Roman is the prettiest and the best girl in Grenoble; but she will find some difficulty in marrying as she has no money.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

My lady had discovered that I was getting old before I had discovered it myself, and she had come to my cottage to wheedle me (if I may use such an expression) into giving up my hard out-of-door work as bailiff, and taking my ease for the rest of my days as steward in the house.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

This Princess, whose name was Ortrud, was very unscrupulous, and a dealer in magic; and she had learnt the arts of sorcery so well that it was her delight to change people into the forms of animals, and to work all the mischief she could.
— from Stories from the Operas by Gladys Davidson

It shall be with those who delve in mines, and shall hum in the manufactories of New England, and in the cotton-gins of the South.
— from The American Union Speaker by John D. (John Dudley) Philbrick

He ended his days in misery, and serve him devilish
— from St. Andrews Ghost Stories Fourth Edition by William Thomas Linskill

Between that light and our eyes a cloud for a time may seem to gather; chariots, armed men on foot, the troops of kings may march on us, and our fears may make us for a moment turn from it; a sea may spread before us, and waves seem to hedge us up; dark idolatries may alienate some hearts for a season from that worship; revolt, rebellion, may break out in the camp, and the waters of our springs may run bitter to the taste and mock it; between us and that Canaan a great river may seem to be rolling; but beneath that high guidance our way is onward, ever onward; those waters shall part, and stand on either hand in heaps; that idolatry shall repent; that rebellion shall be crushed; that stream shall be sweetened; that overflowing river shall be passed on foot dryshod, in harvest time; and from that promised land of flocks, fields, tents, mountains, coasts, and ships, from north and south, and east and west, there shall swell one cry yet, of victory, peace, and thanksgiving!
— from The American Union Speaker by John D. (John Dudley) Philbrick

I very soon caught some dozens, I may almost say hundreds; I undressed, and cleared my clothes of them, then dressed myself, and waited until daylight, being resolved not to trust to a Greek bed again, but to my own mattress.
— from Autobiography of Sir John Rennie, F.R.S., Past President of the Institute of Civil Engineers Comprising the history of his professional life, together with reminiscences dating from the commencement of the century to the present time. by Rennie, John, Sir

My sufferings seem noble to you; you imagine you have discovered in me a second Hamlet; but my state of mind in all its phases is only fit to furnish food for contempt and derision.
— from Ivanoff: A Play by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

One day in making a spear head, he struck a quartz pebble with his flint hammer stone.
— from The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone by Margaret A. McIntyre