It was a real catastrophe, not a mere episode, that evening of hers at Venice, when she had found in her bedroom something that is one worse than a flea, though one better than something else.
— from A Room with a View by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

I only danced one minuet with Madame de Chauvelin, nearly all my evening being taken up with talking to her husband.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The miserable change now at my end Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

But these can never afford manure enough for keeping constantly in good condition all the lands which they are capable of cultivating.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Praecepto primo, cogatur nubere aut mulctetur et pecunia templo Junonis dedicetur et publica fiat.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle; Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, The air is delicate; and by the second quotation from Hamlet this from Antony and Cleopatra : The miserable change now at my end Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world, The noblest; and do now not basely die, Not cowardly put off my helmet to My countryman,—a Roman by a Roman Valiantly vanquish'd.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

And when she looked out of the window on her right she beheld on a little forested rise a succession of tiny "camps" built by residents of Hampton whose modest incomes could not afford more elaborate summer places; camps of all descriptions and colours, with queer names that made her smile: "The Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug Harbour," "Buena Vista,"—of course,—which she thought pretty, though she did not know its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing, "Klein aber Mein."
— from The Dwelling Place of Light — Volume 2 by Winston Churchill

He owned, that you were the finest young lady in England, and he would be content to be but little beloved, if he could not, after marriage, engage your heart, for the sake of having the honour to call you his but for one twelvemonth—I suppose he would break your heart the next—for he is a cruel-hearted man, I am sure.
— from Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 2 by Samuel Richardson

I should die if I could not add my efforts to yours.
— from Vendetta by Honoré de Balzac

After sixty battles and a march of more than two thousand miles, the grand army of Napoleon entered Moscow, and found no smoke issuing from a single chimney, nor a Muscovite even to gaze upon them from the battlements or walls.
— from Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 2 (of 2) by John L. Stephens

For Conscience is no synonime of Consciousness, nor any mere expression of the same as modified by the particular Object.
— from Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We may be wrong; but it has occurred to us, that the great defect in the written efforts of many clever newspaper and magazine essayists of the South, consists in their being 'elaborated to tenuity, or argued to confusion.'
— from The Knickerbocker, Vol. 22, No. 3, September 1843 by Various

In complexity, our large civilized nations as much exceed primitive savage tribes, as a vertebrate animal does a zoophyte.
— from Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions by Herbert Spencer

I was myself led into the mistake by the Marquis Albert having the same Christian name as my English friend.
— from Olla Podrida by Frederick Marryat