some unjust law altered,--I forget exactly what it was.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

If you do, they will instantly shut up like an oyster.
— from The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

Nahulúgan siya ug lubi, A coconut fell on him.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

She stepped up lightly, and stretching out an arm to get at some figs to one side of her, she put her body off its balance, holding on to the ladder with the other hand.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

"Oh," said Alice, "how I wish I could shut up like a telescope!
— from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Following is a touching example: Here lie the bones of Parson Platt, Wise, pious, humble and all that, Who showed us life as all should live it; Let that be said—and God forgive it!
— from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

That night—it was the fourteenth of August—he sat up late, and wrote two fervent letters; one was to Lucie, explaining the strong obligation he was under to go to Paris, and showing her, at length, the reasons that he had, for feeling confident that he could become involved in no personal danger there; the other was to the Doctor, confiding Lucie and their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the same topics with the strongest assurances.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

But I appeared very angry that there were no more things got ready against to-morrow’s feast, and in that passion sat up long, and went discontented to bed.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The eldest, a broad-faced thin girl with a comb in her hair, looked about fifteen, while the youngest, a chubby child with hair that stood up like a hedge-hog, was not more than three.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

similyahun ug láwas a for a woman to be healthy (lit.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

I could imagine the farmer purring with delight as his distinguished charge dilated in polished sentences upon liberty and the rights of nationalities.
— from London to Ladysmith via Pretoria by Winston Churchill

One day the duke’s daughter was walking in her garden, and the prince immediately turned his head and saw her, and began beckoning to her, for he had the head and arms and body of a man from the waist upwards still, and the rest of him [ 319 ] was like the hindquarters of a goat, only he stood upright, like a man.
— from Roman Legends: A collection of the fables and folk-lore of Rome by Rachel Harriette Busk

This is at the base in the form of the lower part of a cone, with one hundred and fifty steps; then it becomes a six-sided tower with dormer windows supported by three white elephants' trunks; the graceful spire then rises from a nest of turrets, and shoots upward like a single column rounded off into a cupola at the summit; from thence a bronze gilt arrow extends twenty crooked arms that pierce the clouds.
— from Siam : The Land of the White Elephant as It Was and Is by George B. (George Blagden) Bacon

The happiness which shone from their two faces seemed to brighten the strangely unecclesiastical looking apartment, in which a cheerful and exceedingly pleasant looking American divine completed the formalities of their marriage.
— from The Cinema Murder by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

"But," said Buck, and suddenly stood up, looking at her very intently, "it isn't for your mind that I love you this minute.
— from Emma McChesney and Co. by Edna Ferber

Dollops obeyed instructions upon both points—obeyed them, indeed, with such alacrity that he shut up like an oyster forthwith, dived into the caravan and bounced out 113 again, and within five minutes of the time he had been told of the necessity for starting, had started, and was forging away with the others over the dark, still moor and facing cheerily the prospect of a thirty-mile walk to Cumberlandshire.
— from Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories by Thomas W. Hanshew

He afterwards declared that he received a mental knock-downer on taking his station and facing about, to find Bright Chanticleer close in upon him, and Rossius steaming up like a locomotive.
— from Yesterdays with Authors by James Thomas Fields

Their train was due there early in the afternoon, but was blocked by drifts and did not reach the station until late at night.
— from The Deserter by Charles King