Victoria died; and the secret remained locked in my breast.
— from The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

It was then very dark, and the scattered lamps made the darkness greater when we were once outside their individual radius.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

The man had heard every word of the conversation between the disputants, and the Jew ran flying with terror into his arms; and Magny, a quick and passionate, but not a violent man, bade the servant lead the villain downstairs, and thought no more of him.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

It was her own choice to give the time of their absence to Highbury; to spend, perhaps, her last months of perfect liberty with those kind relations to whom she was so very dear: and the Campbells, whatever might be their motive or motives, whether single, or double, or treble, gave the arrangement their ready sanction, and said, that they depended more on a few months spent in her native air, for the recovery of her health, than on any thing else.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

During excessive laughter the whole body is often thrown backward and shakes, or is almost convulsed; the respiration is much disturbed; the head and face become gorged with blood, with the veins distended; and the orbicular muscles are spasmodically contracted in order to protect the eyes.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

Wishing to clinch my reputation for respectability, I took him and made him very drunk at the Savoy.
— from The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Although, to speak in the true diabological sense or phrase of Toledo, I must needs confess and acknowledge that veritably the devils cannot be killed or die by the stroke of a sword, I do nevertheless avow and maintain, according to the doctrine of the said diabology, that they may suffer a solution of continuity (as if with thy shable thou shouldst cut athwart the flame of a burning fire, or the gross opacous exhalations of a thick and obscure smoke), and cry out like very devils at their sense and feeling of this dissolution, which in real deed I must aver and affirm is devilishly painful, smarting, and dolorous.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Mightie Father, thou thy foes Justly hast in derision, and secure Laugh’st at thir vain designes and tumults vain, Matter to mee of Glory, whom thir hate Illustrates, when they see all Regal Power Giv’n me to quell thir pride, and in event Know whether I be dextrous to subdue Thy Rebels, or be found the worst in Heav’n.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

[2609] Their bodies are lean and dried up, withered, ugly, their looks harsh, very dull, and their souls tormented, as they are more or less entangled, as the humour hath been intended, or according to the continuance of time they have been troubled.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Such a lad vor drawin' an' that I never did zee. '
— from Babylon, Volume 1 by Grant Allen

So, too, is it impossible to conjecture just what her emotions may have been as she discerned the lights of a flier speeding rapidly out of the distance from that very direction, as though impelled toward her garden by the very intensity of the princess' thoughts.
— from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

—I arrived at last at Okayama at about 3 in the afternoon, very dirty after the night in the train, and tired for want of food—to be met by a party of Japanese, most kind and welcoming, who took me to a charming hotel and kept me sitting and talking for two hours without a chance of even washing!
— from A Journal from Japan: A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist by Marie Carmichael Stopes

"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
— from A Bottle of Old Wine by Richard O. Lewis

In the early stages of life the organism has only the sense of feeling—and very dim at that—and a faint sense of taste.
— from A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga by William Walker Atkinson

The very doctors, accustomed to miracles, could not believe their senses when they counted his pulse and looked at the little thermometer, and felt the places where the sore lumps had been.
— from Materfamilias by Ada Cambridge

The buckle of a woman's belt had been dug up that very day, and the farmer was discoursing upon it when his eyes fell upon Mrs. Brown's face.
— from The Last of the Legions and Other Tales of Long Ago by Arthur Conan Doyle

These internal or concealed hemorrhages are very dangerous, as the patient may lose much blood before her condition is suspected.
— from The Matron's Manual of Midwifery, and the Diseases of Women During Pregnancy and in Childbed Being a Familiar and Practical Treatise, More Especially Intended for the Instruction of Females Themselves, but Adapted Also for Popular Use among Students and Practitioners of Medicine by Frederick Hollick

The sopha, the vaulted dome, and the colonade, do not more effectually content their native inhabitant.
— from An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition by Adam Ferguson