21 Ah, well ­ but sing the foolish song I gave you, Alice, on the day 22 When, arm in arm, we went along, A pensive pair, and you were gay, With bridal flowers ­ that I may seem, As in the nights of old, to lie Beside the mill-wheel in the stream, While those full chestnuts whisper by.
— from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

she justly cursed-- A people puzzling aye your brains With children's tales and children's play, While Greece puts on her steel array, To save her limbs from, tyrant chains!
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

It requires as much judgment to select proper instrumental pieces for a parlor performance, as you would display in a choice of songs.
— from The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society by Florence Hartley

There came a pause, presently, and “You don’t any of you know the plot of the skit they’re putting on, do you?”
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

You only weaken your case and prejudice people against you for your lack of tact, good judgment, or sense of proportion.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

Take up any political paper and you will find that the text is obliterated here and there, and that in its place shimmers the white of the paper.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

“Yes; just so, in your circumstances: but find me another precisely placed as you are.”
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

I AS when a ship, that flyes faire under saile, An hidden rocke escaped hath unwares, That lay in waite her wrack for to bewaile, The Marriner yet halfe amazed stares 5 At perill past, and yet in doubt ne dares To joy at his foole-happie oversight: So doubly is distrest twixt joy and cares The dreadlesse courage of this Elfin knight, Having escapt so sad ensamples in his sight.
— from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I by Edmund Spenser

I have admired you at a distance; and if I have come to town sometimes, with long times between, to take a proud peep at you, I have done it unbeknown, my love, and gone away again.’
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

It is quite possible for a good man to slip a piece of money into the palm of some miserable being standing in a public place, and yet this may be done solely with the idea of relieving distress without a thought of the onlookers.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Music, I say, is a pattern of the everlasting life of heaven; because in heaven, as in music, is perfect freedom and perfect pleasure; and yet that freedom comes not from throwing away law, but from obeying God’s law perfectly; and that pleasure comes, not from self-will, and doing each what he likes, but from perfectly doing the will of the Father who is in heaven.
— from The Good News of God by Charles Kingsley

"And a precious poor artist you'd be if he hadn't, and if the misery didn't come in."
— from The Creators: A Comedy by May Sinclair

To think that a child cannot bear to enter the dark, cannot bear to be alone, cannot bear to be separated from its loving and protecting parents, and yet must suffer in a few moments from a fatal disease—the agony of all this, in the face of death, is the crime of crimes, too damnable and horrible for words.
— from The Tyranny of God by Joseph Lewis

It is true, I have not yet attached myself to any particular profession, although you may expect I should tell you of my progress therein; but, without a guide or director, I feared rashly to engage lest I should afterwards discover my abilities unfitted to the part I had chosen.
— from Secresy; or, Ruin on the Rock by E. (Eliza) Fenwick

Abolish private property and you abolish poverty.”
— from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine

But I tell you she was a pretty piece as you'd wish to see.
— from The Castle Inn by Stanley John Weyman

He had a pleasant physiognomy, as young men go.
— from The Invisible Censor by Francis Hackett