rn to any subject with love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

“If the matter were really so, then, I should have a bad opinion of love; but I do not believe it, for I love my sweetheart here, and I never conceal the truth from her.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

though the Lord had not said three times but only once, "Lovest thou ( amas ) me?" and twice " Diligis me? "
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

The precious plenty of His dearworthy blood ascended up into Heaven to the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there is in Him, bleeding and praying for us to the Father, and is and shall be as long as it needeth; and ever shall be as long as it needeth; and evermore it floweth in all Heavens, enjoying the salvation of all mankind that are there, and shall be—fulfilling the Number that faileth" ( xii. ).
— from Revelations of Divine Love by of Norwich Julian

Tell her that through pain and danger you were faithful, and that, if your lifeblood could have saved me, it would have flowed to its last drop; and tell her that you will be something dearer than a father, and that my blessing is with you both, and that my dying eyes can see a long and pleasant path in which you will journey together." As Malvin spoke he almost raised himself from the ground, and the energy of his concluding words seemed to fill the wild and lonely forest with a vision of happiness; but, when he sank exhausted upon his bed of oak leaves, the light which had kindled in Reuben's eye was quenched.
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Meanwhile when Nancy presented herself at the Infirmary, it happened to be one of Lydgate's days there.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

And King Pellam lay so, many years sore wounded, and might never be whole till Galahad the haut prince healed him in the quest of the Sangreal, for in that place was part of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, that Joseph of Arimathea brought into this land, and there himself lay in that rich bed.
— from Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Malory, Thomas, Sir

These wars were never very bloody or of long duration, and they were in many ways fought in a competitive, sporting manner, since, unlike with the Dobuans and Southern Massim, there were neither head-hunting nor cannibalistic practices among the Boyowans.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

It holds "that in the Lord's Supper the true body and the true blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are, through the power of the word [of institution], truly and essentially tendered and given with the bread and wine to all men who partake of the Supper of Christ; and that, even as they are tendered by the hand of the minister, they are at the same time also received with the mouth of him who eats and drinks it."
— from Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church by F. (Friedrich) Bente

When the work of collecting suitable extracts from the great body of our literature was fairly entered upon, it soon became apparent that little aid could be had from the earlier manuals.
— from Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Being Selections from the Chief American Writers by Benj. N. (Benjamin Nicholas) Martin

In a few days the Majestic had sunk from being one of "London's huge caravanserais" to the level of a swollen Turk's Head.
— from The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure by Arnold Bennett

Way back in 1998 when they get it in the sky, they are more interested in it being useful than pretty; anybody that got nasty and unsanitary ideas just forgot them when they saw that iron casket floating in a sky that could be filled with hydrogen bombs or old laundry without so much as a four-bar intro as warning.
— from The Flying Cuspidors by V. R. Francis

"You should smile at the birth of our love.
— from The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

Always after a talk with them I came away with a deep belief that the courage, honesty, and humanity of these boys were a world higher than the philosophy of their intellectual leaders, and I hated the thought that we have been brought to such a pass by the infamy of an enemy caste, and by the low ideals of Europe which have been our own law of life, that all this splendid youth, thinking straight, seeing straight, acting straight, without selfish motives, with clean hearts and fine bodies, should be flung into the furnace of war and scorched by its fires, and maimed, and blinded, and smashed.
— from From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 by Philip Gibbs

A tug, the Gando , immediately re-named the Can-do , brought out our lighters of coal.
— from The Bonadventure: A Random Journal of an Atlantic Holiday by Edmund Blunden

"If I've been knocking myself up for years past," she said to Jean, "it certainly hasn't been out of love for his good looks."
— from The Soil (La terre): A Realistic Novel by Émile Zola