You shall see that, if Hymen likes to die in order to get rid of life, Love on the contrary expires only to spring up again into existence, and hastens to revive, so as to savour new enjoyment.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

But her eyes were glancing right or left, like a fawnʼs when a lion has roared; and even the youngest trees saw quite well that, however rigid with Miss Eudoxia the gliding form might be, it was poised for a dart and a hide behind them at every crossing shadow.
— from Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Vol. 1 (of 3) by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore

M DCCC XXXV TO MY MOTHER, TO WHOM THESE TRANSLATIONS HAVE AFFORDED MUCH PLEASURE, AND TO WHOM, AT HER ADVANCED AGE, TO HAVE AFFORDED PLEASURE IS THE MOST GRATIFYING REWARD OF LITERARY LABOUR, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, BY HER AFFECTIONATE SON.
— from Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems by Henry Hart Milman

The pedestrian alone keeps his in good repair; our long livers have mostly been great walkers.
— from About London by J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie

The old airs of our fathers, who had been satisfied with the gay repetition of lon, lon, la, larira dondaine, and the gai, gai, larira dondé, were abandoned for the more artificially mannered comic opera, pointed epigrams and long-drawn-out, elegantly turned verses.
— from My Memoirs, Vol. II, 1822 to 1825 by Alexandre Dumas

For the general reader of limited leisure and means, Professor Starbuck's smaller volume, The Psychology of Religion , presents the salient facts in a brief and satisfactory manner.
— from Religion & Sex: Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development by Chapman Cohen

giving resumé of labor legislation.
— from Consumers and Wage-Earners: The Ethics of Buying Cheap by J. Elliot (John Elliot) Ross

Then, as the full force of what they had done occurred to them, and they realised that, at great risk of life, limb, and freedom, they had rescued from the clutches of the law an utterly worthless tramp, they burst into peals of uncontrollable laughter.
— from His Lordship's Leopard: A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts by David Dwight Wells