A noble place; inside as well as out, a noble place—a house in which you incontinently lost yourself if ever you were so rash as to attempt to penetrate its mysteries alone; a house in which no one room had any sympathy with another, every chamber running off at a tangent into an inner chamber, and through that down some narrow staircase leading to a door which, in its turn, led back into that very part of the house from which you thought yourself the furthest; a house that could never have been planned by any mortal architect, but must have been the handiwork of that good old builder, Time, who, adding a room one year, and knocking down a room another year, toppling down a chimney coeval with the Plantagenets, and setting up one in the style of the Tudors; shaking down a bit of Saxon wall, allowing a Norman arch to stand here; throwing in a row of high narrow windows in the reign of Queen Anne, and joining on a dining-room after the fashion of the time of Hanoverian George I, to a refectory that had been standing since the Conquest, had contrived, in some eleven centuries, to run up such a mansion as was not elsewhere to be met with throughout the county of Essex.
— from Lady Audley's Secret by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

After a very short delay, she returned and took me up, staring at me all the way.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

30 Comments and conclusions are usually impertinent and unwelcome save as mere addenda to facts , but in the light of the facts derivable from our own official records, is it any wonder that General Anderson, a gallant veteran of the Civil War, and perhaps the most conspicuous figure of the early fighting in the Philippines, delivered an address some time after he came back home before the Oregon Commandery of the Loyal Legion of the United States 31 on the subject, “Should republics have colonies?” and answered the question emphatically “No!”
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

Thoroughly to understand such a moment, and not to treat it wrongly, was the whole secret, and this I fully realised on that day from the absolute failure on the great singer's part to produce the right effect.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

“She had better have stayed at home,” cried Elizabeth; “perhaps she meant well, but, under such a misfortune as this, one cannot see too little of one's neighbours.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

They answered that they would not give up such a man, as we imagined [they would do], and that they would not give him for all the riches in the world, but that they intended to keep him as a memorial.
— from The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century by Antonio Pigafetta

"She had better have stayed at home," cried Elizabeth; "perhaps she meant well, but, under such a misfortune as this, one cannot see too little of one's neighbours.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

" Untruthful statements are made at times for other than propaganda purposes; truthful statements may be propaganda or not.
— from Psychological Warfare by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

Talaíra ug sanggì ang mais arun walay hisayluan, Harvest the corn methodically, covering it square by square, so that you miss nothing.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

It is not to human tradition of any kind; not to the Fathers; not to the decrees of general councils; not to the commandments and doctrines of men; not to any of these, or all put together, which can only bewilder, perplex, and mislead; but to the pure and precious word of God, that perfect revelation which in His infinite goodness He has put into our hands, and which can make a little child "wise unto salvation" and make a man " perfect , thoroughly furnished unto all good works " (2 Tim. iii.).
— from Life and Times of David. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. VI by Charles Henry Mackintosh

He felt as if he had unexpectedly struck a match and set fire to something old and long dried, which began to burn alarmingly and almost consumed him in its sudden malicious blaze.
— from The Spy: The Story of a Superfluous Man by Maksim Gorky

"But it is nearly tea time; don't let us say anything more about it now.
— from A Bunch of Cherries: A Story of Cherry Court School by L. T. Meade

To Miss Balfour these composites and their owners would have been joys unalloyed except for the microbe of society ambition that was infecting the latter, and transforming them from simple, robust, self-reliant Westerners into a class of servile, nondescript newly rich, that resembled their unfettered selves as much as tame bears do the grizzlies of their own Rockies.
— from Ridgway of Montana (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) by William MacLeod Raine

The straw was woven through upright stakes, and made a tolerably secure wall; outside, growing up around the house in every direction, were running vines and wild flowers; and at a little distance were various smaller sheds and out-houses, in which our worthy host kept his domestic animals, and what wood he required during the bad weather.
— from Crusoe's Island: A Ramble in the Footsteps of Alexander Selkirk With Sketches of Adventure in California and Washoe by J. Ross (John Ross) Browne

"Just my opinion," he said, with a smile; "the only question with me is, Will Uncle Sam allow me a sufficiently long leave of absence."
— from Elsie's Winter Trip by Martha Finley

I scarcely need to say, that I consider the military posts and property situated within the States which claim to have seceded as yet belonging to the Government of the United States as much as they did before the supposed secession.
— from Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York by A. F. (Adolphus Frederick) Warburton

The World is so dull, now, and the Moon always seemed to us such a mad and merry place.’
— from Brief Diversions: Being Tales, Travesties and Epigrams by J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley