Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall:—all these were things of which I was afraid.
— from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

Well, we know that one essential form of comic fancy lies in picturing to ourselves a living person as a kind of jointed dancing-doll, and that frequently, with the object of inducing us to form this mental picture, we are shown two or more persons speaking and acting as though attached to one another by invisible strings.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson

Our whole future lies in the subsidy with which I must begin my first campaign, for life in Paris is one continual battle.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

With a half-happy, half-tearful pleasure Katy recognized the fact that distance counts for little if people love one another, and that hearts have a telegraph of their own whose messages are as sure and swift as any of those sent over the material lines which link continent to continent and shore with shore.
— from What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge

Demum ducendæ sunt perpendiculares G & H , quæ tangant circulos F & L in punctis terminativis maximæ latitudinis.
— from Rules and Examples of Perspective proper for Painters and Architects, etc. In English and Latin: Containing a most easie and expeditious method to delineate in perspective all designs relating to architecture by Andrea Pozzo

The first requisite in a companion for life is piety.
— from A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister by Harvey Newcomb

He'll stay in France; he'll not walk in at your hall-door, and call for luncheon, I promise you.
— from Checkmate by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

However potent the spell might be that saved the worthy churchman from lead, it proved inefficient against ‘cold iron.’
— from Cruikshank's Water Colours by William Harrison Ainsworth

What the little, chivalrous fellows lacked in physical dimension, they made up in patriotic sentiment in behalf of the grand sovereignty of South Carolina, which they continued to pour out until a late hour, every man backing his sayings by the authority of the great and wonderful Calhoun.
— from Manuel Pereira; Or, The Sovereign Rule of South Carolina by F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams

She went to the window and looked down on the flattened crowd flowing like inky pools under the phosphorescent arc-lights; the scurrying roofs of automobiles, darting across the lighted trolleys, calculating the effect of a cry.
— from The Salamander by Owen Johnson