“The Father sometimes gets this mystic’s cloud on him,” he said; “but I give you fair warning that I have never known him to have it except when there was some evil quite near.”
— from The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

I was so proud in heart that I thought none my equal, but now have I encountered with thee, who hast given me my fill of fighting; wherefore, I pray thee, Sir knight, tell me of thyself.”
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

At the moment when he flattered himself that he should become the father of a line of kings, a foreign maid, who had been educated in the house of his implacable enemies, was introduced into the Imperial bed; and Eudoxia soon displayed a superiority of sense and spirit, to improve the ascendant which her beauty must acquire over the mind of a fond and youthful husband.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

and what scenes of endearing transport have I enjoyed with my Antonia, in mutual congratulation upon our parental happiness!
— from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. (Tobias) Smollett

For as parents easily observe, that a man is the more useful, both to himself and others, the greater degree of probity and honour he is endowed with; and that those principles have greater force, when custom and education assist interest and reflection: For these reasons they are induced to inculcate on their children, from their earliest infancy, the principles of probity, and teach them to regard the observance of those rules, by which society is maintained, as worthy and honourable, and their violation as base and infamous.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

I took a plain but clean and light summer dress from my drawer and put it on: it seemed no attire had ever so well become me, because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

I bethought myself of finding her a husband in every way better than myself; a husband so good that she would not only forgive me for the insult I should thus be guilty of towards her, but also thank me at the end, and like me all the better for my deceit.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

20 His immense estates were scattered over the wide extent of the Roman world; and though the public might suspect or disapprove the methods by which they had been acquired, the generosity and magnificence of that fortunate statesman deserved the gratitude of his clients, and the admiration of strangers.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow-lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea how they might be readily turned into cash and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land and shingle palaces in the wilderness.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

No animal is instinctively cleaner in its habits, in every way, than is the cat.
— from The Cat: Its Natural History; Domestic Varieties; Management and Treatment by Philip M. Rule

The suspicion of her infamous employer, which had induced Mrs. Sowler to attempt to intrude herself into Phoebe’s confidence, led her to make a visit of investigation at Jervy’s lodgings later in the day.
— from The Fallen Leaves by Wilkie Collins

He is to help her in every way he can; but he is also to honor the woman he asks to be his wife.
— from Was It Right to Forgive? A Domestic Romance by Amelia E. Barr

This I have demonstrated at the Hague with turf, and proved here in England with coals, in the presence of Mr. Boyle, by experiments made at Windsor on a large scale.
— from A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 1 (of 2) by Johann Beckmann

Life, my old shipmate, life, at any moment and in any view, is as dangerous as a sinking ship; and yet it is man’s handsome fashion to carry umbrellas, to wear indiarubber overshoes, to begin vast works, and to conduct himself in every way as if he might hope to be eternal.
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 21 by Robert Louis Stevenson

But it is necessary to contemplate man apart from all the rest of Nature, because we find that he is endowed with intellect, and we have very good and direct evidence that his intellect is an actor; and we know that he is endowed with consciousness, and we have very good and direct evidence that, by introspection, he becomes aware of his own consciousness, and what it is.
— from Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry by George Ticknor Curtis

[10] Here is Emerson writing to Carlyle of his "new plaything"—a piece of woodland of forty acres on the border of Walden Pond.
— from Garden-Craft Old and New by John Dando Sedding