As I slowly hobble up the lane toward day-close, an incomparable sunset shooting in molten sapphire and gold, shaft after shaft, through the ranks of the long-leaved corn, between me and the west.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Images of bodily movements, such as we have when we imagine moving an arm or, on a smaller scale, pronouncing a word, might possibly be explained away on Professor Watson's lines, as really consisting in small incipient movements such as, if magnified and prolonged, would be the movements we are said to be imagining.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

This, to me, was knowledge; but it was a kind of knowledge which filled me with a burning hatred of slavery, increased my suffering, and left me without the means of breaking away from my bondage.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

Pitiful as these are, sights and sounds infinitely more saddening await us beyond the gate that shuts this world of woe off from one whence the light of hope and reason have gone out together.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

I will close this day's writing, with just saying, that she is mighty silent and reserved, to what she was: and says nothing but No, or Yes, to what I ask.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

Tell him what a dreadful state I am in,—that I am frightened out of my wits; and have such tremblings, such flutterings, all over me, such spasms in my side, and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart, that I can get no rest by night nor by day.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

You see in me, such as I am, a person sentenced to be hung.”
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

All the same she is my servant and she is there by my orders and there she will stay.
— from The Outcaste by F. E. (Fanny Emily) Penny

"Well," was the response, "I suppose it may sound a little sentimental, but I have written the bill to make an appropriation for the new Naval Repair Station at Cleverly, and I want you to run it off on the typewriter.
— from Barry Wynn; Or, The Adventures of a Page Boy in the United States Congress by George Barton

Σ 2289 is also close, but our five-inch will separate it: magnitudes six and seven, distance 1.2", p. 230°.
— from Pleasures of the telescope An Illustrated Guide for Amateur Astronomers and a Popular Description of the Chief Wonders of the Heavens for General Readers by Garrett Putman Serviss

You'll be quoting Dr. Watts to me next: "'Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain, 'You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again!'
— from The Girls of St. Cyprian's: A Tale of School Life by Angela Brazil

The stream was keeping the sand in motion still about my helmet and over my head, but my hands informed me that the pack was gradually settling, that the sand was piling up around my neck slowly but surely.
— from Where Your Treasure Is: Being the Personal Narrative of Ross Sidney, Diver by Holman Day

"She could have slipped into my stateroom and pinned that note to my pillow, and she could have stuck the second one on my suit case as I walked past her on the deck."
— from The Brand of Silence A Detective Story by Harrington Strong