She has anticipated her answer by the present of her portrait.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Her mother had been a French woman, and Captain Crewe had loved her language, so it happened that Sara had always heard and been familiar with it.
— from A Little Princess Being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Hurons thought that the soul had a head and body, arms and legs; in short, that it was a complete little model of the man himself.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

It is my intention to give suppers here and hold a bank, but if I play without correcting the freaks of fortune I am sure to lose.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

And the Doctor, than whom no man or boy had a stronger liking for old school customs which were good and sensible, had, as has already been hinted, come into most decided collision with several which were neither the one nor the other.
— from Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes

Home on foot, and seeing him at home at Butler’s merry, he lent me a torch, which Will carried, and so home.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

To use any but brand-new comparisons to illustrate graces like hers would be singularly inappropriate; for she herself always had a bright, fresh look, like some piece of handiwork just finished by the maker.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

When the bride reappeared he stared hard at her again, but this time he noticed that there were similar delicate beings in her train.
— from The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

Manicamp hurriedly ran up the stairs, but paused at the threshold of the door, looked into the room, and seeing that everything was perfectly quiet, he advanced towards the foot of the large leathern armchair, a specimen of furniture of the reign of Henry IV., and seeing that the nurse, as a matter of course, had dropped off to sleep, he awoke her, and begged her to pass into the adjoining room.
— from Louise de la Valliere by Alexandre Dumas

King Edward returning backe, came to the castell of Striueling (which the Scotishmen held against him) and besieged it.
— from Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (09 of 12) Edward the First, Surnamed Longshanks, the Eldest Sonne of Henrie the Third by Raphael Holinshed

Gumley saw no reason for not humoring so harmless a hobby, and brought the lighted candle.
— from Jack Hardy: A Story of English Smugglers in the Days of Napoleon by Herbert Strang

The expert was a tall and thin person, with deep-set and brilliant eyes hidden more or less by a pair of rimless eyeglasses; and Anstice was suddenly and humorously reminded of the popular idea of a detective as exemplified in Sherlock Holmes and his accomplished brethren.
— from Afterwards by Kathlyn Rhodes

The sultan saw her, admired her, and bought her; and I saw her "riding like a thing of life" on the waters of the Golden Horn, a model of beauty.
— from Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 1 (of 2) by John L. Stephens

There was but one person on board the ship that he liked, and why should he avoid her and be avoided?
— from Lotta Schmidt, and Other Stories by Anthony Trollope

His haste in emerging from the room, when the colored girl saw him later, and his pause to listen at the head of the stairs seem to indicate that something had attracted his attention below."
— from Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist by John Thomas McIntyre