But I am unwilling to think you intended to hurt me by allowing me to see the canker in your heart.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

He proves by a miracle that He remits sins.
— from Pascal's Pensées by Blaise Pascal

If I fall, let me fall bearing about me the semblance of a Christian, at least.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

"What! dost thou still persist, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "in saying, thinking, believing, and maintaining that my lady Dulcinea was sifting wheat, that being an occupation and task entirely at variance with what is and should be the employment of persons of distinction, who are constituted and reserved for other avocations and pursuits that show their rank a bowshot off?
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

What here concerns us is, that this religion, like other and better religions, has its martyrs; that its prophet and founder was, for his teaching, put to death by a mob; that others of its adherents lost their lives by the same lawless violence; that they were forcibly expelled, in a body, from the country in which they first grew up; while, now that they have been chased into a solitary recess in the midst of a desert, many in this country openly declare that it would be right (only that it is not convenient) to send an expedition against them, and compel them by force to conform to the opinions of other people.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

Well is it with those whose labours deserve all praise, if, in place of being praised and admired, they do not thereby incur blame and many times even disgrace.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

But in the rashness of pursuit, the vanguard of the Greeks was encompassed by an irresistible multitude of boats and men; their provision of fire was probably exhausted; and twenty-four galleys were either taken, sunk, or destroyed.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

To please his harem he built a mosque; to please himself he built an English church.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

cv ‘That last,’ he said, ‘must be a marvellous thing.’
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

Now the vitelline bile also may take on the appearance of this combusted black bile, if ever it chance to be roasted, so to say, by fiery heat.
— from Galen: On the Natural Faculties by Galen

Jesus ordered them to be brought, and made the multitude range themselves in companies of hundreds and of fifties.
— from Ecce Homo! Or, A Critical Inquiry into the History of Jesus of Nazareth Being a Rational Analysis of the Gospels by Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'

O let my heart, my body, and my tongue Bleed forth the lively streams of faith unfeigned, Worship my saint the gods and saints among, Praise and extol her fair that me hath pained!
— from Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles: Idea, Fidesa and Chloris by Smith, William, active 1596

After that, the heavier expenses of manufacturing have been defrayed and the book goes on advertising itself; there is merely the cost of paper, printing, binding, and marketing to be met, and the arrangement becomes fairer and fairer for the publisher.
— from Literature and Life (Complete) by William Dean Howells

The young ladies would sing and play the piano beautifully, and make things quite homelike for us after the routine of the day's work.
— from A Narrative of Service with the Third Wisconsin Infantry by Julian Wisner Hinkley

But it must be a thousand times more exciting to be loved by a man than by a girl! Thea.
— from The Awakening of Spring: A Tragedy of Childhood by Frank Wedekind

But any man that'd go crookin' his elbow when he had that mountain run ahead of him would be all fool!"
— from The King of Arcadia by Francis Lynde

It is presupposed by the very wants of his mind; nor could it otherwise have been, any more than could have been the cabin of the beaver, or the curious hive of the bee, without their preëxisting instincts; it is therefore in the highest sense natural, as growing out of the inherent desires of the mind.
— from Lectures on Art by Washington Allston

The division of the book into three Parts was perfectly sound, and by all means to be preserved.
— from The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Volume 1 (of 3) To Headwaters of the Mississippi River Through Louisiana Territory, and in New Spain, During the Years 1805-6-7. by Zebulon Montgomery Pike

That faith beyond, above mistrust, That gratitude, so wholly just, Each several, crowding claim forgot, Whose source was light, without a blot; No moment of unkindness shrouding, No speck of anger overclouding: An awful and a sweet controul, A rainbow arching o'er the soul; A soothing, tender thrill, which clung Around the heart, while, all unstrung, The thought was still, and mute the tongue!
— from The Lay of Marie and Vignettes in Verse by Matilda Betham

[94] Mrs. Stanton wrote her at once, "Come here and I will do what I can to help you with your address, if you will hold the baby and make the puddings."
— from Susan B. Anthony Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian by Alma Lutz