It is supposed that any one who pokes out its eyes with a special needle (which must be one out of a score—the packets being made up in scores—and must possess a torn eye) will be able to inflict blindness, by sympathy, upon any person against whom he has a grudge.
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

In order to divert the impatience of those who were waiting to see the fishes taken alive and wriggling from their prison, the beautiful Iday got out the harp, for Iday not only played well on that instrument, but, besides, she had very pretty fingers.
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

I think it beautiful; but somehow or other she never cultivated her talent.”
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

When you were brought in, I was there; when you were questioned, I was there.—Den of wolves!—It was my crime, it was my gallows that I beheld being slowly reared over your head.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

The free weekly Guardian often lost its reporters to bigger daily papers and the Internet, but Barbara Stratford had been there forever.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

What a relief most people have in speaking of a man not by his true and formal name, with a "Mister" to it, but by some odd or homely appellative.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

I am lying because I know myself that it is not underground that is better, but something different, quite different, for which I am thirsting, but which I cannot find!
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“That is but brief space,” answered Rebecca, “for a stranger, who is also of another faith, to find one who will do battle, wagering life and honour for her cause, against a knight who is called an approved soldier.”
— from Ivanhoe: A Romance by Walter Scott

But it is woman's mission as the educator of the race to remedy the evil, not by giving up the ideal but by striving more and more to conform herself and all under her care to its blessed outlines.
— from Woman's Profession as Mother and Educator, with Views in Opposition to Woman Suffrage by Catharine Esther Beecher

I have received a Commission to go against the Indians , Bacon being sent for home.
— from The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume IV by Aphra Behn

Commando te in nomine botteli potheeni boni drinkandi his oedibus, hac note, inter amicos excellentissimi amici mei, Dionissii O'Shaughnessy, quem beknavavi ex excellentissimo colto ejus, causa pedantissimi filii ejus, designali eccleseae, patri, sed nequaquam deo, nec naturae, nec ingenio;—commando te inquam, Bernarde Buie, surgere, stare, ambulare, et decedere e cornero isto vel hobbo, qua nunc sedes!
— from Going to Maynooth Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, The Works of William Carleton, Volume Three by William Carleton

May I?” Upon this, as vanity is seldom out of call, Sir Charles swelled like a turkey-cock, and loftily consented to indulge Bella Bruce's strange propensity.
— from A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day by Charles Reade

“I think that is blasphemous, Bertha,” said Miss Glover.
— from Mrs. Craddock by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

"No doubt of that," replied Roy, "but that doesn't give us any clew to their identity beyond bare suspicions.
— from The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly by Margaret Burnham