Had he seen Paulina with the same youth, beauty, and grace, but on foot, alone, unguarded, and in simple attire, a dependent worker, a demi-grisette, he would have thought her a pretty little creature, and would have loved with his eye her movements and her mien, but it required other than this to conquer him as he was now vanquished, to bring him safe under dominion as now, without loss, and even with gain to his manly honour, one saw that he was reduced; there was about Dr. John all the man of the world; to satisfy himself did not suffice; society must approve—the world must admire what he did, or he counted his measures false and futile.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living, even if they bore no other fruit.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

You must hear us talk, and not think of talking; you must see us drink, and not think of drinking; you must see us eat, and not think of eating.
— from She Stoops to Conquer; Or, The Mistakes of a Night: A Comedy by Oliver Goldsmith

Some unwholesome dishes are not present here (i.e. cannot be spoken of as “these”).
— from Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll

And the best that is in them is what they are interested in, the thing by which they make their living, the thing they’ve specialized on and sat up days and nights over, and even dreamed about.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London

He gave it its present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

There were to be no speeches until dessert, and now the fateful moment was near.
— from Dry Fish and Wet: Tales from a Norwegian Seaport by Anthon Bernhard Elias Nilsen

Errors the most impious, the most deadly, the most pernicious to the human race, which have been spread abroad during the course of ages, and which have sufficed, taken singly, to turn civil society upside down, are now all assembled together, and united with each other to batter and destroy it.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870 by Various

In the marsh, half a mile away, the chorus of frogs, when it swelled up, drowned all nearer noise; but when it broke off suddenly, those others resumed their hold upon the stillness.
— from Little Novels of Italy by Maurice Hewlett

"Citizens, The effects of a malignant fever, with which I was afflicted during a rigorous confinement in the Luxembourg, have thus long prevented me from attending at my post in the bosom of the Convention; and the magnitude of the subject under discussion, and no other consideration on earth, could induce me now to repair to my station.
— from The Life Of Thomas Paine, Vol. 2. (of 2) With A History of His Literary, Political and Religious Career in America France, and England by Moncure Daniel Conway