“John enters like a brother into my happiness,” continued Mr. Knightley, “but he is no complimenter; and though I well know him to have, likewise, a most brotherly affection for you, he is so far from making flourishes, that any other young woman might think him rather cool in her praise.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

If the Berlin psychologist Stumpf, the scientific director of the committee of investigation, had but taken into consideration the teachings of hypnotism, he would never have made the fiasco of admitting that the horse, Clever Hans, had been educated like a boy, not trained like an animal.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance?
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A half-clothed, red-haired Irish servant was upon her knees, kindling up the fire; and a long, thin woman, with a sharp face, and an eye like a black snake, was just emerging from a bed in the corner.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

En las pampas está la inmensidad, la soledad, el silencio, la abrumante igualdad de lugar y de tiempo: en las montañas, el hombre halla horizontes limitados, que hace suyos y toca como si fueran su propiedad; se siente acompañado por las colinas graciosas de pendientes circulares y suaves, por los picos rocallosos y salvajes, por los boscajes aislados y las mesetas de verdura; encuentra la animación bulliciosa de la naturaleza en todas partes, en las voces del torrente que se desata furioso entre las rocas de la quebrada, en los ruidos de las auras que juguetean en las selvas, en los zumbidos del viento que se choca en las cumbres sinuosas.
— from Heath's Modern Language Series: The Spanish American Reader by Ernesto Nelson

And do you know the thing that is going to stick the longest in my memory, and outlast everything else, little and big, I reckon, is the mean thought I had then?
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

Fired with an abstract love of virtue, she, My Dian of the Ephesians, Lady Adeline, Began to think the duchess' conduct free; Regretting much that she had chosen so bad a line, And waxing chiller in her courtesy, Look'd grave and pale to see her friend's fragility, For which most friends reserve their sensibility.
— from Don Juan by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

Such conduct made them of course most exceedingly laughed at; but ridicule could not shame, and seemed hardly to provoke them.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

on this course we passed through the plains found the plains as yesterday extreemly leavel and beautifull, great quanties of Buffaloe, some wolves foxes and Antelopes seen.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

The animal does not like them to be touched, or even looked at, but is frequently shaking the head, and howling or whining afterwards.
— from The Dog by W. N. (William Nelson) Hutchinson

Thus, in Pharaoh case, when he persisted in holding, with an iron grasp, the Israel of God, the vials of divine wrath were poured forth upon him; and the land of Egypt was covered, throughout its entire length and breadth, with darkness, disease, and desolation.
— from Notes on the book of Exodus by Charles Henry Mackintosh

With this ticket, on a platform declaring for free silver, opposing the issue of bonds and national bank currency, denouncing “government by injunction,” declaring for a low tariff, the Monroe doctrine, an income tax, and election of senators by a direct vote of the people, the democracy went before the country with a confidence and exuberance little anticipated before the convention met, and scarcely justified, as later proven, by the outcome.
— from William Jennings Bryan: A Concise But Complete Story of His Life and Services by Harvey Ellsworth Newbranch

"My soul is escaped, Like a bird, like a bird, From the snare of the fowlers, My soul is escaped!
— from A Modern Madonna by Caroline Abbot Stanley

He was radiant, happy, and excited, like a boy back from school for the holidays.
— from Cinderella, and Other Stories by Richard Harding Davis

Each lever, A B C D E F, is movable through an angle of 45 degrees, by a joint near the circumference of the wheel, and the inner end or tail of 318 each is confined by two studs or pins, so that it must either lie in the direction of a radius, or else in the required position of obliquity.
— from Perpetual Motion by Percy Verance

And as I had talked to these forlorn people, these human beings who lay crushed beneath the misfortune which had uprooted them from their barren and exhausted lands, and blown them, like autumn leaves, towards the Caucasus where nature's luxuriant, but unfamiliar, aspect had blinded and bewildered them, and with its onerous conditions of labour quenched their last spark of courage; as I had talked to these poor people I had seen them glancing about with dull, troubled, despondent eyes, and heard them say to one another softly, and with pitiful smiles: "What a country!" "Aye,—that it is!—a country to make one sweat!" "As hard as a stone it is!" "Aye, an evil country!" After which they had gone on to speak of their native haunts, where every handful of soil had represented to them the dust of their ancestors, and every grain of that soil had been watered with the sweat of their brows, and become charged with dear and intimate recollections.
— from Through Russia by Maksim Gorky

Never misfortune has struck mo so hard, But I ere long again better have fared.
— from Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations With a Sketch of Their Popular Poetry by Talvj

Wheeler , Edward L. Apollo Bill, the trail tornado; or, Rowdy Kate from Right Bower.
— from The Beadle Collection of Dime Novels Given to the New York Public Library By Dr. Frank P. O'Brien by New York Public Library