He told me it was to be a great secret; and, therefore, I should not think of mentioning it to any body but you, but he said you knew it.”
— from Emma by Jane Austen

How many of the girls and boys—ah, men and women too—that are brought before you and you don’t pity, are deaf and dumb in their minds, and go wrong in that state, and are punished in that state, body and soul, while you gentlemen are quarrelling among yourselves whether they ought to learn this or that?—Be a just man, Sir, and give me back my son.’
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

At first in the distance before them a broad, bright, yellow streak of light crept over the ground where the earth met the sky, near the little barrows and the windmills, which in the distance looked like tiny men waving their arms.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

You are Tarsilo and Bruno, both young and strong.
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

'Not in the least,' said Margaret, determined just to say this one thing; 'not in the least because of your labour and capital positions, whatever they are, but because you are a man, dealing with a set of men over whom you have, whether you reject the use of it or not, immense power, just because your lives and your welfare are so constantly and intimately interwoven.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?” “Why, no,” she said.
— from Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Throat and breast bright yellow, growing steadily paler underneath.
— from Bird Neighbors An Introductory Acquaintance with One Hundred and Fifty Birds Commonly Found in the Gardens, Meadows, and Woods About Our Homes by Neltje Blanchan

He makes the depraved admit they are bad, but yet persevere in their crimes ; a certain proof that he did not know the human heart.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 by Various

So [ 177 ] he sent for him, explained his mistake, and gave him a fruit to eat, which, having tasted, the aged Brâhmaṇ became young and his eye was also restored to him.
— from Tales of the Sun; or, Folklore of Southern India by Pandit Natesa Sastri

"My gracious Prince," replied the fawning wizard, "this night, if you dare loose yourself from love, and come unattended to my apartment, I will undertake to shew you all the future fortune you are to run, the hazards, dangers, and escapes that attend your mighty race of life; I will lay the adamantine Book before you, where all the destinies of princes are hieroglyphick'd.
— from Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister by Aphra Behn

Trumbull and Barlow, both Yale graduates, had fought with their friend Timothy Dwight their first reform campaign which was an effort to introduce into the somewhat archaic and outworn body of the Yale curriculum the breath of the humanities and of modern thought.
— from The Friendly Club and Other Portraits by Francis Parsons

"Take a breath before you start.
— from Mavericks by William MacLeod Raine

So says the apostle: "Be not fashioned according to this age , but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Rom. 12: 2, R. V.).
— from The Ministry of the Spirit by A. J. (Adoniram Judson) Gordon

If I offer myself to you because I think we have a fair chance of being happy together, and because by your help I may get for both of us a good place and a not undistinguished name, why ask me to feign raptures and counterfeit romance, in which neither of us believe?
— from The History of Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray