I was quite alright last night, my parents know about it, perhaps better than me, I had a small symptom of it last night already.
— from Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail’s bed.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

Placed amid the other rare and beautiful objects on a large round table near him, was a dwarf cabinet in ebony and silver, containing coins of all shapes and sizes, set out in little drawers lined with dark purple velvet.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Then I happened to go to Yorkshire and saw several of its lovely abbeys: I came back with a craze for architecture, so I and the girls did that together.
— from Stray Thoughts for Girls by Lucy Helen Muriel Soulsby

To this account of Savu, I shall only add a small specimen of its language, by which it will appear to have some affinity with that of the South-Sea islands, many of the words being exactly the same, and the numbers manifestly derived from the same source.
— from A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13 by Robert Kerr

Mrs. Crawford could recollect but a single stanza of it:— "Let auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind, And Jackson be our President, And Adams left behind.
— from The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete by Abraham Lincoln

In the village we had a singular stroke of ill luck.
— from The Fifth Leicestershire A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. by John David Hills

So great a triumph, crowning so much patient and painstaking labour, won at the hour when the Bahá’í World Spiritual Crusade is entering the second year of the third phase in its irresistible unfoldment, must be celebrated through the initiation of a subsidiary Six-Year Plan on the part of the newly-formed Alaskan National Spiritual Assembly, for the purpose of speedily increasing the number of the followers of the Faith; of multiplying its Centres; of adding to its existing Local Spiritual Assemblies; of inaugurating a National Bahá’í Fund; of establishing a Summer School; of initiating local Bahá’í endowments; of incorporating the newly-emerged National Spiritual Assembly as well as all firmly grounded local spiritual assemblies; of obtaining recognition for the Bahá’í Marriage Certificate, as well as the Holy Days on which work is forbidden; of stimulating the conversion of both the Eskimos and American Indians, and of purchasing a plot of land to serve as the site for the future Ma sh riqu’l-A dh kár of Alaska.
— from High Endeavours: Messages to Alaska by Effendi Shoghi

After a time, the wonted serenity of the cavalier returned, and as the country into which we penetrated became more mountainous and romantic, he related to me many a wild legend and tradition of blood and sorcery—of Gothic chiefs, Norman knights, and Saracen emirs, and many a sad story of Italian love; all of which have long since passed away from my remembrance.
— from Adventures of an Aide-de-Camp; or, A Campaign in Calabria, Volume 2 (of 3) by James Grant

—The flight of the greater yellow-legs is quite swift, strong, and well sustained on the downward and sweeping strokes of its long, pointed, dark-colored wings.
— from Life Histories of North American Shore Birds, Part 1 (of 2) by Arthur Cleveland Bent

"Only a small sample of it," laughed the other, "and there'll be plenty more to follow before we win this Marathon.
— from Fred Fenton Marathon Runner: The Great Race at Riverport School by Allen Chapman

It was as though the face of the sea were covered with a solid sheet of ice, lying ahead as far as sight carried into the night.
— from The Adventures of Billy Topsail by Norman Duncan