[3185] A clear air cheers up the spirits, exhilarates the mind; a thick, black, misty, tempestuous, contracts, overthrows.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

“Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so dark, and we were all so reserved, that I cannot undertake to say even that.”
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

They never felt comfortable and confident unless their strength exceeded that of any party of travelers they were likely to meet by four or fivefold.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

And they were already smiling rather too broadly upon Sorelli, who had begun to recite her speech, when an exclamation from that little madcap of a Jammes broke the smile of the managers so brutally that the expression of distress and dismay that lay beneath it became apparent to all eyes: "The Opera ghost!" Jammes yelled these words in a tone of unspeakable terror; and her finger pointed, among the crowd of dandies, to a face so pallid, so lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the straddling eyebrows, that the death's head in question immediately scored a huge success.
— from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

These phenomena continue until the sun enters the southern signs, when the polar current is reëstablished, because the difference between the heat at the equinoctial and temperate regions is daily increasing.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852 by Various

The most determined, young or old, audacious or timid, find themselves powerless to resist her, for when the fatal fascination creeps upon them she engages their brain, saps their spirit, holds captive their senses, breaks asunder their resolutions, and lures them to their ruin.
— from If Sinners Entice Thee by William Le Queux

Why are the crystals collected in camphor bottles in druggists' windows always most copious upon the surface exposed to the light?
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 17, No. 479, March 5, 1831 by Various

But close upon that she escaped to her own room.
— from North of Fifty-Three by Bertrand W. Sinclair

If Mr Williams—who had no knowledge of ship-building except such as he obtained from observation of the vessels he visited—could do so, we, at all events, ought to be able to build a craft capable of carrying us to Singapore, even though we may not secure much more from the wreck.”
— from In the Eastern Seas by William Henry Giles Kingston

[632] In the light of passages such as these we can understand to some extent the lurid, fanciful, mystic description which he gives early in 1518, clearly on the strength of his own states of mind.
— from Luther, vol. 1 of 6 by Hartmann Grisar

Her forced composure under the severe examination to which he had subjected her was, in his opinion, sheer effrontery.
— from Harper's Round Table, April 14, 1896 by Various

At last, the letter finished, he put it and my certificate under the same envelope, took off his spectacles, called me and said: “This letter is addressed to Andrew Karlovitch, my old friend and comrade.
— from Marie; a story of Russian love by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin