"If I had beauty I should stand a better chance," sighed Christie, surveying herself with great disfavor, quite unconscious that to a cultivated eye the soul of beauty was often visible in that face of hers, with its intelligent eyes, sensitive mouth, and fine lines about the forehead, making it a far more significant and attractive countenance than that of her friend, possessing only piquant prettiness.
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott

Should I ever see mine again?
— from The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories by Mark Twain

It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled sign upon the forehead of Taurus.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

Much more wisely Pacuvius— “Nam istis, qui linguam avium intelligunt, Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt, quam ex suo, Magis audiendum, quam auscultandum, censeo.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

As the girl passed down through the hall, she went before open doors framing more eyes strangely microscopic, and sending broad beams of inquisitive light into the darkness of her path.
— from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane

give tone to a measure—say ten of these at $3,000 each, is $30,000; then a lot of small-fry country members who won’t vote for anything whatever without pay—say twenty at $500 apiece, is $10,000; a lot of dinners to members—say $10,000 altogether; lot of jimcracks for Congressmen’s wives and children—those go a long way—you can’t spend too much money in that line—well, those things cost in a lump, say $10,000—along there somewhere; and then comes your printed documents—your maps, your tinted engravings, your pamphlets, your illuminated show cards, your advertisements in a hundred and fifty papers at ever so much a line—because you’ve got to keep the papers all
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner

Faustus, these books, thy wit, and our experience, Shall make all nations to canonize us.
— from The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus From the Quarto of 1604 by Christopher Marlowe

127.]—for that was his name, returned answer, that it was not for fear of him, or of any man living, that he did so, but that it was the way of marching in practice with his nation, who had neither tilled fields, cities, nor houses to defend, or to fear the enemy should make any advantage of but that if he had such a stomach to fight, let him but come to view their ancient places of sepulture, and there he should have his fill.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

On each side marched a double hedge of guards of infamous aspect, wearing three-cornered hats, like the soldiers under the Directory, shabby, covered with spots and holes, muffled in uniforms of veterans and the trousers of undertakers’ men, half gray, half blue, which were almost hanging in rags, with red epaulets, yellow shoulder belts, short sabres, muskets, and cudgels; they were a species of soldier-blackguards.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

When she arrived at the place of execution she made a little speech, saying that she ought never to have allowed anyone to persuade her to be queen; but that she was young—she had not known what was right.
— from The Children's Book of London by G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

All this espied Sir Marhaus and had great wonder how his might increased, and so they wounded other passing sore.
— from Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Malory, Thomas, Sir

We will, therefore, that the English ship, merchandise, and all other their goods, without exception, be restored to the Englishmen; also, that the men be let go free, and, if they will, let none hinder them to return peaceably into their country; do not commit that they another time complain of this matter, and how this business is despatched certify us at our most famous porch.
— from Voyager's Tales by Richard Hakluyt

If we could tackle up, now, and go off by ourselves, early some morning, and get what we want—there'd be some fun in that."
— from Diana by Susan Warner

A climax is reached when Drinkwater, let loose without a stain on his character for the second time, is rapt by belief in his star into an ecstasy in which, scorning all partnership, he becomes as it were a whirling dervish, and executes so miraculous a clog dance that the others gradually cease their slower antics to stare at him.
— from Captain Brassbound's Conversion by Bernard Shaw

As it was they looked as though they did not even see me at all.' "'Well, well!' said his friends, 'if you are nothing else, you can't say you're not as black as a priest.
— from Tales from the Fjeld: A Second Series of Popular Tales by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

Here was a Link of the Past which exactly suited me, and, if only Polly could have understood the allusion, I should have said to her—"Ah, did you
— from Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography by George William Erskine Russell

Precautions were taken against possible surprise and to ensure speedy mounting and getting into position in the event of an emergency requiring it.
— from Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War by James Harvey Kidd