But first on earth, as Vampyre sent, Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent; Then ghastly haunt the native place, And suck the blood of all thy race; There from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life; Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid living corse, Thy victims, ere they yet expire, Shall know the demon for their sire; As cursing thee, thou cursing them, Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
— from The Vampyre; a Tale by John William Polidori

I am sorry the affair of the carriage should have given you any concern, but I am highly flattered by the anxiety you express so kindly.
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

You said the other day that Mrs. Clements had told you everything she knew.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

If the sweetest little girl you ever saw knew perfectly whom you meant when you said "Dear," what was the use of hunting up such prosy names as May or Alice?
— from The Sick-a-Bed Lady And Also Hickory Dock, The Very Tired Girl, The Happy-Day, Something That Happened in October, The Amateur Lover, Heart of The City, The Pink Sash, Woman's Only Business by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

sez I. He blinked his eyes at me a time ’r two, hove a long sigh, an’ said: “The’ was a purple dragon in front o’ me, a lot o’ long-legged yaller snakes back o’ me, and the peskiest pink jack-rabbit you ever saw kept swoopin’ into my face an’ peckin’ at my eyes.
— from Friar Tuck Being the Chronicles of the Reverend John Carmichael, of Wyoming, U. S. A. by Robert Alexander Wason

If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar, hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with the reflection that speech was forced from her.
— from The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer

It requires some boldness to pursue the latter course, and yet every speaker knows that his highest efforts—efforts that have seemed beyond his normal power, and which have done more in a minute to gain the object for which he spoke than all the remainder of the discourse—have been of this character.
— from Extempore Speech: How to Acquire and Practice It by William Pittenger

"Don't shut your eyes, Susie: keep 'em open, and see it come."
— from Winter Fun by William O. Stoddard

It's one of the greatest sights you ever saw, Kit.
— from Kit of Greenacre Farm by Izola L. (Izola Louise) Forrester

Yet every student knows this conception to be utterly false; every man of science rejects it as absurd; and even the clergy themselves mostly disbelieve it Why, then, do they not disabuse the popular mind, and preach what they deem true instead of what they know to be false?
— from Bible Romances, First Series by G. W. (George William) Foote

I say, Mac, did you ever smoke killikinick?
— from The Lonesome Trail by John G. Neihardt