We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we can't tell where that will lie.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Bring, then, these blessings to a strict account; Make fair deductions; see to what they mount; How much of other each is sure to cost; How each for other oft is wholly lost; How inconsistent greater goods with these; How sometimes life is risked, and always ease; Think, and if still the things thy envy call, Say, would’st thou be the man to whom they fall?
— from An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires by Alexander Pope

The difference between these rivals was in the height of rancour, when I received the message of Crab, who received me as civilly as I could have expected from one of his disposition; and, after desiring me to sit, inquired into the particulars of my leaving the house of Potion; which when I had related, he said, with a malicious grin, “There's a sneaking dog!
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

Canon Kingsley and Froude are equally as acute and discerning as the late Cardinal Newman, but that did not necessitate their following that prelate into the foremost ranks of the Catholic Church; and Pere Hyacynthe was equally as intelligent as Cardinal Newman, but that did not prevent him from leaving the fold into which the Cardinal had entered from out of the Reformed Church.
— from History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance by P. C. (Peter Charles) Remondino

Then he goes on to say, with more force and right judgment than one could have expected from one of his [Pg 179]
— from Witch Stories by E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn) Linton

Perplexed and annoyed, de Spain, from the high ground on which he sat his horse, cast his eyes far out over the desert.
— from Nan of Music Mountain by Frank H. (Frank Hamilton) Spearman

H2 anchor THE PLUNDERER It was no use: men might come and go before her, but Kitty Cline had eyes for only one man.
— from A Romany of the Snows, Complete Being a Continuation of the Personal Histories of "Pierre and His People" and the Last Existing Records of Pretty Pierre by Gilbert Parker

A sleepy coastguard had emerged from one of the cottages and was washing at a tub of rain water.
— from Boy Woodburn: A Story of the Sussex Downs by Alfred Ollivant

Like a flash these half-thoughts became no thoughts, as a dark blotch caught his eye, far off on the snow, beyond a little thicket.
— from Yellowstone Nights by Herbert Quick

A rule describes the peculiar construction or circumstantial relation of words, which custom has established for our observance.
— from English Grammar in Familiar Lectures Accompanied by a compendium, embracing a new systematic order of parsing, a new system of punctuation, exercises in false syntax, and a system of philosophical grammar, in notes, to which are added an appendix and a key to the exercises : designed for the use of schools and private learners by Samuel Kirkham