“Well, I like that,” exclaimed Drouet, little realising the fire his remark had generated.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

We must, I take it, have our scoundrels like other people; the only great grievance here is, that the fellow’s ubiquity is such that it is hard to believe that the swindler who walked off with the five watches from Hamburg is the same who, in less than eight days afterwards, borrowed fifty ducats from a waiter at Naples, and “bolted.” Of late I have observed he has dropped his second prénom of Napoleon, and does not call himself by it.
— from Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General by Charles James Lever

Finally Richards said, with the hesitancy of one who is making a statement which is likely to encounter doubt, “Mary, Burgess is not a bad man.”
— from The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories by Mark Twain

Your genius has limned with ineffaceable lines that everlasting disease of venerable big-wigs and mouldy specialists,—disdain of the laity, respect for their fellow-members, idolatry of the past.
— from Mysterious Psychic Forces An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants by Camille Flammarion

If too much disturbed however, such a snake will move away, higher, or to the opposite side of the clump, with a slow and stealthy gliding motion which is likely to escape detection.
— from Natural History of the Racer Coluber constrictor by Henry S. (Henry Sheldon) Fitch

It was tiring to pull the heavy boat with so many, but the sea was inexpressibly lovely, the evening dead calm.
— from Recollections of My Childhood and Youth by Georg Brandes

In the Thysanura even this small post-embryonic change ceases to appear, and the Insect, when it leaves the egg, differs from its parent only in size.
— from The Structure and Life-history of the Cockroach (Periplaneta orientalis) An Introduction to the Study of Insects by L. C. (Louis Compton) Miall

[225] harmful in some cases, at least useless, requiring constant care, the neglect of which is liable to entail disease and suffering; the irritation it produces through the sebaceous secretion is a frequent cause of masturbation which nothing short of circumcision will remedy.”
— from History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance by P. C. (Peter Charles) Remondino

Men who heard of a machine that would cut one hundred and seventy-five acres of wheat in less than eight days—as happened in one case—naturally decided that it was worth investigating.
— from Historic Inventions by Rupert Sargent Holland

It is this, that as those who know that they are telling a story which is likely to excite doubt, take more than usual care to put on a grave and honest countenance, so those who know that they are writing what is bad or questionable in grammar, spelling, &c., should use the precaution of being peculiarly legible.]
— from Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 101, October 4, 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various