I envied no girl her lover, no bride her bridegroom, no wife her husband; I was content with this my voluntary, self-offering friend.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

In Godfrey's case there were further reasons why his thoughts should be continually solicited by this one point in his lot: his conscience, never thoroughly easy about Eppie, now gave his childless home the aspect of a retribution; and as the time passed on, under Nancy's refusal to adopt her, any retrieval of his error became more and more difficult.
— from Silas Marner by George Eliot

‘Then she’s alive,’ said Quilp, ‘and there’s nothing the matter with her. Go home again, you bird of evil note, go home!’
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

He is expecting new guests, He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever and ever....
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Experienced Nestor gives his son the reins, Directs his judgment, and his heat restrains; Nor idly warns the hoary sire, nor hears The prudent son with unattending ears.
— from The Iliad by Homer

She was talking to Fanny; about what, he could not hear; but he saw his sister's restless way of continually arranging some part of her gown, her wandering eyes, now glancing here, now there, but without any purpose in her observation; and he contrasted them uneasily with the large soft eyes that looked forth steadily at one object, as if from out their light beamed some gentle influence of repose: the curving lines of the red lips, just parted in the interest of listening to what her companion said—the head a little bent forwards, so as to make a long sweeping line from the summit, where the light caught on the glossy raven hair, to the smooth ivory tip of the shoulder; the round white arms, and taper hands, laid lightly across each other, but perfectly motionless in their pretty attitude.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Waldemar was so passionately fond of the chase that he said if the Lord would only let him hunt for ever near Gurre (his castle in the north of Seeland), he would not envy him his paradise.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

My lord, he is but even now gone hence; Here was he merry, hearing of a song.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

The cover was removed by a trembling servant, and there lay before the Pasha Mahmoud the head of the poor Circassian girl--the masses of golden hair he had so frequently caressed, the eyes, now glazed, he had loved to look on, and the now pale lips he had kissed a thousand times in that lonely kiosk beside the sea.
— from Under the Red Dragon: A Novel by James Grant

"We'll relieve you of tailless horses, armless and legless dolls, sailless ships, funnelless engines, neckless giraffes, humpless camels, trunkless elephants, even noseless tapirs," he ended with a flourish.
— from The Young O'Briens: Being an Account of Their Sojourn in London by Margaret Westrup

And as Robert Gregory turned away, there was a tear in his eye, which was even now growing heavy and red from long excesses and hard drinking, and a sigh, and a half prayer from the heart, from which for long years such things had ceased to rise.
— from A Search For A Secret: A Novel. Vol. 1 by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

For we too are of earth Whom here thou seest: there were not a heaven Were there no earth, nor gods, had men not been,
— from The Epic of Hades, in Three Books by Lewis Morris

Sometimes, they are even national gods: Hecate and Diana were the object of a magic cult; the Virgin, Christ and the saints have been utilized in the same way by Christian magicians.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

For my part, I confess I entertain no great hopes from anything I have seen and heard."
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon by Various

So far Esther Clark, Mollie O’Neill and, strangely enough, Nan Graham, had earned the greatest number of honor beads, for since Nan’s unpleasant day at home a new incentive seemed to have been added to her first ambition to make herself an attractive and capable woman.
— from The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows by Margaret Vandercook

There were no formal designs from the shop of any florist, but from every neighborhood garden had come contributions out of that wealth which this golden month was squandering in blossom.
— from Destiny by Charles Neville Buck

The line of palisades had been made entire, new gates had been erected, the blockhouses strengthened, double bastions constructed, provisions laid in, and cattle collected.
— from Daniel Boone, Backwoodsman by C. H. Forbes-Lindsay

The generalization of Tolstoï, that emotion never goes hand in hand with duty, is almost the opposite of the truth.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll