It seems very pretty, but it’s rather hard to understand; somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are.
— from Alice in Wonderland A Dramatization of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" by Alice Gerstenberg

—Well, it’s a poor case, she said, when a university student is so dirty that his mother has to wash him.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

the upper surface is Smooth and of a deep green the under disk of a pale green and covered with a brown bubersence of a woolly appearance particularly near the cental fiber or rib.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

‘You, Ulick,’ said I, ‘shall be NUMBER TWO.’
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

First, if successfully executed, and it was, he would annoy the enemy by cutting his line of supplies and telegraphic communications, and destroy or get for his own use supplies in store in the rear and coming up.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

Ug sukmátun kag sumbagay, ayaw ug súkul, If s.o. challenges you to a fight, don’t take him on.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

I might have sent him a volume of Keats containing a Pot of Basil in an equally transmissible form, but as he does not read English he would not have understood; so I sent him a young cucumber about three inches long.
— from Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions by Henry Festing Jones

Both of us sat in silence, involved in deep and anxious thought—I for him, he for himself.
— from The Lady of the Ice: A Novel by James De Mille

There was no use in remaining up, so I sought to forget my terror in sleep, and crept onto one of the little shelves allotted to us.
— from Tenting on the Plains; or, General Custer in Kansas and Texas by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

(Very thick bill, white throat and rump, and a note like the twitter of the sparrow; usually seen in small flocks.)
— from Indian Birds: Being a Key to the Common Birds of the Plains of India by Douglas Dewar

“That is unfortunately so,” I said.
— from As We Forgive Them by William Le Queux

Anon I espied Sir William Davenant walking with Mr. Killigrew, and my Lord of Rochester dallying with a pretty Damsel; one or two more Gentlemen did I recognize as I gazed on the moving Sight, until suddenly I saw that which caused me to draw my Head back quickly from the Window and to gaze with added Anxiety on the listless Figure of my Friend.
— from His Majesty's Well-Beloved An Episode in the Life of Mr. Thomas Betteron as told by His Friend John Honeywood by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness

Sort of fruit not mentioned; their usual slovenliness in statistics.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

[183] Boehtlingk seems never to have forgiven me, and he and several of his friends were highly displeased at my ultimate success in securing a publisher for the Rig-veda in England.
— from My Autobiography: A Fragment by F. Max (Friedrich Max) Müller

‘Eat and sleep, for to-morrow six of us start in search of fresh wool to weave, and we pray you to give us your company.’
— from The Orange Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

He became more frequent at his excellent West End club, and directed a certain portion of his capital to largely indecisive but on the whole unprofitable speculations in South African and South American enterprises.
— from Marriage by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells