I had not the remotest idea—living apart from women as I have done for so many years—that merely taking a woman to church and putting a ring upon her finger could by any possibility involve one in such a daily, continuous tragedy as that now shared by her and me!"
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

She that, being anger'd, her revenge being nigh, Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly; She that in wisdom never was so frail To change the cod's head for the salmon's tail; She that could think and ne'er disclose her mind, See suitors following and not look behind; She was a wight, if ever such wight were- DESDEMONA.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Then, turning to Messer Guasparrino, whose kindness was unlooked for, they avouched themselves most certain that, whenas that which he had done for Scacciato should be known of Arrighetto, the like thanks and yet greater would be rendered him.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

The Fellow answered, Mrs. Betty Arable , the great Fortune, and the Widow her Mother; a recruiting Officer (who took a Place because they were to go;) young Squire Quickset her Cousin (that her Mother wished her to be married to;) Ephraim the Quaker 1 her Guardian; and a Gentleman that had studied himself dumb from Sir Roger De Coverley's .
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

SYN: Gloomy, heavy, dismal, foreboding, sulky, moody, lowering, cheerless.
— from A Complete Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms or, Synonyms and Words of Opposite Meaning by Samuel Fallows

On entering he asked for a room, and when they told him there was none in the inn he seemed distressed, and approaching her who by her dress seemed to be a Moor he her down from saddle in his arms.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I was so alarmed, that I felt more strength and life than I had done for some time.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

The old King who in pleading with his daughters feels so intensely his own humiliation and their horrible ingratitude, and who yet, at fourscore and upward, constrains himself to practise a self-control and patience so many years disused; who out of old affection for his Fool, and in repentance for his injustice to the Fool's beloved mistress, tolerates incessant and cutting reminders of his own folly and wrong; in whom the rage of the storm awakes a [285] power and a poetic grandeur surpassing even that of Othello's anguish; who comes in his affliction to think of others first, and to seek, in tender solicitude for his poor boy, the shelter he scorns for his own bare head; who learns to feel and to pray for the miserable and houseless poor, to discern the falseness of flattery and the brutality of authority, and to pierce below the differences of rank and raiment to the common humanity beneath; whose sight is so purged by scalding tears that it sees at last how power and place and all things in the world are vanity except love; who tastes in his last hours the extremes both of love's rapture and of its agony, but could never, if he lived on or lived again, care a jot for aught beside—there is no figure, surely, in the world of poetry at once so grand, so pathetic, and so beautiful as his.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

Julie and Saint-Preux became names to conjure with; their ill-starred amours were everywhere sighed and wept over by the tender-hearted fair; indeed, in composing this work, Rousseau may be said to have done for Switzerland what the author of the Waverly Novels did for Scotland, turning its mountains, lakes and islands, formerly regarded with aversion, into a fairyland peopled with creatures whose joys and sorrows appealed irresistibly to every breast.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Diana went up-stairs to change her dress, for she had the dishes now to wash up; and Mrs. Starling stood in front of the fire-place, pondering.
— from Diana by Susan Warner

The actions of somnambulists often appear almost automatic without a reason for them; somewhat resembling instinct, as the beaver will still build his dome for shelter, even under a roof; or as monomaniacs will do a work in three or four different places , forgetful of their previous labour.
— from The Philosophy of Mystery by Walter Cooper Dendy

There are handy drawers for sugars and tea, and at the bottom a large place for bread.
— from The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls by Various

And when his distemper first seized him, "I suppose," said he, "I shall soon be a god."
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 10: Vespasian by Suetonius

They had hardly disappeared from sight, when he heard the clatter of hoofs behind him and a body of armed men rode down the street.
— from The Child of the Moat: A Story for Girls. 1557 A.D. by I. B. (Ian Bernard) Stoughton Holborn

He had disappeared for six months.
— from A Nest of Spies by Pierre Souvestre

There is a little platform where you may repose and enjoy the view, as I have done for some evenings past--letting the eye roam up-country towards Dolcedorme and its sister peaks, and westwards over the undulating Sila lands whose highest point, Botte Donato, is unmistakable even at this distance of forty miles, from its peculiar shape.
— from Old Calabria by Norman Douglas

Thence to the Treasurer's; and I and Sir J. Minnes and Mr. Tippets down to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, and there had a hot debate from Sir Thomas Clifford and my Lord Ashly (the latter of which, I hear, is turning about as fast as he can to the Duke of Buckingham's side, being in danger, it seems, of being otherwise out of play, which would not be convenient for him), against Sir W. Coventry and Sir J. Duncomb, who did uphold our Office against an accusation of our Treasurers, who told the Lords that they found that we had run the King in debt L50,000 or more, more than the money appointed for the year would defray, which they declared like fools, and with design to hurt us, though the thing is in itself ridiculous.
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1669 N.S. by Samuel Pepys

There is no chance of this being her daughter, for she would have been too old to attract your father's fancy.
— from Senator North by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

It is certain that man has descended from some extinct mammal; and we should just as certainly class this in the order of apes if we had it before us.
— from The Evolution of Man — Volume 2 by Ernst Haeckel