He was practising upon me to see if there was any hope of his being able to read the document to his prayer-meeting with anything like a decent command over his feelings.
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

To my uncle Mr. Toby Shandy do I stand indebted for the preceding anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher, and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and heavily complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my uncle Toby well remember'd, upon his observing a most unaccountable obliquity, (as he call'd it) in my manner of setting up my top, and justifying the principles upon which I had done it,—the old gentleman shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than reproach,—he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me, That I should neither think nor act like any other man's child:—But alas!
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

A few days before, a tempest-struck vessel had appeared off the town: the hull was parched-looking and cracked, the sails rent, and bent in a careless, unseamanlike manner, the shrouds tangled and broken.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Who would have thought it, Flask!” cried Stubb; “if I had but one leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with my timber toe.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Then the savage and the maiden danced violently together, and, finally, the savage dropped down on one knee, and the maiden stood on one leg upon his other knee; thus concluding the ballet, and leaving the spectators in a state of pleasing uncertainty, whether she would ultimately marry the savage, or return to her friends.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

It might, perhaps, make us mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away; if it were not that in the furthest depths of our being we are secretly conscious of our share in the exhaustible spring of eternity, so that we can always hope to find life in it again.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer

“It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.
— from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Ug musungag ta sa hángin, dúgay ta muabut, If we go against the wind, it will take us a long time to arrive.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

3. 'Doth your carriage answer the law of love or civility, when the brethren used means to send for you for a conference, and their letter was received by you, that you should go out again from the city after knowledge of their desires, and not vouchsafe a meeting with them, when the glory of God, and the vindication of so many churches is concerned.'
— from Works of John Bunyan — Complete by John Bunyan

"He made a very pressing remonstrance," said the King, "concerning the arrival of these deputies, urging me to send them back at once; denouncing them as disobedient rebels and heretics.
— from History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce — Complete (1584-1609) by John Lothrop Motley

In my opinion, not one of those who have tried to reveal themselves has been able to give us more than shreds and patches of reality.
— from The Open Question: A Tale of Two Temperaments by Elizabeth Robins

President Lt. Gen. Umar Hasan Ahmad al-BASHIR (since 16 October 1993); First Vice President Ali Uthman Muhammad TAHA (since 17 February 1998), Second Vice President Moses MACHAR
— from The 2002 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

Later the unions managed to sneak by the guard of the ex-union man Burgess and hold a meeting or two—said to be the first since the Homestead strike, twenty-six years before—but nothing substantial could be done, and the fight was called off for the winter.
— from The Great Steel Strike and its Lessons by William Z. Foster

There happened in Macuto a tragic thing, an unsolvable mystery, that sobered for a time the gaiety of the happy season.
— from Whirligigs by O. Henry

"Shall the base feare of displeasing the world overpower or withhold me from revealing unto man the spirituall works of the Lord?
— from The Birth of the Nation, Jamestown, 1607 by Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

The places that have known him shall know him no more; but his memory shall be treasured up by the wise and the good of his contemporaries, as eminent among the patriots and statesmen of this our native land; and were it possible for any Northern bosom, within this hall, ever to harbor for one moment a wish for the dissolution of our National Union, may the spirit of our departed friend, pervading every particle of the atmosphere around us, dispel the delusion of his soul, by reminding him that, in that event, he would no longer be the countryman of Lewis Williams."
— from Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850 by Thomas Hart Benton

And—there, I'm sure I won't take upon myself to speak for him.
— from A Charming Fellow, Volume II by Frances Eleanor Trollope

Magpugispugis ang pánit sa sabun ug dílì hugásan ug maáyu, The skin will get streaks of soap if you don’t rinse it off.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff