He found, as on the night before, the little folks at their singing and dancing, and the old man again shaved him clean, and signed to him to take some coal away with him.
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

He was no sooner assured of this; and he assured himself so carefully that one may almost say he shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better; than he came back at a round trot, pounced upon him, and summarily took off a piece of his tail; as a caution to him to be careful what he was about for the future, and never to play tricks with his family any more.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

I fancied that I had found favour in her sight, that she would continue to think of me after she had left the church, and would, perhaps, grow pensive again, that evening, at Guermantes, on my account.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

As we had now been so long at sea, and had fully convinced ourselves that it was no island, but a continent, we had discovered, containing considerable towns; as our cassave-bread was become quite mouldy and unfit for eating; considering, moreover, that our numbers were too small to think of making any settlement here, particularly as we had lost ten of our men in consequence of their wounds, besides having four others dangerously ill,—we determined to forward Diego Velasquez an account of the state of affairs, and desire him to send us succours; indeed Grijalva had a great mind to have founded a colony even with the few men we had to spare.
— from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain. by Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Of course once I had put into motion the forces of society, society turned on me and said, ‘Have you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection?
— from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

If John's declaration be true, that "no man hath seen God at any time" (John iv. 12), then the important question arises, How could Christ be God, as he was seen by thousands of men, and seen hundreds of times?
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

That one might almost say her body thought.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

He had only thought of money, and so had not prepared a hiding-place.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And hence we see the reason why it is pretty late before most children get ideas of the operations of their own minds; and some have not any very clear or perfect ideas of the greatest part of them all their lives.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

Thence my Lord Brouncker and I to the Duke of York’s playhouse, and there saw the latter part of “The Master and the Man,” and thence by coach to Duck Lane, to look out for Marsanne, in French, a man that has wrote well of musique, but it is not to be had, but I have given order for its being sent for over, and I did here buy Des Cartes his little treatise of musique, and so home, and there to read a little, and eat a little, though I find that my having so little taste do make me so far neglect eating that, unless company invite, I do not love to spend time upon eating, and so bring emptiness and the Cholique.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

He steps out, closes the curtains, and surveys every thing once more, and smiles his approval.
— from Mohammed Ali and His House by L. (Luise) Mühlbach

It gave him a number, it clothed him in a uniform, put a gun in his hands, strapped upon his back and about his waist and on his flanks all the other tools needful for the prosecution of the highly specialised modern trade of manslaughter, and set him aboard a [ 55 ] train and started him north.
— from Local Color by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb

Though there be an equity in whatsoever he doth, yet there is not an equality to what we deserve; our iniquities would justify a severer treating of us; his justice goes not here to the end of its line, it is stopped in its progress, and the blows of it weakened by his patience; he did not curse the earth after Adam’s fall, that it should bring forth no fruit, but that it should not bring forth fruit without the wearisome toil of man, and subjected him to distempers presently, but inflicted not death immediately; while he punished him, he supported him; and while he expelled him from paradise, he did not order him not to cast his eye towards it, and conceive some hopes of regaining that happy place.
— from The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2 by Stephen Charnock

Pretty soon “Ily” Tucker heads over towards our moorings, and says he: “What's troubling the ancient mariners?”
— from Cape Cod Stories by Joseph Crosby Lincoln

Manuello has a primitive, passionate, unbridled and selfish nature; he is wildly in love with Estrella and because she has selected another lover he has committed murder; with this man out of his way, he hopes to succeed with Estrella and goes to her intimate friend, Tessa, to find out how she actually feels about the death of her lover, Victorio Colenzo; Tessa secretly adores Manuello; she is, also, a native Cuban, but her nature is more sluggish than that of Manuello and she has a dog-like affection for Estrella, who has become separated from her own family as a child and is a member of the household of Manuello, being known as his half-sister among the villagers; the handsome peon makes love to little Tessa
— from An American by Belle Willey Gue

This article amounts to one million and six hundred thousand livres."
— from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 2 (of 9) Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private by Thomas Jefferson

He thought of Marthy as she had been when he first met her in Dogtown—smart, pretty, and saucy—before the sun had turned the roses in her cheeks brown and the silence of the chaparral had tamed her ambitions.
— from Waifs and Strays Part 1 by O. Henry

Father Carillo went over to the old man and saluted him respectfully.
— from The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

Its cold, laconic and impersonal meaning was assumed an efficacy to change on this propelling Earth like the odious taste of medicine and so he could not fail to believe that it was true since there was nothing to his knowledge to replace it with.
— from Corpus of a Siam Mosquito by Steven David Justin Sills