Some years older than I, she knew more of the world, and could tell me many things I liked to hear: with her my curiosity found gratification: to my faults also she gave ample indulgence, never imposing curb or rein on anything I said.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

You want to upset me, to upset yourself, to upset Glyde, and to upset Laura; and—oh, dear me!—all for the sake of the very last thing in the world that is likely to happen.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

yes then it came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and the weight all down my side telling me pull the right reins now pull the left and the tide all swamping in floods in through the bottom and his oar slipping out of the stirrup its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of course me no theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in his flannel trousers Id like to have tattered them down off him before all the people and give him what that one calls flagellate till he was black and blue do him all the good in the world only for that longnosed chap
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

Later on, it is often to their great harm that experience teaches them something else; for the discovery, that the instructors of their early years were the first to deceive them, is likely to have a more mischievous effect on their morality than if these persons had given them the first example of ingenuous truthfulness, by saying frankly: "The world is sunk in evil, and men are not what they ought to be; but be not misled thereby, and see that you do better."
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer

“I think I liked the home under the ground best of all.”
— from Peter Pan by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

His account of himself was so far attended with an agreeable result, that it led to his withdrawing his hand in order that he might have another hug of himself under the chin.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I was born here, my father and mother lived here, my grandfather too, I love this house.
— from Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

All this has helped me to a complexion delicate and incapable of solicitude, even to that degree that I love to have my losses and the disorders wherein I am concerned, concealed from me.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steer through their complicated channels and straits, knowing not at what moment it may be locked in and crushed.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Now gone, he thinks it long till he see her again, and she him, the clocks are surely set back, the hour's past,
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

The end of it was that I left the house—pledged to keep Lucilla in ignorance of the cost at which Oscar had determined to purchase his cure, until Oscar thought fit to enlighten her himself.
— from Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins

But even that is liable to have its exits blocked.
— from The Last Million: How They Invaded France—and England by Ian Hay

Mrs. Peter Jones, who is very small and alert, said suddenly that it looked to her as if the smoke were coming out of the kitchen chimney, but Mrs. Ketchum said of course it was on fire inside in the woodwork.
— from The Jamesons by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

I think it loves to have us here.”
— from Success: A Novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams

Thus determined, she reconnoitred the field, and practised her address so successfully, that in less than half an hour she was loaded with ermine and embroidery, and disposed to retreat with her burden, when her regards were solicited by a splendid bundle, which she descried at some distance lying on the ground.
— from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. (Tobias) Smollett

"The night came out of the dusk a fine starlight to seaward, beyond the reefs where the Indiaman lay, the high side of the island glooming back against the deep blue glistening sky, till you didn't see how large it might be; while the white water hung glimmering off to leeward from the rocks.
— from The Green Hand: Adventures of a Naval Lieutenant by George Cupples

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself for taking it like that," he said.
— from Pelle the Conqueror — Volume 04 by Martin Andersen Nexø

He turned and looked at her as a man may look for the last time at the thing in life that has been most dear to him, and said nothing.
— from The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Seeing that I liked the horse—I had ridden him on several occasio
— from Project Gutenberg Edition of The Memoirs of Four Civil War Generals by John Alexander Logan