A Flemish officer, unknown to me, accosted me, and painted his destitute condition in such sad colours that I felt obliged to give him twelve louis.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

A cart came into sight on the high road in the distance coming from the town.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There was a companionship in suffering there, and, the neighbours keeping constant watch on each other, and inspired by the active benevolence of Adrian, succour was afforded, and the path of destruction smoothed.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

the Corolla is smooth, moderately long, situated at the base of the germen, permanent, and cup shaped.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

This new tenant, who, as we have said, was an Italian, was called Il Signor Giacomo Busoni.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

I long, when thou, wise lord, art nigh, All fearless, with delighted eye To gaze upon the rocky hill, The lake, the fountain, and the rill; To sport with thee, my limbs to cool, In some pure lily-covered pool, While the white swan's and mallard's wings Are plashing in the water-springs.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

Sophia would have gladly been excused from all, but would not disoblige her aunt; and as to the arts of counterfeiting illness, she was so entirely a stranger to them, that it never once entered into her head.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Besides, on one or two points change is simply impossible.
— from The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Sap is characterized in sugar maple, sweet gum, balsam fir, and sweet birch.
— from Trees Worth Knowing by Julia Ellen Rogers

It was to be managed so that no one should suspect that Montigny had been executed, but so that, on the contrary, it should be universally said and believed that he had died a natural death.
— from PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

roused much criticism: it said things that comfortable people did not like to hear, and said them frankly; it was far in advance of the public opinion of that time, but its truth no one would dispute to-day.
— from Victorian Worthies: Sixteen Biographies by George Henry Blore

But there are other examples whose character as literary creation is still farther beyond question.
— from Horace and His Influence by Grant Showerman

Any one who has ever had any experience of "table-turning" will realise that this genuineness of manifestation is quite compatible with the extreme futility of the "information" usually conveyed in such ways, and will recognise that the noises and rappings in the house at St. Govan's evidently belonged to the same class of phenomena.
— from Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore by Mary L. Lewes

" After he had finished his watermelon, and while Victorine was pouring his coffee, the two children came in, scrambling to their places, and drumming on the table with their knife-handles.
— from Blix by Frank Norris

The English commander immediately sent notice to Blake, who was lying off Dover.
— from How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves Updated to 1900 by William Henry Giles Kingston

He had achieved an ugly, jumbled apparatus, vaguely cylindrical in shape with a point of metal at one end.
— from The Martian by A. R. (Alec Rowley) Hilliard

But Dangle now, or even Clapperton, I shall be charmed to see.
— from The Cock-House at Fellsgarth by Talbot Baines Reed

Among all the famous queens of history, there is not one, save Catherine de’ Medici, whose career is so utterly devoid of noble acts, so entirely dictated by “selfishness, lust, and sordid greed,” as that of Catherine II., removed by the grace of God on the 10th of November,
— from The Girls' Book of Famous Queens by Lydia Hoyt Farmer