For though I feel that I am bound to obey her mandate, I feel too that I am debarred by the boon I have accorded to the princess that accompanies us, and the law of chivalry compels me to have regard for my word in preference to my inclination; on the one hand the desire to see my lady pursues and harasses me, on the other my solemn promise and the glory I shall win in this enterprise urge and call me; but what I think I shall do is to travel with all speed and reach quickly the place where this giant is, and on my arrival I shall cut off his head, and establish the princess peacefully in her realm, and forthwith I shall return to behold the light that lightens my senses, to whom I shall make such excuses that she will be led to approve of my delay, for she will see that it entirely tends to increase her glory and fame; for all that I have won, am winning, or shall win by arms in this life, comes to me of the favour she extends to me, and because I am hers.”
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

He smelled it and found it so recent that he crouched swiftly, and looked in the direction in which it disappeared.
— from White Fang by Jack London

As fire in summer rages through The forests thick with dry bamboo, So will my fawn eyed love consume My soul o'erwhelmed with thoughts of gloom.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

To own a fault is some reparation; and what every lordly husband will not do.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

THE COSSACK M AXIM TORTCHAKOV, a farmer in southern Russia, was driving home from church with his young wife and bringing back an Easter cake which had just been blessed.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Such a fiction is suicidal, ruinous, impious.
— from The Republic by Plato

And for this there are two reasons to be given; one from the nature of the thing itself, because from the one extreme being nearer and more like the mean, we do not put this against it, but the other; as, for instance, since rashness is thought to be nearer to courage than cowardice is, and to resemble it more, we put cowardice against courage rather than rashness, because those things which are further from the mean are thought to be more contrary to it.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

For it will live in my memory like a sweet dream which lingers long after awakening; for I shall remember for ever that instant when you opened your heart to me like a brother and so generously accepted the gift of my shattered heart to care for it, nurse it, and heal it....
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For hatred of the foreigner ever arms a few intrepid souls, ready to die for an idea.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

The wildest woods and laurel, interlocked with thorns and briers, spring from its precipitous sides; while the voices of cascades and cataracts arise from its shadowy ravines.
— from The Heart of the Alleghanies; or, Western North Carolina by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler

All the more now was he confirmed in the love of God and the contempt of the world, of which one night he had a vision as of a torrent filled with obscene filth, and carrying in its flood the countless host of people of the world, while apart and aloof from its slime rose the sweet cloister, with its walls of silver, surrounded by silvery herbage, all delectable beyond conception.
— from The Mediaeval Mind (Volume 1 of 2) A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages by Henry Osborn Taylor

“And let this word of mine be kept by you, so that no one shall know the place, save you alone, for I shall receive it (my body) incorruptible from my Saviour in the resurrection of the dead.
— from The Hermits by Charles Kingsley

“Oh, yes; after a fashion, I suppose,” replied the Dunstan hopeful deliberately.
— from The Motor Boat Club at Nantucket; or, The Mystery of the Dunstan Heir by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

My imagination was excited by the inscriptions, coins, and utensils, by the Roman monuments of every kind which are found in such rich abundance in and around Salzburg; for this town, with its prominent fortress, the "Capitolium," on the rocky hill dominating stream and valley, was for centuries, under the name of "Claudium Juvavum," a chief bulwark of the Roman rule and the seat of a flourishing and brilliant development of the Roman culture.
— from Felicitas: A Tale of the German Migrations: A.D. 476 by Felix Dahn