But I had no hope, and not even desire as a thing outside myself, that would come and go, exhaust or excite.
— from The Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes by Joseph Conrad

"We'll live in some God-forsaken, out-of-the-way little hole, and never even dare ask a person in to a meal for fear there wouldn't be enough potatoes to go around.
— from The Romance of a Plain Man by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Those who, by marked deficiency of organization, are unable to do so, among the generation taken unawares by these inventions, fall out of the ranks; they become hysterical and neurasthenical, engender degenerates, and in these end their race; [472] but the more vigorous, although they at first also have become bewildered and fatigued, recover themselves little by little, their descendants accustom themselves to the rapid progress which humanity must make, and soon their slow respiration and their quieter pulsations of the heart will prove that it no longer costs them any effort to keep pace and keep up with the others.
— from Degeneration by Max Simon Nordau

She was in the world to help—with no political economy beyond the idea that for help and nothing else did any one exist.
— from The Elect Lady by George MacDonald

Then had come the short interview under the elm tree—an interview which had shown him a new Esther, demure, adorable, with eyes which refused to look at him.
— from Up the Hill and Over by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

Terribly as we feel the loss, and shall feel it still more, I cannot help thanking the Eternal Father that He has accepted the life-sacrifice, and feeling that He calls upon us here and now, each day and moment of our lives, to offer up ourselves on the altar of universal thanksgiving.
— from Letters to His Friends by Forbes Robinson

When they were half grown the pots were sunk in holes at nearly even distances among the Andromedas, and in a few weeks my row of Lilies gave me my reward.
— from Colour in the flower garden by Gertrude Jekyll