If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

16 He further said to me, 'When you have taken them to yourself, give them to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life, and give them to drink of the water of peace; and clothe them in a garment of light, and restore them to their former state of grace, and leave them not in misery, for they came from you.
— from The First Book of Adam and Eve by Rutherford Hayes Platt

A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

The Romans however made her the goddess of leisure and repose, and represented her as being worshiped by the husbandmen at harvest home, when they were “vacui,” or at leisure.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

So he took a rusk and a glass of lemonade, and retired to rest with a cool head and a cooler heart.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

Freedom—independence of the laws of nature—is certainly a deliverance from restraint, but it is also a relinquishing of the guidance of law and rule.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

I tell you the higher grades of life are reached only through struggle—combat.
— from Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

His attitude is the attitude of one beholding a Tristan en voyage for a garden of love and roses he can never reach.
— from Europe After 8:15 by H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken

Our Prince--we talked of his strife, The forlorn hope He had led, How He opened the gates of life, And rescued from Death the dead; And with Him we saw a bright host, Our comrades gone on before, The right wing of our army Upon the farther shore.
— from Victor Roy, a Masonic Poem by Harriet Annie Wilkins

Several small streams run to the sea here, and at Poltesco the sands are broken by a gorge of lonely and romantic charm, with a charming cascade, opening into Carleon Cove.
— from The Cornwall Coast by Arthur L. (Arthur Leslie) Salmon

No charter or grant of Longchamp, as representing him, is known.
— from Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries by John Horace Round

In the following sketch, taken from Charles Audry’s magnificent “Ecole d’ Equitation,” a Persian lady is delineated as just about to start on a journey, in the saddle; and, in the next, which is engraved from an original drawing, “done from the life,” a lady and gentleman of Lima are represented on horseback.
— from The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual by Anonymous

A song which breathes the glories of literature as represented by Montaigne, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Molière is tolerated idly.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875 by Various

Andy gave one look at Ruth.
— from Then Marched the Brave by Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa) Comstock

At the doorway they encountered a girl of lithe and robust figure, quick in her movements.
— from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey

A moment afterward she heard the sound of footsteps, the door was drawn back an inch or two, and some one from behind it whispered in Irish, "Who are you, and for whom?" "For God, our Lady, and Roger O'More," Nellie promptly answered.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868 by Various

"Well, Gran'ma Mullins said Hannah begun to wait, 'n' Hannah waited until if Hannah had waited any longer she 'd have gone off like a rocket, she was that mad again.
— from Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs by Anne Warner