Upon a hasty consideration of the circumstances, it may be matter of surprise to some persons, that Mr. and Mrs. Squeers should have taken so much trouble to repossess themselves of an incumbrance of which it was their wont to complain so loudly; but their surprise will cease when they are informed that the manifold services of the drudge, if performed by anybody else, would have cost the establishment some ten or twelve shillings per week in the shape of wages; and furthermore, that all runaways were, as a matter of policy, made severe examples of, at Dotheboys Hall, inasmuch as, in consequence of the limited extent of its attractions, there was but little inducement, beyond the powerful impulse of fear, for any pupil, provided with the usual number of legs and the power of using them, to remain.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

He is a most extraordinary young man, and whatever be the event, you must feel that you have created an attachment of no common character; though, young as you are, and little acquainted with the transient, varying, unsteady nature of love, as it generally exists, you cannot be struck as I am with all that is wonderful in a perseverance of this sort against discouragement.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

“There was nothing entered in the inventory but the title-deeds of the capital and interest of the convent; the letters and other papers were left as being of no use; no one looked after them, and I don’t know if they are still in existence.”
— from The Memoirs of Maria Stella (Lady Newborough) by Ungern-Sternberg, Maria Stella Petronilla, Baroness

“No one has anything to do with us, no one speaks to us, no one looks at us.”
— from The Real Thing and Other Tales by Henry James

Such true patches consist of a groundwork of shading, upon which, 252 indeed, are superposed the usual network of lines and spots.
— from Mars and Its Canals by Percival Lowell

At the post-office I was told that only a small part of the mail had been brought into Srinagar, the road being "bund" between Baramula and that place, while an unusual number of landslips and bridges have come down in the Jhelum Valley.
— from A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil by T. R. Swinburne

There seemed to be an unusual number of locks and bolts, and the big key he carried did not seem to fit any of the numerous key-holes.
— from Ting-a-ling by Frank Richard Stockton

It was required to support the theory of the undulatory nature of light and to fulfil the possibility of light propagation in space.
— from The Problem of Truth by Herbert Wildon Carr