“Well, sir, to be quite plain with ye, I am one of those honest gentlemen that were in trouble about the years forty-five and six; and (to be still quite plain with ye) if I got into the hands of any of the red-coated gentry, it’s like it would go hard with me.
— from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

You know the auditor told you it was a bad business.”
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

“I was afraid it would be too much for her,” said Lady Bertram; “but when the roses were gathered, your aunt wished to have them, and then you know they must be taken home.”
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

OTHELLO Hold your hands, Both you of my inclining and the rest: Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it Without a prompter.—Where will you that I go To answer this your charge?
— from Othello, the Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare

Here are patterns of most of the fashions which I brought into vogue, and which have already lived out their allotted term; you will supply their place with others equally ephemeral.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Is there anything troubling you?—though I’ve no right to ask such a question,” he added hurriedly.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

And you never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; it’s what makes great men and good men; you’ll be a great man and a good man yourself, some day, Thomas, and then you’ll look back and say, It’s all owing to the precious Sunday-school privileges of my boyhood—it’s all owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learn—it’s all owing to the good superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and gave me a beautiful Bible—a splendid elegant Bible—to keep and have it all for my own, always—it’s all owing to right bringing up!
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The natural restless force of life in children, 'who do nothing but roar until they are three years old,' is gradually to be reduced to law and order.
— from Laws by Plato

I care neither for you nor for your anger; and thus will I do: since Phoebus Apollo is taking Chryseis from me, I shall send her with my ship and my followers, but I shall come to your tent and take your own prize Briseis, that you may learn how much stronger I am than you are, and that another may fear to set himself up as equal or comparable with me.
— from The Iliad by Homer

Ordinarily we take a piece of red carpet thread or shoe button thread, about two yards in length, wax it thoroughly and double it.
— from Hunting with the Bow & Arrow by Saxton T. (Saxton Temple) Pope

I wish I could be more to all these young glad beings,—it is not in me to touch the chords of many souls at once, but I will enlarge my sympathies.
— from Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary by Daniel Dulany Addison

"We shall go twisted all the year, shan't we," said Ben, as he hurried over to the table for a box of chessmen, in the midst of the overflow of gifts, "because we had such a belated Christmas?
— from Ben Pepper by Margaret Sidney

Are you not anxious to go to a place with the assurance that you will be struck on all sides as soon as you land with unusual activity? Do you not burn to see what "a long sinuous train" is like?
— from The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 by Harry Furniss

You hear, my lords, How the prevaricating villain shrinks From the absolute truth, yet dares not front his Maker With the full damnable lie hot on his lips.
— from The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume 2 Jewish poems: Translations by Emma Lazarus

And our hearts beat back to yours With the rapturous adoration That through all the years endures!
— from Songs of the Army of the Night by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

If it comes to a trial, you may want a friend.
— from The Exhibition Drama Comprising Drama, Comedy, and Farce, Together with Dramatic and Musical Entertainments by George M. (George Melville) Baker

Let me, therefore, rush for comfort into other thoughts; and tell you at once of the fearful dangers we have now mercifully escaped; for the Samarang lies like a log in this friendly port, dismasted, and next to a wreck.
— from The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper by Martin Farquhar Tupper

109 “If Your Majesty desires to attach to yourself a faithful ally of inviolable constancy, this is the time: our interests, our religion, our blood is the same, and it would be sad to see ourselves acting against each other: it would be still more grievous to oblige me to concur in the great plans of France, which I intend to do only if I am compelled.”
— from Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia by William Fiddian Reddaway