I still had a great love for her in spite of my daily infidelities, and when I thought of those moments in which I had seen her given over to voluptuousness I could not help pitying her fate as I thought of the days of despair in store for her.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

If he were on foot, there would be a good deal of difficulty in saving those bottles.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

It deals almost exclusively with youth, where the moulding of the bodily organs is still as if suspended between growth and completion, indicated but not emphasised; where the transition from curve to curve is so delicate and elusive, that Winckelmann compares it to a quiet sea, which, although we understand it to be in motion, we nevertheless regard as an image of repose; where, therefore, the exact degree of development is so hard to apprehend.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

I have no doubt that if I could have avoided this happiness with any degree of decency, I should have relinquished it with all my heart.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When the first snow falls, the first day of driving in sledges, it is good to see the white earth, the white roofs; one breathes easily, eagerly, and then one remembers the days of youth.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Oh dear, oh dear, I shan't love you any more, Nana.
— from Peter Pan by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

A lion "defamed" or "diffamed" is supposed to be rampant to the sinister but looking backwards, the supposition being that the animal is being (against his will) chased off the field with infamy.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

Yet in nature some time soon and in the fullness of days I shall die, quietly, I trust, with my face turned South and eastward; and, dreaming or dreamless, I shall, I am sure, enjoy death as I have enjoyed life.
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

George Spencer was an elegant poet, and my dear Duchess of Devonshire, if she had not been a grande dame, would have beat 'em all, by George.
— from Roundabout Papers by William Makepeace Thackeray

A porous diaphragm or difference in specific gravities is used to keep the solutions separate and yet permit the essential electrolytic diffusion.
— from The Standard Electrical Dictionary A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice of Electrical Engineering by T. O'Conor (Thomas O'Conor) Sloane

There, in a large drawing-room, panelled and bare, with heavy cornices and a lofty ceiling, in a little oasis of light made by two candles in a desert of dusk, I sat at a little table to worry and ink myself all over till the task of my preparation was done.
— from Notes on Life & Letters by Joseph Conrad

Being across the Umganie with Monyosi and his dog one day in search of buck, I found the elephants in very bad “fettle.”
— from Sporting Scenes amongst the Kaffirs of South Africa by Alfred W. (Alfred Wilks) Drayson

[Pg 152] lavishness of cost that beats anything an American billionaire has ever tried to do, or dreamed of doing in San Francisco or New York; and yet a city abounding in the mean, small, log and wooden cabins of the very poor; a city where penury and poverty and dire pinch protrude their squalid presence in continual tragic protest against the flaunted and wanton riot of unmeasured wealth, possessed by the very few.
— from Through Scandinavia to Moscow by William Seymour Edwards

The Flag could not be got easily from under the fallen Mast, and was therefore recover’d by the Swallow ; it had the Figure of a Skeleton in it, and a Man pourtray’d with a flaming Sword in his Hand, intimating a Defyance of Death it self.
— from A General History of the Pyrates: from their first rise and settlement in the island of Providence, to the present time by Daniel Defoe

Still the blaze of the burning village illumined the landscape, Reddened the sky overhead, and gleamed on the faces around her, And like the day of doom it seemed to her wavering senses.
— from The Land of Evangeline: The Authentic Story of Her Country and Her People With Evangeline by H. W. Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When dispersed or divided into separate groups of unequal size, they made the lake surpass even the beauty of a sky embellished with scattered banks of clouds.
— from The Gâtakamâlâ; Or, Garland of Birth-Stories by Aryasura

The English people said this name was given to it, because, like the Day of Doom, it spared no one.
— from The Leading Facts of English History by D. H. (David Henry) Montgomery