Sofya began to laugh; she thought it sinful and terrible and sweet to hear about, and she felt envious and sorry that she, too, had not been a sinner when she was young and pretty.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

And as experience shows, many have been the conspiracies, but few have been successful; because he who conspires cannot act alone, nor can he take a companion except from those whom he believes to be malcontents, and as soon as you have opened your mind to a malcontent you have given him the material with which to content himself, for by denouncing you he can look for every advantage; so that, seeing the gain from this course to be assured, and seeing the other to be doubtful and full of dangers, he must be a very rare friend, or a thoroughly obstinate enemy of the prince, to keep faith with you.
— from The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

I wrote to you the day after I had your two Letters, with Mr. Furness’ enclosed, and said that, seeing the uncertainty of any success in the matter, I really would not bother you or him any more.
— from Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) by Edward FitzGerald

And thus filled full, he returned to his own place of training, gathering to himself what he had got from each, and striving to show all their qualities in himself.
— from The Hermits by Charles Kingsley

No change shall darken thy exalted name, From everlasting ages still the same!"
— from Old and New London, Volume I A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places by Walter Thornbury

They can't see things except by bringing them near their eyes, because their eyes are not flat enough, and so their spectacles are made with double concave lenses.
— from The Big Brother: A Story of Indian War by George Cary Eggleston

It was here, in fact, that during the last two days he had conceived, and begun to put into practice, the never-before-heard-of invention of a machine for enabling a swimmer to swim up-stream at the rate of eight to ten miles an hour!
— from A Dog with a Bad Name by Talbot Baines Reed

In this deduction there was more of false enthusiasm and stiltedness than sincerity.
— from In Vain by Henryk Sienkiewicz

There are individual men so recognized,—Edison, for example, and, strange to say, one or two men who by accident are holding political office.
— from Philosophy and the Social Problem by Will Durant

The soul is formed for expansion, and surely the spirit world is not the place to suppress unfoldment!"
— from Strange Visitors A series of original papers, embracing philosophy, science, government, religion, poetry, art, fiction, satire, humor, narrative, and prophecy, by the spirits of Irving, Willis, Thackeray, Brontë, Richter, Byron, Humboldt, Hawthorne, Wesley, Browning, and others now dwelling in the spirit world; dictated through a clairvoyant, while in an abnormal or trance state by Henry J. Horn

We lifted Captain Davis in our arms, and with fixed eyes and set teeth saw the misnamed schooner drive her bows under the water, and then shortly after, majestically raising her forefoot high in air, sink down grandly into the abyss of ocean, leaving us poor unfortunates adrift upon its treacherous bosom.
— from Perseverance Island; Or, The Robinson Crusoe of the Nineteenth Century by Douglas Frazar