I was for enlightening the heathen with it, for I was always unaccountably down on the heathen somehow; but Mrs. McWilliams said no, let's have a burglar alarm.
— from The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories by Mark Twain

Mitgefühl erweckt Vertrauen; / Und Vertrauen ist der Schlüssel / Der des Herzens Pforte öffnet —Sympathy awakens confidence, and confidence is the key which unlocks the doors of the heart.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

All the marvelous conclusions they have reached about the distances, weights, movements, and deflections of the heavenly bodies are only founded on the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies about a stationary earth, on that very motion I see before me now, which has been so for millions of men during long ages, and was and will be always alike, and can always be trusted.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

It struck me to ask the daughter of the house to play something on the piano; so I passed through the corner room to join the ladies.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Dyeing of the hair is a practice which ought never to be resorted to.
— from The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society by Florence Hartley

'The disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a wise man, than all the money which the journey, &c. had cost him, put together,—rot the hundred and twenty pounds,—he did not mind it a rush.'
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

"True, there are, by the direction of the Lawgiver, [23] certain good and substantial steps, placed even through the very midst of this slough; but at such time as this place doth much spew out its filth, as it doth against change of weather, these steps are hardly seen; or, if they be, men, through the dizziness of their heads, step aside, and then they are bemired to purpose, notwithstanding the steps be there; but the ground is good when they are got in at the gate."
— from The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan Every Child Can Read by John Bunyan

When the party went down over the hill to the pool, I wandered along and dropped easily into a conversation with the other noncombatant, Marie.
— from A Maid and a Million Men the candid confessions of Leona Canwick, censored indiscreetly by James G. Dunton by James G. (James Gerald) Dunton

Believing that the members of the medical profession will wish to contribute toward a fund for the purpose of paying the balance due on the house, the committee requests contributions of any amount.
— from The Hospital Bulletin, Vol. V, No. 2, April 15, 1909 by Various

An attempt was ostensibly made to issue us cow-peas instead, and the first issue was only a quart to a detachment of two hundred and seventy men.
— from Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons by John McElroy

Gabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hill eating a dead lamb (a kind of meat he usually kept from them, except when other food ran short), and concluding that the young one had not finished his meal, he went indoors to the luxury of a bed, which latterly he had only enjoyed on Sundays.
— from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

[447] Lorenzo has left in his pretty and cheerful description of the hawking-party a graceful memorial of his love of the sport.
— from Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent (vol. 2 of 2) by Alfred von Reumont

The front door was open, and as she entered the house her mother came groping toward her out of the close-smelling dusk of the hall.
— from Virginia by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

The decline of the herd is thus made synonymous with the rise of pelagic sealing.
— from Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899 Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899 by Various

I don't mind admitting that when I stood on the doorstep of this house fifteen nights ago and knocked the mystic knock, I felt like a man embarking on a coffin-ship."
— from The Mystics: A Novel by Katherine Cecil Thurston