The second collection of "Odes" preluding it, showed the spirit of the son of Napoleon's general, rather than of the Bourbonist field-marshal.
— from Poems by Victor Hugo

The entire Conquest of our Passions is so difficult a Work, that they who despair of it should think of a less difficult Task, and only attempt to Regulate them.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

I looked contemptuously at Rostaing, who was as pale as death, and averting my face from the Charpillon out of pity, I said,— “The witnesses are worthy of the charge.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

We must therefore content ourselves to learn languages as they are, and to make the best use we can of our present imperfect system of alphabetic characters; and we may be the better satisfied to do this, because the deficiencies and redundancies of this alphabet are not yet so well ascertained, as to make it certain what a perfect one would be.
— from The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

"Let's check one other place," I suggested, "before we make a mistake."
— from Fee of the Frontier by H. B. (Horace Bowne) Fyfe

“I think, my good Mr. Draper,” she said, “that my young gentleman has sown wild oats enough; and when he comes out of prison I should like him to come out clear, and without any liabilities at all.
— from The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray

Unsubjected to the laws of contact, and proximity of situation, which had been observed to mark and retard the course of other pestilences, it surpassed the plague in the width of its range, and outstripped the most fatal diseases hitherto known, in the destructive rapidity of its progress.
— from Letters on the Cholera Morbus. Containing ample evidence that this disease, under whatever name known, cannot be transmitted from the persons of those labouring under it to other individuals, by contact—through the medium of inanimate substances—or through the medium of the atmosphere; and that all restrictions, by cordons and quarantine regulations, are, as far as regards this disease, not merely useless, but highly injurious to the community. by J. (James) Gillkrest

The Dutch rapidly succeeded to all the commercial outposts of Portugal in Siam, devoting themselves chiefly to trade and taking little or no interest in internal politics, except insofar as their commercial prospects were affected.
— from Siam: Land of Free Men by H. G. (Herbert Girton) Deignan