Here is the light of life still burning, but a breath of yours can extinguish it in utter gloom, and then who may rekindle it!
— from The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

"Then steamers carry a mob, and I detest mobs, especially such ones as they delight in--greasy Jews, hairy Germans, Mulatto-looking Italians, squalling children, that run between your legs and throw you down, or wipe the butter off their bread on your clothes; Englishmen that will grumble, and Irishmen that will fight; priests that won't talk, and preachers that will harangue; women that will be carried about, because they won't lie still and be quiet; silk men, cotten men, bonnet men, iron men, trinket men, and every sort of shopmen, who severally know nothing in the world but silk, cotten, bonnets, iron, trinkets, and so on, and can't talk of anythin' else; fellows who walk up and down the deck, four or five abreast when there are four or five of the same craft on board, and prevent any one else from promenadin' by sweepin' the whole space, while every lurch the ship gives, one of them tumbles atop of you, or treads on your toes, and then, instead of apoligisin', turns round and abuses you like a pick-pocket for stickin' your feet out and trippin' people up.
— from Nature and Human Nature by Thomas Chandler Haliburton

"When you tell me you have broken off your clandestine engagement."
— from The Pastor's Wife by Elizabeth Von Arnim

One of the great secrets of gardening is to find out how to make the best of your conditions, even when they are unfavourable.
— from The Children's Book of Gardening by Mrs. Paynter

He and his flock halted before our young Colonel, even as the citizens of Calais in a bygone century must have stood before the English king.
— from Project Gutenberg Complete Works of Winston Churchill by Winston Churchill

“Since we find you two here right-side-up-with-care we must believe that in the final wind-up you got the better of your canine enemies.”
— from The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound; or, A Tour on Skates and Iceboats by George A. Warren

In speaking of the effect of ungratified sexual impulse on unmarried women, Dr. H. Ploss says: “It is a noteworthy fact, of interest not only to the physician but to the anthropologist as well, that an infallible remedy exists whereby the process of fading bloom, so manifest in old maids, cannot only be arrested, but the already vanished bloom of youth can even be reinstated, partly at least, if not in its entire charm.
— from Woman and Socialism by August Bebel