It is to her an agony to tell us so much as she has done; but it is most right, and we are warned in time.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

“That of the doctor or that of the money-changer, I would say: the doctor, because he has to know what poor devils have got in their insides, and when the fever’s due: but I hate them like the devil, for my part, because they’re always ordering me on a diet of duck soup: and the money-changer’s, because he’s got to be able to see the silver through the copper plating.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

Let that be bright and shining, well set in prudence, and all others must darken before it.
— from The Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness Being a Complete Guide for a Gentleman's Conduct in All His Relations Towards Society by Cecil B. Hartley

“If I were legislator,” cried Jean Jacques Rousseau, “I should not say what ought to be done, but I would do it.”
— from Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay by Immanuel Kant

The legend of Friar Rush had already twice been used in the drama before it was adopted by Jonson.
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson

Moreover, those who are not well skilled in a language present some image of this; for in Italy I said whatever I had a mind to in common discourse, but in more serious talk, I durst not have trusted myself with an idiom that I could not wind and turn out of its ordinary pace; I would have a power of introducing something of my own.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

We stopped at Messieurs Dillys, booksellers in the Poultry; from whence he hurried away, in a hackney coach, to Mr. Thrale's, in the Borough.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you? I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you, I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long, I know not how I came of you
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

We were blissfully ignorant how many men choked, poisoned, and were otherwise attentive to their wives, during those bright days when we sat on deck, basking in the sun, with our fascinated gaze fixed upon the bright foam-track, or upon the sea-gulls, that, with untiring wing, followed us hundreds of miles, now and then laving their snowy breasts in the blue waves; or, as we gladly welcomed the smaller, friendly birds, that flew into the cabin windows, and fluttered about the ceiling, as if glad to see new faces in their trackless homes.
— from Folly as It Flies; Hit at by Fanny Fern by Fanny Fern

(The day before I had concluded she liked Richard very much.)
— from Richard Vandermarck: A Novel by Miriam Coles Harris

A difficult balance, indeed, for us to hold, if it were left merely to our skill to poise; but the just point between poverty and profusion has been fixed for us accurately by the wise laws of Providence.
— from Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political Economy by John Ruskin

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
— from The Brute by Frederic Arnold Kummer

A nation endures with comparative equanimity defeat beyond its own borders.
— from Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War by G. F. R. (George Francis Robert) Henderson

It is an imperative duty, because it must be performed at once, for otherwise it will be too late.
— from Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation by William T. (William Temple) Hornaday

Dearly beloved, I cannot forsake this little home where we have loved each other for eight years, without imprinting a kiss of gratitude upon its threshold.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

The device of sex rendered reproduction more difficult, but in decreasing the quantity of offspring it at the same time improved their quality.
— from The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts by Margaret Sanger

A lonely beast in the valley, a fish in the sea, has his Dike, but it is not till man congregates together that he has his Themis.
— from The New Stone Age in Northern Europe by John M. (John Mason) Tyler