'When I came to England, attracted to the country with which I had none but most miserable associations, by the accounts of my fine inheritance that found me abroad, I came back, shrinking from my father's money, shrinking from my father's memory, mistrustful of being forced on a mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father's intention in thrusting that marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the two dear noble honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life or that of my heartbroken sister.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber, Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d, No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d, Ungart’red, and down-gyved to his ankle, Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, And with a look so piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors, he comes before me.
— from Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare

I was sitting in my cabin late at night, playing a low air on my violin, when the door opened carefully, and Celeste stood before me.
— from Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana by Solomon Northup

Page 554 These wise men, for such I must call Lord Sunderland, Lord Godolphin, Lord Somers, and Lord Marlborough, were too well principled in these maxims upon which the whole fabric of public strength is built, to be blown off their ground by the breath of every childish talker.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

And I have often had four coaches and horses at once on my table, full of company, while I sat in my chair, leaning my face towards them; and when I was engaged with one set, the coachmen would gently drive the others round my table.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd; Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other, And with a look so piteous in purport, He comes before me.
— from Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare

She then explained that to have stolen a pair of socks, or “to have the socks” (in more colloquial language), was a recognised way of saying that the person in question was slightly indisposed.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

'Tis [2736] Hippocrates' observation, Galen's sentence, Etsi mortem timent, tamen plerumque sibi ipsis mortem consciscunt , l. 3. de locis affec. cap.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

As we are going to study it more closely later on (Chapters XVI and XVII), I will only make one or two passing observations on it here.
— from The Evolution of Man by Ernst Haeckel

[** V. MACROCALYX (De Vriese MSS.); foliis omnibus radicalibus, oblongospathulatis acutis, integris, membranaceis, remote, minute et obsolete dentatis, uninerviis, glabris, subdecurrentibus, glabris; scapis radicalibus elongatis, folia vix exaequantibus; bracteis dichotomiarum vel trichotomiarum binis ternisve lanceolatis acutis vel lineari-lanceolatis, floribus 2-3nis; calycibus (involucris) ternis, magnis, membranaceis, ovatis, ellipticisque, acuminatis, basi cordatis, petiolatisque; antherae liberae, stigmatis indusium maximum ciliatum, labiis compressis, cochleariforme.—Folia sunt 6-12 cent.
— from Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, in Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1848) by T. L. (Thomas Livingstone) Mitchell

My habitation was embellished in my absence, and the last division of books, which followed my steps, increased my chosen library to the number of between six and seven thousand volumes.
— from Memoirs of My Life and Writings by Edward Gibbon

Lloyd George is fascinatingly magnetic in and out of the spotlight while Smuts is more coldly logical.
— from An African Adventure by Isaac Frederick Marcosson

The office retained its dignity as the highest place open to a subject, ranking above the Lord Chancellor or the Lord President of the Council, but the Church of England, having no fightings within, nor anything to fear from without, was lapped in placid ease, so it mattered comparatively little who her chief pastor was.
— from Studies in Contemporary Biography by Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount

It was quite a triumph to Charlie or Harry, and was sure to be recounted with glee at the next meal, when he succeeded in making Connie laugh.
— from The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 by George MacDonald

The entire strength of the Dunboy garrison amounted to 143 men; towards the end of April —the last of the Spaniards having sailed in March— Carew left Cork at the head of 3,000 men to besiege Dunboy.
— from A Popular History of Ireland : from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics — Complete by Thomas D'Arcy McGee

Never use shot: it might cause lead poisoning.
— from A Handbook of Invalid Cooking For the Use of Nurses in Training, Nurses in Private Practice, and Others Who Care for the Sick by Mary A. Boland

This lifted Sawed-Off slightly off the board, and in response to three or four bitter wrenches from Troy, he was forced to let them have six inches more cable, lest they cut him in two like a cake of soap.
— from The Dozen from Lakerim by Rupert Hughes

Yet the spirit in me cannot lie and I know well, and bid all here make record of my words, that to-night I stand in the presence of him who ere two moons have passed will be crowned Pharaoh.”
— from Moon of Israel: A Tale of the Exodus by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard