It is the invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great geniuses: the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which masters everything besides, can never attain to this.
— from The Iliad by Homer

You may search for it all your days and grow gray and haggard, and sit down in the evening of life with the vampires circling about you and be forced to confess, "I have not found rest!"
— from The Heart-Cry of Jesus by Byron J. (Byron Johnson) Rees

With the enthusiastic egotism of the true artist, he went over his most celebrated performances, and smiled bitterly to himself as he recalled to mind his last appearance as "Red Reuben, or the Strangled Babe," his début as "Guant Gibeon, the Blood-sucker of Bexley Moor," and the furore he had excited one lovely June evening by merely playing ninepins with his own bones upon the lawn-tennis ground.
— from The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

Farther, the apostles often mention Grace , yet never distinguish between gratia, gratis data , and gratia gratificans .
— from In Praise of Folly Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts by Desiderius Erasmus

The silken curtains had waved a second time betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as another fair young girl unclosed the door and glided ghostlike to the bedside.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

but I fear will hardly do any great good at it, because she is conceited that she do well already, though I think no such thing.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

For some probably economical reason it was usually a woman who was chosen for this particular duty, and Groby gave as his motive in selecting Tess that she was one of those who best combined strength with quickness in untying, and both with staying power, and this may have been true.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

4. Let them take their pleasures then, and as [5159] he said of old, young men and maids flourishing in their age, fair and lovely to behold, well attired, and of comely carriage, dancing a Greek galliard, and as their dance required, kept their time, now turning, now tracing, now apart now altogether, now a courtesy then a caper, &c., and it was a pleasant sight to see those pretty knots, and swimming figures.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night!
— from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The ones I own are now shiny with dirt and grease, gathered from the camps and forests extending from Maine to the State of Washington, from Northern Quebec to Florida.
— from The Book of Camp-Lore and Woodcraft by Daniel Carter Beard

The fruit of several buckthorns, or the Persian berries, as they are generally called by dyers, also give greens and brilliant yellows.
— from Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern A Handbook for Ready Reference by Rosa Belle Holt

Jim Lee spoke to his daughter and growled gruffly at Ed.
— from Sandburrs by Alfred Henry Lewis

"There is an East Indian tradition that a divinely appointed greyhound guards the golden herds of stars and sunbeams for the Lord of Heaven, and collects the nourishing rain-clouds as the celestial cows to the milking-place.
— from Infelice by Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans

Perhaps a day at “Glorious Goodwood,” or anywhere else in the fresh air, might have put some colour into her cheeks.
— from Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

Nothing is gained by this remark: in this case, the anterior impulse only regains the ascendency; he is persuaded, that life may possibly be longer preserved, or that he shall derive a greater good by drinking the poisoned water, than by enduring the torment, which, to his mind, threatens instant dissolution: thus, the first becomes the strongest, and necessarily urges him on to action.
— from The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1 by Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'

“Voila, my simple king, the thing for you to do: a grand gift, and to cost you nothing now.
— 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

And there was a great feast, a great dance, and great games held in honor of their arrival, and the two finest young Sea-Duck men, utterly unheeding the old Loon, who believed indeed that they were his own wives, carried them off, and nothing loath wedded them.
— from Algonquin Legends of New England by Charles Godfrey Leland

How, sir! I make a doubt if there be at this day a greater general breathing.
— from The Old Bachelor: A Comedy by William Congreve