What SHALL I do?" Sara stopped turning over the leaves and looked at her with an excited flush on her cheeks.
— from A Little Princess Being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time by Frances Hodgson Burnett

By night she flits between sky and land, shrilling through the dusk, and droops not her lids in sweet slumber; in daylight she sits on guard upon tall towers or the ridge of the house-roof, and makes great cities afraid; obstinate in perverseness and forgery no less than messenger of truth.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

And her face is flat and broad; and as to colour, looks like as if it had been pickled a month in saltpetre: I dare say she drinks:—She has a hoarse, man-like voice, and is as thick as she is long; and yet looks so deadly strong, that I am afraid she would dash me at her foot in an instant, if I was to vex her.—So that with a heart more ugly than her face, she frightens me sadly: and I am undone to be sure, if God does not protect me; for she is very, very wicked—indeed she is.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

To my sight, perhaps, she would not appear as she now stands before me; and why should I destroy so sweet a picture? JUNE 16.
— from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

SYN: Eager, serious, intent, determined, strenuous, solemn, grave, warm, fervent, intense, ardent.
— from A Complete Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms or, Synonyms and Words of Opposite Meaning by Samuel Fallows

By every shade Its dismal sepulchre shall then be found, Its flesh and ancient form it shall resume, And list
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

The whole attack may be represented by a single intensively developed symptom, such as a trembling, dizziness, palpitation of the heart, or tightening of breath; the general undertone by which we usually recognize fear may be utterly lacking or vague.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

She twice emitted the sound; in doing so she stood, her thorax against a comb, and the wings crossed on her back; they were in motion but without being unfolded or further opened.
— from New observations on the natural history of bees by François Huber

“So I did, sir, sure enough.
— from Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall by Robert Stephen Hawker

"Well, he see it different," said Susan; "he says,—'n' I can't in reason see how any one as knows as little as you, Mrs. Lathrop, can deny him,—he says as no one as gets married easy at the end of courtin' can possibly figger on the difficulties of gettin' married hard.
— from Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs by Anne Warner

Sacrificate sacrificium justitiæ et sperate in Domino: Sacrifice, saith the prophet, a sacrifice of justice and hope in the Lord.
— from Abandonment; or, Absolute Surrender to Divine Providence by Jean Pierre de Caussade

The method of opening it is a secret, but as somebody may succeed in doing so some day I will show you its contents, for
— from Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason Corner Folks by Charles Felton Pidgin