So their actions and passions are intermixed, but of all other passions, sorrow hath the greatest share; [5305] love to many is bitterness itself; rem amaram Plato calls it, a bitter potion, an agony, a plague.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, N.Y., the wealthy and influential reformer and philanthropist, became an earnest advocate of this costume, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller, a beautiful and fashionable woman, was the first to put it on.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

It is not an impossible ideal; it is one which actually does exist in some few cases, and might exist in almost all, with a little more patience and forbearance upon the parents’ part; but it is rare at present—so rare that they have a proverb which I can only translate in a very roundabout way, but which says that the great happiness of some people in a future state will consist in watching the distress of their parents on returning to eternal companionship with their grandfathers and grandmothers; whilst “compulsory affection” is the idea which lies at the root of their word for the deepest anguish.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

12, Plate 57.--Behind the meatus, and on the right of the fraenum, is represented a perforation in the urethra, caused by a venereal ulcer.
— from Surgical Anatomy by Joseph Maclise

To receive a simple primitive phenomenon, to recognise it in its high significance, and to go to work with it, requires a productive spirit, which is able to take a wide survey, and is a rare gift, only to be found in very superior natures.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

But now I remark farther: What in such a time as ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the stripping-off of those poor undevout wrappages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays,—this, the ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for itself.
— from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

Just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than the reality.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A stirring letter was sent by Neal Dow, expressing his great pleasure that women were taking active and decided measures for the suppression of intemperance, and closing: "It is absurd, therefore, to argue that the community has no power to control this great evil; that any citizen has the right to inflict it upon society, or that society should hesitate to exercise its right and power of self-protection against it.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

Here I remark all poets are Love to idealize inclined; I have dreamed many a vision fair
— from Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] A Romance of Russian Life in Verse by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

His correspondence with the other brother, the ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in retirement at Paris, Rue Cassette, remained more affectionate.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

There must be some reason, I felt sure, for her inexorable severity; consequently I remained a passive spectator.
— from Major Frank by A. L. G. (Anna Louisa Geertruida) Bosboom-Toussaint

Mr. Brontë—like other parents and friends of precocious and gifted children, who, in after-life have become celebrated in religion, art, poetry, literature, politics, or war, and who have given out in childhood tokens of brilliant and sterling gifts which have been recorded in their biographies—saw in his own children evidences of that mental power, fervid imagination, and superior faculty of language and expression, which were developed in them in after-years.
— from The Brontë Family, with special reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. Vol. 1 of 2 by Francis A. Leyland

This scene indeed has a decidedly Oriental costume; but the feelings, from which it results, are produced by as much of romantic exaltation as any Spanish romance could exhibit.
— from Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations With a Sketch of Their Popular Poetry by Talvj

He is rich and prosperous, and the cares of poverty, and all the other troubles that fall to the lot of civilised men, do not affect him.
— from The Last Boer War by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

Peter involves himself in a tangle of misfortunes (as he would, of course) by his slipshod enthusiasm; Natasha's courage and good sense are surprisingly aroused—one had hardly seen that she possessed such qualities, but Tolstoy is right; and presently it is Andrew, the one clear-headed and far-sighted member of the circle, who is lost to it in the upheaval, wounded and brought home to die.
— from The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock

And no doubt nine-tenths of the men he knew would have applauded his resolution in running away, patted him on the back, told him he was a very fine fellow, and said that but for his self-control the affair might have ended miserably.
— from Red Rowans by Flora Annie Webster Steel

It is rather a pretty coin, of quite pure [Pg 87] gold, and will do very well as an ornament for a watch chain.
— from Private Journal of Henry Francis Brooke Late Brigadier-General Commanding 2nd Infantry Brigade, Kandahar Field Force, Southern Afghanistan, from April 22nd to August 16th, 1880 by Henry Francis Brooke

I have less than no patience with those principally clerical revisers; albeit for their chairman, Dr. Ellicott, I retain a pleasant memory from Orkney recollections in old days.
— from My Life as an Author by Martin Farquhar Tupper