Nearly the whole of my previous life having been devoted to business and the pursuit of wealth, numerous scenes of which I had no previous conception have dawned upon me—I hope to the enlargement of my mind, and the improvement of my understanding.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Many of our tastes were similar; we had the same desire to seek the truth, the same earnest wish to be exact, perhaps the same sense of humour, and, what is necessary when writing on Marco Polo, certainly the same love for Venice and its history.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

Faith, sir, so it is, this gentleman and myself have been most uncivilly wrong'd and beaten by one Downright, a coarse fellow, about the town here; and for mine own part, I protest, being a man in no sort given to this filthy humour of quarrelling, he hath assaulted me in the way of my peace, despoiled me of mine honour, disarmed me of my weapons, and rudely laid me along in the open streets, when I not so much as once offered to resist him.
— from Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson

The corporal had array’d himself in poor Le Fever ’s regimental coat; and with his hair tuck’d up under his Montero -cap, which he had furbish’d up 183 for the occasion, march’d three paces distant from his master: a whiff of military pride had puff’d out his shirt at the wrist; and upon that in a black leather thong clipp’d into a tassel beyond the knot, hung the corporal’s stick——my uncle Toby carried his cane like a pike.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

'For my part, now, I consider supper as a turnpike through which one must pass, in order to get to bed.' JOHNSON.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

You will say, that may never come to pass; at all events, industry and exertion shall not be wanting on my part.
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

It was a great diversion from the late nights working on my PhD. I was lucky.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

That at the King’s coming in, he did send for her husband, and told him what a great man Sir W. Coventry was like to be, and that he having all the records in his hands of the Navy, if he would transcribe what was of most present use of the practice of the Navy, and give them him to give Sir W. Coventry from him, it would undoubtedly do his business of getting him a principal officer’s place; that her husband was at L5 charge to get these presently writ; that Sir W. Pen did give them Sir W. Coventry as from himself, which did set him up with W. Coventry, and made him what he is, and never owned any thing of Mr. Turner in them; by which he left him in the lurch, though he did promise the Duke of Albemarle to do all that was possible, and made no question of Mr. Turner’s being what he desired; and when afterwards, too, did propose to him the getting of the Purveyor’s place for him, he did tell Mr. Turner it was necessary to present Sir W. Coventry 100 pieces, which he did, and W. Coventry took 80 of them: so that he was W. Coventry’s mere broker, as Sir W. Batten and my Lady did once tell my Lady Duchess of Albemarle, in the case of Mr. Falconer, whom W. Pen made to give W. Coventry L200 for his place of Clerk of the Rope Yard of Woolwich, and to settle L80 a year upon his daughter Pegg, after the death of his wife, and a gold watch presently to his wife.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Its basis or groundwork was of most pure and limpid alabaster, and its height somewhat more than three spans, being a regular heptagon on the outside, with its stylobates or footsteps, arulets, cymasults or blunt tops, and Doric undulations about it.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Tess was so receptive that the few minutes of contact with the whirl of material progress lingered in her thought.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

He shall paint the walls of my private room."
— from Buried Cities, Volume 1: Pompeii by Jennie Hall

First, to discard crude thinking; second, to realize that the orthodox or so-called scientific or purely economic or materialistic socialism of the type preached by Marx is an exploded theory; and, third, that many of the men who call themselves Socialists to-day are in reality merely radical social reformers, with whom on many points good citizens can and ought to work in hearty general agreement, and whom in many practical matters of government good citizens well afford to follow.
— from Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt

Even then, I wouldn't have thought anything much about it, but a maid who lived here before I did, said she lost a pin once that had been in the waist of Mrs. Pell's gown and they had an awful time about it."
— from The Diamond Pin by Carolyn Wells

“In the case of the large yellow Œnothera the pistil stands out above the stamens, and I suppose it could not be fertilized except by the wind or (more probably) by insects.
— from The English Flower Garden with illustrative notes by Henry Arthur Bright

This conception has now given place to the mechanistic or naturalistic theory on which our modern physical science is based.
— from The Problem of Truth by Herbert Wildon Carr

"I was speaking to Mr. Ricaby about it," went on Mrs. Parkes.
— from John Marsh's Millions by Arthur Hornblow

By the time he reached the hotel he was once more plunged in all the preoccupations, the schemes, the pugnacities of the party leader.
— from The Testing of Diana Mallory by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

The Black Death divided the century into two parts, and work done after that time was often much poorer than before, because the country was poorer.
— from Our English Towns and Villages by H. R. Wilton Hall

We ate quantities of reindeer tallow with our meat, probably about half our daily food.
— from Schwatka's Search: Sledging in the Arctic in Quest of the Franklin Records by William H. (William Henry) Gilder

Anne-Marie, who was elfish and impish, made strange by her music, and made wild by the worship of many people, in this one hour became a little tender child again, softer and sweeter than the day-time Anne-Marie, nearer and more human than the concert Anne-Marie, who was a strange, inaccessible being that Nancy sometimes thought could not really belong to her.
— from The Devourers by Annie Vivanti