why did you persuade me to come?' Emily drew one of the massy arm-chairs, with which the apartment was furnished, and begged Dorothee would sit down, and try to compose her spirits.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

If men had not this hope and this fear, but believed that the mind perishes with the body, and that no hope of prolonged life remains for the wretches who are broken down with the burden of piety, they would return to their own inclinations, controlling everything in accordance with their lusts, and desiring to obey fortune rather than themselves.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

The flower garden is overgrown with weeds and almost baked dry, while the boys play ball in the kitchen garden.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

You can say of a line that it runs east, or you can say that it runs west, and the line per se accepts both descriptions without rebelling at the inconsistency.
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James

Now I myself, 6 A Tory to the quick, was as a boy Destructive, when I had not what I would.
— from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

She was not fitted for it—no woman was fitted for it, no woman ought to be allowed to do such work; if the world could not keep them alive any other way it ought to kill them at once and be done with it.
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

From the very beginning of the play, though the conflict has not arisen, things are happening and being done which in some degree arrest, startle, and excite; and in a few scenes we have mastered the situation of affairs without perceiving the dramatist's designs upon us.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

When I consider the first, I own I am so far a Woman I cannot avoid being delighted with the Thoughts of living great; but then he seems to receive such a Degree of Courage from the Knowledge of what he has, he looks as if he was going to confer an Obligation on me; and the Readiness he accosts me with, makes me jealous I am only hearing a Repetition of the same things he has said to a hundred Women before.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

Yes, we shall drink to the Fatherland in those?" Jo frowned upon that piece of extravagance, and asked why he didn't buy a frail of dates, a cask of raisins, and a bag of almonds, and be done with it?
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Miguel de los Santos, after being degraded, was given over to the secular law and was hanged in the square of Madrigal on the 19th of October, 1595.
— from The Story of Don John of Austria by Luis Coloma

She, all but dissolved with her vapourish humours, made answer:—"Why, the truth is, that I am come back early because never, I believe, were there such odious and tiresome men and women in this city as there are to-day.
— from The Decameron, Volume II by Giovanni Boccaccio

Because the receiver could not be exhausted so thoroughly as the pump-cylinder, Boyle attempted to measure the pressure of the air by determining what weight could be supported by the piston.
— from Heroes of Science: Physicists by William Garnett

“Poor Dorothy is almost broken down with work and loss of sleep.
— from Dorothy South: A Love Story of Virginia Just Before the War by George Cary Eggleston

She had better marry a fool and be done with it.
— from Peter's Mother by De La Pasture, Henry, Mrs.

The iron bed; the chest of drawers, scratched and with broken handles; the closed colonial desk; the miserly rag carpet—all seemed mutely asking, as Bobby did, why their owner had deserted them the other night and delivered himself to the ghostly mystery of the old bedroom.
— from The Abandoned Room by Wadsworth Camp

So great was then the fervour of the faith, as is reported, and the desire for the laver of salvation among the nation of the Northumbrians, that Paulinus at a certain time coming with the king and queen to the royal township, which is called Adgefrin, 238 stayed there with them thirty-six days, fully occupied in catechizing and baptizing; during which [pg 120] days, from morning till night, he did nothing else but instruct the people resorting from all villages and places, in Christ's saving Word; and when they were instructed, he washed them with the water of absolution in the river Glen, 239 which is close by.
— from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Bede, the Venerable, Saint

You should choose, once for all, between disreputable women, and respectable ones, or you are sure to get mixed.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Your Honour and Maister Clement, I ha’ gone by where those hives stand now and seen those bees come flying in with wings a span long and shining, and bodies daubed with gold and making a humming sound like a fiddle-string!
— from The Witch by Mary Johnston

An' to think iv me twinty years ago cuttin' capers like a bally dancer, whin
— from Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen by Finley Peter Dunne