‘I don’t say I can clear myself altogether,’ said she, speaking low and fast, while her heart beat visibly and her bosom heaved with excitement,—‘but would you be glad to discover I was better than you think me?’ ‘Anything that could in the least degree tend to restore my former opinion of you, to excuse the regard I still feel for you, and alleviate the pangs of unutterable regret that accompany it, would be only too gladly, too eagerly received!’ Her cheeks burned, and her whole frame trembled, now, with excess of agitation.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

"It must have been difficult to explain to Robert," I said.
— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

Our manufacturers are unwilling, it seems, that even this restricted importation should be encouraged, and are afraid lest some part of these goods should be stolen out of the warehouse, and thus come into competition with their own.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

But with all their eagerness to render interested service to a distinguished man of letters who was not then here to look after his own affairs, the pirates missed this, the best of his books; and finding that no surreptitious edition of it has appeared in this country, the author has felt himself privileged to re-write it and make such changes in it and additions to it as his own judgment has suggested without the prompting of voluntary assistants, and even to negotiate with a publisher for the issue of an edition on his own account.
— from John Bull, Junior; or, French as She is Traduced by Max O'Rell

The bush stands on its side then and blocks up the entrance; the rope is secured inside to a bar which is fixed across the threshold and no one can pass this strange and thorny gate.
— from Southern Arabia by Bent, Theodore, Mrs.

Several of the Europeans took refuge in stables and outhouses.
— from The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan, 1856-7-8 by George Dodd

If the expedition to Rhode Island should be prevented, or if it should not succeed, or if nothing can be attempted at New York, we ought then to proceed on our expeditions against Virginia, or Georgia, or Carolina, and winter afterwards at Boston, leaving Rhode Island to the next season, as proposed in our plan of sailing in the month of October.
— from Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette by Lafayette, Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier, marquis de

Unless Ramirez delayed his attack too long they were confident, with the aid of the barricaded cave that they could put their enemy to rout in spite of the difference in numbers.
— from The Radio Boys Under the Sea; or, The Hunt for Sunken Treasure by J. W. Duffield

* * * In the ordinary, i.e. in their preaching and piety, they show a style of goodishness fitly represented by Henry's Commentary; in the extraordinary, they rise into sublimity by inflation and the swell of the occasion."
— from American Scenes, and Christian Slavery A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States by Ebenezer Davies

But that I might give to those Persons, an Opportunity of recollecting themselves, I have endeavoured to explain the Rule, in such a manner, that they may perceive those very Faults, if they will Read the Remarks with attention.
— from The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry by André Dacier

Out in the world where he came from, were they ever to reach it, she would be nothing.
— from The Girl from Montana by Grace Livingston Hill

The next logical step would be to enshrine these remains in some way so as to ensure their preservation, and we should return to the vast burial mounds in Egypt.
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume I by Richard Vine Tuson