Is there anything mysterious in a purpose entertained and executed every year, in the most public manner, by fifty thousand of my fellow-countrymen—the purpose of improving one’s mind by foreign travel?”
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James

He threw his arms around her in a passionate embrace.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

And although they all in like manner, with common accord, teach us also to despise pain, poverty, and the other accidents to which human life is subject, it is not, nevertheless, with the same solicitude, as well by reason these accidents are not of so great necessity, the greater part of mankind passing over their whole lives without ever knowing what poverty is, and some without sorrow or sickness, as Xenophilus the musician, who lived a hundred and six years in a perfect and continual health; as also because, at the worst, death can, whenever we please, cut short and put an end to all other inconveniences.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Allow me, sir, to introduce you to my fellow-travellers, the other corresponding members of the club I am proud to have founded.’
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

With their aid I am positive I could climb that detached pinnacle to the summit; but so long as the main cliff overhangs, it is vain to attempt ascending that.
— from The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

Perhaps a walk will give a new turn to my ideas, and present something new to my vacant imagination.
— from American Historical and Literary Curiosities: Second Series, Complete by J. Jay (John Jay) Smith

By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along, and his mouth tightened into a post-office again.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

—Who is now in a position to describe that which will one day supplant moral feelings and judgments!—however certain we may be that these are founded on error, and that the building erected upon such foundations cannot be repaired: their obligation must gradually diminish from day to day, in so far as the obligation of reason
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Another of his theories was, that the air around the earth was immoveable, and pregnant with disease, and that everything in it was mortal; but that the upper air was in perpetual motion, and pure and salubrious; and that everything in that was immortal, and on that account divine.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

Lord, I find a general coldness in all persons towards your Lordship, such as, from my first dependance on you, I never yet knew, wherein I shall not offer to interpose any thoughts or advice of mine, well knowing your Lordship needs not any.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

This time, indeed, a pole was chopped down, and placed (after the wire had been cut) upon the track directly behind the last baggage car.
— from Chasing an Iron Horse Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War by Edward Robins

I do not think the Prince would have any objection to issue the proclamation about revenue, and to signify to all his subjects that he has appointed Meerza Wulee Mahomed Khan to the management of this department, notwithstanding he is aware that papers of an exactly opposite tenor, issued by his father, are in Meerza Ahmed’s hands; but I greatly doubt his aquiescing in the subject of the reward, as whatever may be the secret feelings of Mahomedans regarding betrayal or assassination, it is altogether repugnant to [185] their habits to avow such objects in a public proclamation.”
— from History of the War in Afghanistan, Vol. 3 (of 3) Third Edition by Kaye, John William, Sir

They had actually incurred a grave responsibility, and they were disposed to lighten it somewhat by interposing a plausible excuse.
— from The Parables of Our Lord by William Arnot

And being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline, as inapplicable to myself, any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive department; and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am placed, may, during my continuance in it, be limited to such actual expenditures as the public good may be thought to require.
— from The Life of George Washington: A Linked Index to the Project Gutenberg Editions by John Marshall

The lowest grades of the objectification of will are to be found in those most universal forces of nature which partly appear in all matter without exception, as gravity and impenetrability, and partly have shared the given matter among them, so that certain of them reign in one species of matter and others in another species, constituting its specific difference, as rigidity, fluidity, elasticity, electricity, magnetism, chemical properties and qualities of every kind.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

—Gladstone has spoken about Egypt, a long rigmarole of which the only thing remarkable is that he expresses his confidence in a peaceful solution....
— from Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt Being a Personal Narrative of Events by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

But the next day, none had died; and almost at the same hour of the day at which they had eaten they recovered their senses, and on the third or fourth day got on their legs again like convalescents after a severe course of medical treatment. (4) "Modern travellers attest the existence, in these regions, of honey intoxicating and poisonous....
— from Anabasis by Xenophon

If it’s a client it will look more respectable than if I appeared. PRAED.
— from Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw