He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because he had no means of living in France, save those he had resigned; whereas, in England, he lived by giving instruction in the French language and literature.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Shrouded in a thick veil and armed with a genteel travelling-basket, she departed, feeling that a cool drive would soothe her ruffled spirit, and fit her for the labors of the day.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

She had reached Silver Street; a long, narrow, hilly Street; and now she was at fault.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

In short, her rule seemed to have been “Make a hot dish of some sort, and some sort of taste will result.”
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

So he remained standing a while, and at length inquired if he too could not be a doctor.
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

For some time he stood wondering how a blind man should have reached such a place alone, and what could be his design in coming.
— from The Odyssey by Homer

Could tumult awaken the old Dead, Burgundian Charles the Bold might stir from under that Rotunda of his: never since he, raging, sank in the ditches, and lost Life and Diamond, was such a noise heard here.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

The corpses of those old fitful passions which had lain inanimate amid the lines of his face ever since his reformation seemed to wake and come together as in a resurrection.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

In fact, if not exactly a believer in the doctrine of the efficiency of the extra good works of saints, he really seemed somehow or other to fancy that his wife had piety and benevolence enough for two—to indulge a shadowy expectation of getting into heaven through her superabundance of qualities to which he made no particular pretension.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

"We have also great and spacious houses where we imitate and demonstrate meteors; as snow, hail, rain, some artificial rains of bodies and not of water, thunders, lightnings; also generations of bodies in air; as frogs, flies, and divers others.
— from New Atlantis by Francis Bacon

She had read Sordello with her husband until she thought its meaning was as clear as high noon.
— from Visionaries by James Huneker

In the first place, it was clear, from the testimony recorded, that the prisoner and her daughter had quitted the house of the deceased at half-past eleven—had taken a cab at the Angel at midnight—and had driven straight home, reaching Suffolk-street at twenty minutes to one.
— from The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 by George W. M. (George William MacArthur) Reynolds

I received some pretty Christmas and New-Year's cards and books, and my sister has received some presents and a doll from some readers of Young People , and we have sent a set of deer horns and what eggs we had in return, and in the spring we will be sure to send other eggs we have been asked for.
— from Harper's Young People, February 1, 1881 An Illustrated Weekly by Various

His sahib was proceeding to give him a lecture in rather energetic terms, when Sir Modava interposed, and explained that the servant had religious scruples, knowing that the stamp had been wet on the tongues of the senders, which made it unclean to him, and he could not touch it.
— from Across India; Or, Live Boys in the Far East by Oliver Optic

“Except Aunt Lily, and she said she had read something very like it in Schlegel,” added Dolores.
— from The Long Vacation by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

"His speech," he remarked, "sounded even better than it read."
— from A Lost Leader by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

She had ridden so hard, that she had left her last speech in the middle of the common, and its mood with it; and there seemed now no likelihood of either finding its way home.
— from David Elginbrod by George MacDonald

"For a minute after I had ceased speaking he remained silent; then, drawing a long breath, he seemed to regain command over himself, and said: 'I can but believe all that you have told me, for there are many circumstances, with which you are evidently unacquainted, that go to corroborate your story.
— from Stories and Sketches by our best authors by Various