So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick; so long as your own pains drive you; so long as pain underlies your propositions about sin,—so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an animal feels.
— from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Then a large log of wood came and said, ‘I am big enough; I will lay myself across the stream, and you shall pass over upon me.’
— from Grimms' Fairy Tales by Wilhelm Grimm

The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

How could I possibly prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?”
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

Leaning upon an idle spade, Peter watched the lazy motions of a negro slave whom he had directed to trim a level lawn ornamented with flowerbeds.
— from A Dream of Empire Or, The House of Blennerhassett by William Henry Venable

A tired ship sailed slowly up to the city, trailing a long line of white foam behind her....
— from Changing Winds A Novel by St. John G. (St. John Greer) Ervine

He heard a rumbling sound approaching, and directly there came to meet him an elephant, bearing on his tusks a large log of wood, which he 110 had been directed to carry to the place where it was needed.
— from Nineteenth Century Questions by James Freeman Clarke

He pointed, as he spoke, to a long line of what looked like grey mist, forming wreaths, and rising above the horizon to the westward.
— from Afar in the Forest by William Henry Giles Kingston

Nevertheless, the personal investigation undertaken by us throws a little light on what is already called: The Drama of the Rue Norvins .
— from Messengers of Evil Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantômas by Pierre Souvestre

A mob in Cincinnati, involving the loss of many lives and much property in a three days’ reign of terror, has added another to a long list of warnings that the criminal administration of this country needs a thorough-going reform.
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, May 1884, No. 8 by Chautauqua Institution

Perhaps if she had lived less in the shadow, she might have chosen a less gloomy one: the sky was visible only through a little lane of walls and gables and battlements.
— from Donal Grant by George MacDonald

From the land which we had first sight of, we came to a large lake of water, like drowned land, which made it to rise like islands.
— from A Book of Discovery The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole by M. B. (Margaret Bertha) Synge