And now, when they were all in lively anticipation of “the two villains” being taken, and when the bellows seemed to roar for the fugitives, the fire to flare for them, the smoke to hurry away in pursuit of them, Joe to hammer and clink for them, and all the murky shadows on the wall to shake at them in menace as the blaze rose and sank, and the red-hot sparks dropped and died, the pale afternoon outside almost seemed in my pitying young fancy to have turned pale on their account, poor wretches.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

And it's a lie that you'd slip into my place: you'd get yourself turned out too, that's all.
— from Silas Marner by George Eliot

‘And I beg you never to express yourself like that about our superiors in my presence; you ought to be respectful to the authorities.’
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Today, I assure you, I shall not oppose in the slightest degree any suggestions it may please you to make.”
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She is someone in my power; You entreated my favour, my protection!
— from The Monk: A Romance by M. G. (Matthew Gregory) Lewis

What should induce my persuading you to this step, except the wish of restoring you to happiness and quiet.
— from The Monk: A Romance by M. G. (Matthew Gregory) Lewis

This gentleman is—’ ‘My friend, Mr. Sawyer,’ interposed Mr. Pickwick, ‘your son’s friend.’
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

In preaching before Queen Elizabeth he said: “It may please Your Grace to understand that witches and sorcerers are marvellously increased within
— from English Villages by P. H. (Peter Hampson) Ditchfield

“Your second week won’t be up until next Tuesday, but you have done so well that the manager says I may put you in charge of that machine.”
— from Four Years in the Underbrush: Adventures as a Working Woman in New York by Anonymous

“Uncle Dan says education is knowing what you don't know, and knowing where to find it out without the other people knowing; but he says in most places you can get the name of having it fine and good by talking loud and pushing all your goods in front of you in a big enough barrow.
— from Bud: A Novel by Neil Munro

I must not pass over such an infringement of the school regulations, and so I must punish you both.
— from Briarwood Girls by Julia Lestarjette Glover

Although in the comparison the crusades may have the superiority in many points, yet so little have ideal, romantic, and sentimental considerations to do with the current of human affairs, that while the crusades remain a monument of abortive and objectless folly, fatal to those who embarked in them, and leaving as their chief result a tinge of Asiatic ferocity on European barbarism, the exodus of San Francisco, notwithstanding the material end it has in view, is sure to work out the progress of happiness and civilisation, and add another to the many conquests over nature, which the present age has witnessed.
— from Handbook to the new Gold-fields by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

Again the stranger bowed low, and taking a little card-case from his breast-pocket, produced a visiting-card, which he handed to her, saying, "I must pray your forgiveness for presenting myself in this informal manner as your nearest neighbour."
— from Castle Hohenwald: A Romance by Adolf Streckfuss