It is said—I won’t vouch for the fact—that Captain Brown was heard to say, sotto voce , “D-n Dr Johnson!”
— from Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

And, to tell the truth, what am I that she should have remembered me when she was dying?...
— from A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov

“You have forgotten how to make the sugar since you left D——; but let us forget the maple sugar, and think of something else.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists—over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead—about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

The small servant stood with humility in presence of Miss Sally, and hung her head.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

Then ordering Laviolette, our servant, to stand sentry at the gate, I went out myself, wearing a soldier's helmet and carrying a musket.
— from Canada: the Empire of the North Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom by Agnes C. Laut

With the small sums which he succeeded in drawing on the bank of friendship he rented a miserable room, which contained little but a bed without sheets or pillowcases.
— from August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt: Studies and Impressions by L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby

It shewed me further, this new arrangement, that I ought, after all, to know what it was to love, since I loved Gilberte; it drew my attention to the constant anxiety that I had to 'shew off' before her, by reason of which I tried to persuade my mother to get for Françoise a waterproof coat and a hat with a blue feather, or, better still, to stop sending with me to the Champs-Elysées an attendant with whom I blushed to be seen (to all of which my mother replied that I was not fair to Françoise, that she was an excellent woman and devoted to us all) and also that sole, exclusive need to see Gilberte, the result of which was that, months in advance, I could think of nothing but how to find out at what date she would be leaving Paris and where she was going, feeling that the most attractive country in the world would be but a place of exile if she were not to be there, and asking only to be allowed to stay for ever in Paris, so long as I might see her in the Champs-Elysées; and it had little difficulty in making me see that neither my anxiety nor my need could be justified by anything in Gilberte's conduct.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

his glowing arms have wound her— To the sky she shrieks and springs!
— from Poems — Volume 1 by George Meredith

[Pg 34] stare to the shrunk soil that turned its dead face upward to its leaden dome.
— from A Woman of the Ice Age by L. P. (Louis Pope) Gratacap

On approaching the fortress of Khelat, the residence of Mehrab Khan, whose duplicity had thrown such difficulties in our way by the promise of supplies, which were never sent, a deputation was forwarded to that chief, demanding atonement for his behaviour, and intimating, that nothing short of the most unqualified submission to Shah Soojah's clemency would avert the fall of his city and destruction of his power.
— from Military Service and Adventures in the Far East: Vol. 1 (of 2) Including Sketches of the Campaigns Against the Afghans in 1839, and the Sikhs in 1845-6. by Daniel Henry MacKinnon

In this neat equipage were packed together a dozen students, almost upon one another's shoulders; and if the wretched beast, scarcely capable of putting one foot beyond another, was disposed to stand still, he was urged to further exertion by a horribly ugly, humpbacked, and limping ostler, going before him, and holding before his nose a most fragrant and ravishing lock of hay.
— from The Student-Life of Germany by William Howitt

All goodness, love, virtue, and nobility of character spring from the same source, from sympathy, which is the same in its nature as pure love.
— from Schopenhauer by Margrieta Beer