Let anybody's wife or anybody's child be mentioned, and three things always followed: the most gracious and loving and tender light glimmered in the man's eyes for a moment; faded out the next, and in its place came that deadly look which had flamed there the first time I ever saw his lids unclose; thirdly, he ceased from speech, there and then for that day; lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed; apparently heard nothing that I said; took no notice of my good-byes, and plainly did not know, by either sight or hearing, when I left the room.
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

In the same island, it is said, that a town was sunk in the sea; that in 119 consequence of another shock, a lake burst out, and that, by a third, Prochytas was formed into an island, the neighbouring mountains being rolled away from it.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

The old clergy talk as being sure of their lands again, and laugh at the Presbytery; and it is believed that the sales of the King’s and Bishops’ lands will never be confirmed by Parliament, there being nothing now in any man’s, power to hinder them and the King from doing what they have a mind, but every body willing to submit to any thing.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Anselmo said no more, but he had said enough to cover Lothario with shame and confusion, and he, feeling as it were his honour touched by having been detected in a lie, swore to Anselmo that he would from that moment devote himself to satisfying him without any deception, as he would see if he had the curiosity to watch; though he need not take the trouble, for the pains he would take to satisfy him would remove all suspicions from his mind.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

,” says Fyokia, with a sob, tugging at the lapel of the cobbler’s coat.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

—[A tower has no strength, quoth my uncle Toby, unless ’tis flank’d.]—“ in the darkest doubts it shall conduct him safer than a thousand casuists, and give the state he lives in, a better security for his behaviour than all the causes and restrictions put together, which law-makers are forced to multiply:— Forced, I say, as things stand; human laws not being a matter of original choice, but of pure necessity, brought in to fence against the mischievous effects of those consciences which are no law unto themselves; well intending, by the many provisions made,—that in all such corrupt and misguided cases, where principles and the checks of conscience will not make us upright,—to supply their 238 “ force, and, by the terrors of gaols and halters, oblige us to it.”
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

He challenges reason, which pretends to have given birth to this idea from herself, to answer him by what right she thinks anything to be so constituted, that if that thing be posited, something else also must necessarily be posited; for this is the meaning of the concept of cause.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant

Rakitin felt a sudden twinge as though he had been touched on an open wound.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This book [64] maintains that everybody who sends things across the water should insure them.
— from The Red Room by August Strindberg

Because the untouched truth about her could give ecstasy one would not lose the power of seeing things as they are, and she made one forget the usual sexual story.
— from The Judge by Rebecca West

He was a well-to-do farmer, as well-to-do as a farmer could be in such times as those, and on such land as that.
— from In Homespun by E. (Edith) Nesbit

The like expression appears in the quotation from Edrisi below as Hindiah , and found its way into Spanish in the shapes of Alhinde, Alfinde, Alinde , first with the meaning of steel , then assuming, that of steel mirror , and finally that of metallic foil of a glass mirror.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

She welcomed the knight, told her servants to disarm him and lead him to the bath, and came and sat with him at a splendid table; and the pages-in-waiting were mute."
— from The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England, Volume 2 (of 6) Mémoires d'outre-tombe, volume 2 by Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de

Supposing that among the South American Heliconiidæ there occurred a species of Pieris which had no resemblance to these protected butterflies, either in form, marking, or colouring; who can deny that it would be most useful to this species to acquire the form and colouring of a Heliconide, and thus, by taking to new conditions of life, to avoid the persecutions of its foes?
— from Studies in the Theory of Descent, Volume II by August Weismann

Was it not simpler to adopt the agrarian law straightway?
— from System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of Misery by P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph) Proudhon

The Whig statesmen at once sent out summonses to all the members of the Privy Council living anywhere near London.
— from A History of the Four Georges, Volume I by Justin McCarthy

It seemed to Dolly as she stood there at the door, that her sky was closing in and the ground giving way beneath her feet.
— from The End of a Coil by Susan Warner