In three or four days the princess summoned me to her box in the Alberti Theatre, and shewed me Cardinal Orsini’s note, allowing her and her friends to see the interior of the house.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

For, as if he were about to proclaim some marvellous thing passing belief, he says, "What we are going to say will certainly take some by surprise.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

‘I should be very happy to lend you a change of apparel for the purpose,’ said Mr. Tracy Tupman, ‘but you are rather slim, and I am—’ ‘Rather fat—grown-up Bacchus—cut the leaves—dismounted from the tub, and adopted kersey, eh?—not double distilled, but double milled—ha!
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some may think that it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man like Lydgate, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not proportioned to their tastes; also, in Lydgate's ridiculous fastidiousness about asking his friends for money.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

As for those that will (by faults which charity hath raked up, or common honesty concealed) make themselves a name with the multitude, or, to draw their rude and beastly claps, care not whose living faces they intrench with their petulant styles, may they do it without a rival, for me!
— from Volpone; Or, The Fox by Ben Jonson

The Saracens and the Moors, to whom we owe the origin of so many of our recognised heraldic charges and the derivation of some of our terms ( e.g. "gules," from the Persian gul , and "azure" from the Persian lazurd ) had evidently on their part something more than the rudiments of armory, as Figs. 6 to 11 will indicate.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

The persevering student meant to make up for the lost time by working until daylight.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

The Phrygian slaves masturbated themselves behind the couch whenever Hector’s wife rode St. George; and, however much Ulysses snored, the chaste Penelope always had her hand there.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

And, as regards the foot, which I can't spare, in truth, 'Twould only make the people shun me; Therefore I've worn, like many a spindly youth, False calves these many years upon me.
— from Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When the juniors did score, the plucky sophomores managed to do the same soon after.
— from Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School The Record of the Girl Chums in Work and Athletics by Josephine Chase

Wilson’s machine received only a bronze medal, but his inventive genius was to have a far greater effect on the development of the practical sewing machine than the work of Blodgett and Lerow.
— from The Invention of the Sewing Machine by Grace Rogers Cooper

"I first told the story on April 1, 1903, to the editors of the North American Review , The Popular Science Monthly , the Scientific American , Nature , Outing , and the Fossiliferous Magazine .
— from In Search of the Unknown by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers