Why, indeed, said he, my dear girl, I am not a very dreadful enemy, I hope!
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

A murmur of approbation was heard; but it was excited by her generous interference, and not in favour of poor Justine, on whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence, charging her with the blackest ingratitude.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

For this reason it is that, when we judge of a particular action, we are to consider the circumstances, and the whole man by whom it is performed, before we give it a name.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

There he dies, and leaves his race Growing into a nation, and now grown Suspected to a sequent king, who seeks To stop their overgrowth, as inmate guests Too numerous; whence of guests he makes them slaves Inhospitably, and kills their infant males: Till by two brethren (these two brethren call Moses and Aaron) sent from God to claim His people from enthralment, they return, With glory and spoil, back to their promised land.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

Now that I have sampled the globe, I am not in doubt.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I am not a woman, to be touch'd with so many giddy offences as he hath generally tax'd their whole sex withal.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Although it be no new thing to see horns grown in a night on the forehead of one that had none when he went to bed, notwithstanding, what befell Cippus, King of Italy, is memorable; who having one day been a very delighted spectator of a bullfight, and having all the night dreamed that he had horns on his head, did, by the force of imagination, really cause them to grow there.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Let anybody make a list of the places in which men of great intellect have been found, and are still found; where wit, subtlety, and malice constitute happiness; where genius is almost necessarily at home: all of them rejoice in exceptionally dry air.
— from Ecce Homo Complete Works, Volume Seventeen by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

He struggled hard, and suffered much, for some time; but, having a contented disposition, and a good purpose, succeeded in the end; and, from being a farmer's drudge, and a carrier's lad, he is now the merriest young grazier in all Northamptonshire.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

So long as I live at peace with myself and my God I ask nothing of any one.
— from Homo Sum — Volume 03 by Georg Ebers

But there is nothing that sooner freshens one up than to get in a new group, mingling with people whose thought and work run in different channels.
— from Around the Tea-Table by T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt) Talmage

"I wonder——" "Give it a name," begged Billy, when Tip failed to complete the sentence.
— from The Rider of Golden Bar by William Patterson White

Well, Georgie, I am not so sure of that.
— from Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Vol. 2 (of 3) by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore

You've got into a nice mess, you have.
— from The Cryptogram: A Novel by James De Mille

All I say is that I am glad I am not going.”
— from Youth by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

But if you, a man of fifty or over, go into a new environment, you carry with you that heaviest of all burdens, the necessity of making explanations.
— from The Young Man and the World by Albert J. (Albert Jeremiah) Beveridge

Against the world's great man Lift their low calumny and sneering cries The Pharisaic multitude, the host Of piddling slanderers whose little eyes Know not what greatness is and never can.
— from Poems by Alan Seeger

"We hope that the Society of Arts or the British Gallery will take an early opportunity of commemorating the genius of this great artist, and of reminding the public of the prodigious range of his pencil, by forming a general exhibition of his principal works, if, indeed, they are not permanently gathered in a nobler repository.
— from The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II by Various