— She felt the engagement to be a source of repentance and misery to each : she dissolved it .—This letter reached me on the very morning of my poor aunt's death.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

"The feeling of strained attention in the different sense-organs seems to be only a muscular one produced in using these various organs by setting in motion, by a sort of reflex action, the muscles which belong to them.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

Again, if one conceives the dictating Reason—whatever its dictates may be—as external to oneself, the cognition of rightness is accompanied by a sentiment of Reverence for Authority; which may by some be conceived impersonally, but is more commonly regarded as the authority of a supreme Person, so that the sentiment blends with the affections normally excited by persons in different relations, and becomes Religious.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

Drouet breathed a sigh of relief.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

When emphasis is proscribed, its place is taken by all sorts of ridiculous, affected, and ephemeral pronunciations, such as one observes especially among the young people about court.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When a warm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-ice from Walden, and leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

I have this great commission, / From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts / In any breast of strong authority, / To look into the blots and stains of right.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

I rode out upon the Downs last Tuesday, in the forenoon, when the sky, as far as the visible horizon, was without a cloud; but before I had gone a full mile, I was overtaken instantaneously by a storm of rain that wet me to the skin in three minutes—whence it came the devil knows; but it has laid me up (I suppose) for one fortnight.
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

The Code des Rhodiens dates as far back as 1167; the Code de la Mer , which became a sort of recognised text-book, dates from the same period; the Lois d'Oléron is anterior to the twelfth century, and ruled the western coasts of France, being also adopted in Flanders and in England; Venice dated her most ancient law on maritime rights from 1255, and the Statutes of Marseilles date from 1254.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

The others have to give up all individuality and become, so to speak, a herd, and, through boundless submission, will by a series of regenerations attain primæval innocence, something like the Garden of Eden.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

They seem to be as strong on rumours as we are here.
— from A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium by Hugh Gibson

But the die is cast, and I leave to the world this mournful memento, "that however much a man may be favoured by personal qualifications, or distinguished by mental endowments, genius will be useless, and abilities avail but little, unless accompanied by a sense of religion, and attended by the practice of virtue; destitute of these, he will only be mounted on the wings of folly, that he may fall with greater force into the dark abyss of endless despair."
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 10, No. 285, December 1, 1827 by Various

To the top of this edifice Grey climbed, armed with a heavy walking-stick, with which he began a series of regular and irregular blows upon the heavy oaken panelling which ceiled the room.
— from A Prince to Order by Charles Stokes Wayne

Marseilles, the third city of la belle France , enclosed by a succession of rocky hills, and magnificently situated on the sea, is almost the greatest port of the Mediterranean.
— from Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo Comprising a Tour Through North and South Italy and Sicily with a Short Account of Malta by W. Cope Devereux

Almost everywhere this has been a sign of reverence, alike in temples and before potentates; and it yet preserves among us some of its original meaning.
— from Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 3 of 3 Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions. by Herbert Spencer

Well, I’ll be cussed,” remarked the grocery man, as he put up the butter tryer, and handed the boy a slice of rotten muskmelon.
— from Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa 1883 by George W. (George Wilbur) Peck

[Pg 218] Ferne: “That kind of gentry which is but a bare noblenes of bloud, not clothed with vertues (the right colours of a gentleman’s coat-armour) is the meanest , yea, and the most base of all the rest: for it respecteth but onely the body, being derived from the loynes of the auncestors, not from the minde, which is the habitation of vertue, the inne of reason, and the resemblaunce of God; and, in true speach, this gentry of stock only shal be said but a shadow, or rather a painture of nobility.”
— from The Curiosities of Heraldry by Mark Antony Lower

In the confusion and misery following the downfall of the kingdom of the Goths in the middle [113] of the sixth century the Church became a sanctuary of refuge from the evils of the time.
— from Music in the History of the Western Church With an Introduction on Religious Music Among Primitive and Ancient Peoples by Edward Dickinson

All wore sombreros, held under the chin by a strap of rawhide.
— from The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers by John Henry Goldfrap