For my own interest, I often meditate what a kind of life theirs was, and if, without this faculty, I should have enough left to support me with any manner of ease; and prying narrowly into it, I fear that this privation, if absolute, destroys all the other functions of the soul: “Plenus rimarum sum, hac atque iliac perfluo.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

But as we passed along the outer fosse I saw his eyes lighten. "Credentials! sneered the King," and he tapped the paper with his finger.
— from The King's Scapegoat by Hamilton Drummond

upon examining her lovely face, I saw her eyes looked wild, her features contracted: I started back.
— from Adventures in the Philippine Islands by Paul P. de La Gironière

I wish to pass life calmly—at least, if they do not make me a head shorter, like father, I shall have enjoyed life."
— from Mysteries of Paris — Volume 03 by Eugène Sue

104-106.] Dilapidated Mirow and its inmates, portrayed in this satirical way, except as a view of Serene Highnesses fallen into Sleepy Hollow, excites little notice in the indolent mind; and that little, rather pleasantly contemptuous than really profitable.
— from History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 10 by Thomas Carlyle

For my own interest, I often meditate what a kind of life theirs was, and if, without this faculty, I should have enough left to support me with any manner of ease; and prying narrowly into it, I fear that this privation, if absolute, destroys all the other functions of the soul: "Plenus rimarum sum, hac atque iliac perfluo."
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Volume 11 by Michel de Montaigne

I often fancy I should have enjoyed living in the good old times, but I am glad I never was a child in colonial New England—to have been baptized in ice water, fed on brown bread and warm beer, to have had to learn the Assembly's Catechism and "explain all the Quaestions with conferring Texts," to have been constantly threatened with fear of death and terror of God, to have been forced to commit Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom" to memory, and, after all, to have been whipped with a tattling stick.
— from Customs and Fashions in Old New England by Alice Morse Earle