Their History is a series of sputters and quarrels; true desire to do their function, fatal impossibility to do it.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

O-liver lived in the hotel in a suite of small rooms, and when Atwood Jones passed that way the four men dined together as O-liver's guests.
— from The Gay Cockade by Temple Bailey

“The history is a sad one, sir,” said Caderousse, shaking his head; “perhaps you know all the earlier part of it?”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

There Sisa spent two hours in a state of semi-idiocy, huddled in a corner with her head hidden in her arms and her hair falling down in disorder.
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

So after groping his way a few paces down the passage, and, to his infinite alarm, stumbling over several pairs of boots in so doing, Mr. Pickwick crouched into a little recess in the wall, to wait for morning, as philosophically as he might. He was not destined, however, to undergo this additional trial of patience; for he had not been long ensconced in his present concealment when, to his unspeakable horror, a man, bearing a light, appeared at the end of the passage.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

The result was to throw her into a sort of syncope from which, after half an hour, she revived in a second somnambulic condition entirely unlike that which had characterized her thitherto—different sensibilities, a different memory, a different person, in short.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

—On the promulgation of that barbarous edict, the jizya , the Rana remonstrated by letter, in the name of the nation of which he was the head, in a style of such uncompromising dignity, such lofty yet temperate resolve, so much of soul-stirring rebuke mingled with a boundless and tolerating benevolence, such elevated ideas of the Divinity with such pure philanthropy, that it may challenge competition with any epistolary production of any age, clime, or condition.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

Finally, about half an hour later, the young Englishman, in a frame of mind about equally divided between annoyance at his abduction and amazement at the unaccountable behaviour of his abductors, found himself partaking of the said breakfast, presented to him in a service of solid gold of curious but most elaborate design and workmanship, and waited upon by his entire suite with as much ceremony and obsequiousness as though he were a king.
— from Harry Escombe: A Tale of Adventure in Peru by Harry Collingwood

They were, however, frequently brought to the hospital in a state of suspended animation, from which they were recovered by the usual processes.
— from Non-Criminal Prisons English Debtor's Prisons and Prisons of War; French War Prisons; American War Prisons with References to Those of Other Lands by Arthur Griffiths

Buvat mixed up in a conspiracy—Buvat charged with a state secret—Buvat holding in his hands, perhaps, the fate of nations: a smaller thing would have thrown him into a state of strange perplexity.
— from The Conspirators The Chevalier d'Harmental by Alexandre Dumas

She is very graceful, you know, and they will have it that she can twist herself into all sorts of shapes, or tie herself in a knot, if she wants to.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works by Oliver Wendell Holmes

A long gold chain having been twice placed around her neck, Dr. Elliotson at once threw her into a state of stupor.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions — Volume 3 by Charles Mackay

There was nothing of happiness about this man, Mrs. Larpent told herself in a spirit of self-congratulation.
— from Scandal: A Novel by Cosmo Hamilton

No wonder, then, that P'hra-Alâck experienced an access of gratitude for the privilege of napping for two hours in a snuggery of sunshine.
— from The English Governess at the Siamese Court Being Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok by Anna Harriette Leonowens

At Marathon, which is some forty miles further down the Flinders than Hughenden, there is, close to the homestead, an outcrop of fine-grained yellow sandstone, which has been quarried for building purposes, and below this, to the edge of the waterhole supplying the house, is a series of sandstones and [Pg 250] argillaceous limestones, containing numerous organic remains.
— from Early Days in North Queensland by Edward Palmer