“It is to be a secret, I conclude,” said he.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

As our feelings of propriety induce us to think that the father was a far greater sinner than the son, we rejoice to know that the causeless curse never fell, and that Ham, in the lands of Canaan, Assyria, and Babylonia, and subsequently in Carthaginian Spain, were the masters of those Hebrews, whose main force, in old times, lay in impotent scoldings, such, as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Caliban.
— from Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism With an Essay on Baal Worship, on the Assyrian Sacred "Grove," and Other Allied Symbols by Thomas Inman

Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through nature's power of selection, that is by the survival of the fittest.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

But if these games are to be a success I cannot speak too strongly of the need for gaiety.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Similarly in the island of Kadiak, off Alaska, a woman about to be delivered retires to a miserable low hovel built of reeds, where she must remain for twenty days after the birth of her child, whatever the season may be, and she is considered so unclean that no one will touch her, and food is reached to her on sticks.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

She was probably a frequenter of this place, and, steeped body and soul in church sentiment as she must be by occupation and habit, had, no doubt, much in common with him.
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

I have known what it is to be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and sleeping in cellar stairways and under empty wagons.
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

“No, but a sister in Christ,” said Sybil; “listen to me, good friend.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

I never blamed the men for running back, and so I cannot see why they should blame me for having gone ahead.
— from Captain Macklin: His Memoirs by Richard Harding Davis

Sallie, Amanda's mother, was born a slave in Charleston South Carolina, and she and her mother were brought to Alabama and sold when Sallie was twelve years old.
— from Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume I, Alabama Narratives by United States. Work Projects Administration

Having sold a poem of eighteen lines [Pg 264] for $9.00 she almost wept because, as she ingenuously complained, she might just as easily have written twenty lines for $10.00!
— from Greenwich Village by Anna Alice Chapin

“Not on board a ship, I could see.
— from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad

But sometimes when I do not try to write, and only lean back and close my eyes, I can catch again a little of their breath and sweetness; I can see the purpling vineyards and the poppied fields; I can drift once more with Elizabeth and our girls through the wonderland of France.
— from Dwellers in Arcady: The Story of an Abandoned Farm by Albert Bigelow Paine

For my part, not having had the honour to bear a sword, I cannot say that I saw any particular movement executed this or that way; but I may mention here what I heard on the evening of the battle of Marengo respecting the probable chances of that event.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon by Various