“I am afraid,” returned Emma, sighing, “that I must often have contributed to make her unhappy.”
— from Emma by Jane Austen

One hour demands me in the Trojan wall, To bid our altars flame, and victims fall: Nor shall, I trust, the matrons' holy train, And reverend elders, seek the gods in vain.
— from The Iliad by Homer

But ever since substance became at some sensitive point intelligent and reflective, ever since time made room and pause for memory, for history, for the consciousness of time, a god, as it were, became incarnate in mortality and some vision of truth, some self-forgetful satisfaction, became a heritage that moment could transmit to moment and man to man.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

I who counted upon my good fortune to discharge the recompense of thy services, find myself still waiting for advancement, while thou, before the time, and contrary to all reasonable expectation, seest thyself blessed in the fulfillment of thy desires.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

It is very hard to say, it is hard to believe, but Mr. Cohan has said it, and revolutions especially since the French Revolution confirm it, that "with this sign comes the death of the parasites of the bourgeoisie * * * Jewish tears will come out of them in sweat of drops of blood.
— from The International Jew : The World's Foremost Problem by Anonymous

This essential characteristic would be inexplicable if the idea of the soul were only a pre-scientific solution given to the problem of dreams; for there is nothing in the dream to awaken religious emotions, so the cause by which these are explained could not have such a character.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

No definite hours were kept; no fixed obligations existed: night and day flowed into one another in a blur of confused and retarded engagements, so that one had the impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner was often merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs. Hatch's vigil till daylight.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

In considering the wide distribution of certain genera, we should bear in mind that some are extremely ancient, and must have branched off from a common parent at a remote epoch; so that in such cases there will have been ample time for great climatal and geographical changes and for accidents of transport; and consequently for the migration of some of the species into all quarters of the world, where they may have become slightly modified in relation to their new conditions.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

Thus, soothed and reconciled, each seeks The fairest British fair: The seat of empire is her cheeks, They reign united there.
— from Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway

Even when imported under the fairest scheme that could be conceived, the ignorant "Kanacks," as they are called, cannot enforce their rights, [Pg 135] and rarely ever see their homes again after having once left them.
— from Under the Southern Cross Or Travels in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Samoa, and Other Pacific Islands by Maturin Murray Ballou

But when one knows that, the smallest nuts alone reach England (since they are sold by number, not by weight) and that the ordinary nut, in its husk and on its native tree, is as big as one’s own head, and as heavy as a solid lump of hard wood—that most trees bear seventy or eighty nuts a year, and that every one of those nuts has the height of a four-storey house to drop before it reaches the ground—that native houses are usually placed in the middle of a palm grove, and that every one in the islands, brown or white, walks underneath hundreds of laden cocoanut trees every day in the year—it then becomes a miracle of the largest kind that no one is ever killed, and very rarely injured, by the fall of the nuts.
— from In the Strange South Seas by Beatrice Grimshaw

It was in that season, and a remarkably evil season, that the paper began running the last issue of the week on Saturday night, which is to say Sunday morning, after the custom of a London paper.
— from The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling

Three days in the English camp, and the two lads had pretty well recovered; but they were greatly disappointed to find that during the absence of the dragoons on vedette duty the —th and another regiment had been despatched for a reconnoitring expedition, so that the lads had encountered no old friends.
— from !Tention: A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War by George Manville Fenn

She was plucking with shrivelled and bony fingers at her figured counterpane, and as Roma entered she tried to burst out on her in a torrent of wrath.
— from The Eternal City by Caine, Hall, Sir

3 Mr. Lytzen, of Julianehaab, afterwards contributed an article to the Geografisk Tidsskrift (8th Vol., 1885–86, pp. 49–51, Copenhagen), in which he expressed himself, so far at least as I understand him, in the same sense, and, remarkably enough, suggested that this circumstance might possibly be found to have an important bearing on Arctic exploration.
— from Farthest North, Vol. I Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 by Fridtjof Nansen