Relations, old acquaintances, and friendships, possess our imaginations and make them tender for the time, according to their condition; but the turn is so quick, that ‘tis gone in a moment: “Nil adeo fieri celeri ratione videtur, Quam si mens fieri proponit, et inchoat ipsa, Ocius ergo animus, quam res se perciet ulla, Ante oculos quorum in promptu natura videtur;” [“Nothing therefore seems to be done in so swift a manner than if the mind proposes it to be done, and itself begins.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

When the Queen frowned, or smiled, he knows; and what A subtle minister may make of that; Who sins with whom: who got his pension rug, Or quickened a reversion by a drug; Whose place is quartered out, three parts in four, And whether to a bishop, or a w***e; Who having lost his credit, pawned his rent, Is therefore fit to have a Government; Who in the secret, deals in stocks secure, And cheats the unknowing widow and the poor; Who makes a trust or charity a job, And gets an Act of Parliament to rob; Why turnpikes rise, and now no cit nor clown Can gratis see the country, or the town; Shortly no lad shall chuck, or lady vole, But some excising courtier will have toll.
— from An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires by Alexander Pope

In Senator Lodge’s history of the war with Spain, written in 1899, there is a description of the long struggle for independence in Cuba, whose existence Spain denied year after year until we decided that patience had ceased to be a virtue, which description is so strikingly applicable to the situation in the Philippines during the first years of American rule that I cannot refrain from quoting it here:
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

pretensions to the discovery, in so serious a tone.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

“Why did I say such a lot of dreadful things?
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The too-perfect security of the Overworlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence.
— from The Time Machine by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

And how is our dear invalid?” said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive look fixed on her.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Thou shalt eat sweet venison and quaff the stoutest ale, and mine own good right-hand man shalt thou be, for never did I see such a cudgel player in all my life before.
— from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

Now at this wall without were erected thirteen places to keep garrison in, whose circumferences, put together, amounted to ten furlongs; the whole was completed in three days; so that what would naturally have required some months was done in so short an interval as is incredible.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

But such as have by violent accident fallen into a swoon, and in it have lost all sense, these, methinks, have been very near seeing the true and natural face of death; for as to the moment of the passage, it is not to be feared that it brings with it any pain or displeasure, forasmuch as we can have no feeling without leisure; our sufferings require time, which in death is so short, and so precipitous, that it must necessarily be insensible.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

With considerable labour and difficulty I scraped soles and skis sufficiently to make it possible to stand on them, and once again crawled slowly forward.
— from Red Dusk and the Morrow: Adventures and Investigations in Red Russia by Paul Dukes

He had, before the close of a dignified, if somewhat sententious, address, recovered his breath, and completely his gravity.
— from The Fool Errant Being the Memoirs of Francis-Anthony Strelley, Esq., Citizen of Lucca by Maurice Hewlett

Like any normal child I delighted in such stories as the Swiss Family Robinson, but they were not the books I prized most; they omitted the very quality I liked best—the little thrills that nature itself gave me, which half frightened and fascinated at the same time, the wonder and mystery of it all.
— from A Little Boy Lost by W. H. (William Henry) Hudson

They are rising above the slope--now they dip down again--thousands on thousands--never did I see such a host in Christendom or Paynimry!"
— from Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

Down the watery declivity it shot, swift and straight, like some sea-monster in pursuit of its quarry.
— from The Rival Campers; Or, The Adventures of Henry Burns by Ruel Perley Smith

Even had the poachers been disturbed, it is doubtful if so small a staff of keepers could have done anything to stop them.
— from The Amateur Poacher by Richard Jefferies

“I will go if it can be done in secret, say at night, for I weary of being stared at by these people.”
— from The Virgin of the Sun by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

Was ever such diversity of destinies in so small a family?" He fell into his thoughts: of what strange parts we play in the world, how different from those anybody would predict for us in our childhood—how different, from those we then predict for ourselves.
— from Philip Winwood A Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain in the War of Independence; Embracing Events that Occurred between and during the Years 1763 and 1786, in New York and London: written by His Enemy in War, Herbert Russell, Lieutenant in the Loyalist Forces. by Robert Neilson Stephens