She did not know what a gold piece was; she had never seen one; she hid it quickly in her pocket, as though she had stolen it.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

There were men, too, of a sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard iron, or granite understanding; which, duly mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Add to all these considerations the fact that history shows us actions rather than men, because she only seizes men at certain chosen times in full dress; she only portrays the statesman when he is prepared to be seen; she does not follow him to his home, to his study, among his family and his friends; she only shows him in state; it is his clothes rather than himself that she describes.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The city and the city only, owing to these refinements, can never be served openly and without disguise; he who does serve it openly being always suspected of serving himself in some secret way in return.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

It is a set of stars hurled into heaven without even a centre of gravity to pull against.
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James

" It struck Archer that May, since their return from Europe, had seldom worn her bridal satin, and the surprise of seeing her in it made him compare her appearance with that of the young girl he had watched with such blissful anticipations two years earlier.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The noise of some one stumbling hastily into the room, roused him.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

" Never from song or story had I ever received such inspiring knowledge.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

‘What sort of shoes?’ hastily inquired Wardle, who, together with Mr. Pickwick, had been lost in bewilderment at the singular catalogue of visitors.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Not since I heard the original Fiske Jubilee singers, twenty-five years ago, when a boy of six or seven, have I heard any negro music that satisfied me as this did.
— from Minerva's Manoeuvres: The Cheerful Facts of a "Return to Nature" by Charles Battell Loomis

The cavalier section of society had inherited the sentiment of chivalry, and contrasted with the roundhead not more by its loyalty to the person of the prince, than by its recognition of the superior grace and refinement of womanhood.
— from Milton by Mark Pattison

Whereupon Mrs. Flanagan came bolting out again, with wild eyes and a sort of stupefied horror in her good, coarse, Irish features; and then, with some uncouth ejaculation, ran back, and was heard to tumble over something within, and tumble something else over in her fall, and gather herself up with a subdued howl, and subside.
— from The Ghost by William Douglas O'Connor

Whilst declining to assume so grave a responsibility, the Secretary of State has informed the British Government that we are ready to receive any proposals which they may feel disposed to offer having this object in view, and to consider them in an amicable spirit.
— from State of the Union Addresses by James Buchanan

In a conversation with Sir Thomas Lawrence upon the subject of shadows, his ideas were that they ought to be as still as possible, and that all the little sparkling produced by the crossing of the lines ought to be extinguished, or softened down.
— from Rembrandt and His Works Comprising a Short Account of His Life; with a Critical Examination into His Principles and Practice of Design, Light, Shade, and Colour. Illustrated by Examples from the Etchings of Rembrandt. by John Burnet

The whole collection of buildings being divided by partition walls into several blocks, each containing sixty or seventy houses, is, practically, the apartment hotel of to-day.
— from The Making of the Great West, 1512-1883 by Samuel Adams Drake

It is a decoction of simples, of strengthening herbs, I fancy.
— from Monsieur Cherami by Paul de Kock

In fact, as soon as she grew more familiar with the Indians, she often sought him in preference to the rest, and loved to sit upon the ground beside him, and trace with her tiny fingers the patterns worked upon his leggings and moccasins.
— from Po-No-Kah: An Indian Tale of Long Ago by Mary Mapes Dodge