I should hope our friendship rises above all that sort of thing.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

If your face had not inspired me with a lively interest in you, I should have only felt ordinary compassion on reading your appeal, and this would not have been enough to force me to great sacrifices of time and trouble.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

I allude, for instance, to the way in which he spoke of a man who took exceeding pains in setting himself off, for as he was crossing a gutter with great hesitation, he said, “He is right to look down upon the mud, for he cannot see himself in it.”
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

True it is, she had one failing, Had a woman ever less? H2 anchor Epitaph For William Nicol, Of The High School, Edinburgh Ye maggots, feed on Nicol's brain, For few sic feasts you've gotten; And fix your claws in Nicol's heart, For deil a bit o't's rotten.
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

For now I no longer recognised it, and I became uneasy, as though I were in a room in some hotel or furnished lodging, in a place where I had just arrived, by train, for the first time.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Look at me, I know nothing about omens and I don’t study the heavens like the astrologers, but I can read men’s intentions in their faces and I know what a flirt is after when I see him out for a stroll; so if you’ll sell us what I want there’s a buyer ready, but if you will do the graceful thing and lend, let us be under obligations to you for the favor.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

My peace of mind is doubly involved in it;—for not only is it horrible to suspect a person, who has been what HE has been to ME, of such designs,—but what must it make me appear to myself?—What in a situation like mine, but a most shamefully unguarded affection could expose me to"— "How then," asked her sister, "would you account for his behaviour?" "I would suppose him,—Oh, how gladly would I suppose him, only fickle, very, very fickle.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Every article of the splendid furniture was sold by this time, as I need not say; and as for the plate, I had taken good care to bring it off to Ireland, where it now was in the best of keeping—my banker’s, who had advanced six thousand pounds on it: which sum I soon had occasion for.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

From the moment I saw her one feeling alone overmastered my soul and pervaded it; I felt a profound aversion towards everything that was not this woman.
— from Balthasar and Other Works - 1909 by Anatole France

And there I stood, holding on for all there was in me, and the crowd yelling.
— from His Little World: The Story of Hunch Badeau by Samuel Merwin

As the tickets would have to be accounted for, of course there was nothing for it but to send him a bill, so I sent him one:— F. Petherton , Esq.,
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 21st, 1916 by Various

General Jackson 151 heard of it; sought him out; found him; took him home to remain as long as his business detained him in the country, saying: ‘Your father’s dog should not stay in a tavern while I have a house.’”
— from The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory by Stanley F. Horn

I am impelled, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Most Great Festival, coinciding with a triple celebration—the dedication of the Mother Temple of the West, the launching of a World Spiritual Crusade and the commemoration of the Birth of Bahá’u’lláh’s Mission—to pay warmest tribute to the preeminent share which the American Bahá’í Community has had in the course of over half a century in proclaiming His Revelation, in shielding His Cause, in championing His Covenant, in erecting the administrative machinery of His embryonic World Order, in expounding His teachings, in translating and disseminating His Holy Word, in dispatching the messengers of His Glad Tidings, in awakening royalty to His Call, in succoring His oppressed followers, in routing His enemies, in upholding His Law, in asserting the independence of His Faith, in multiplying the financial resources of its nascent institutions and, last but not least, in rearing its greatest House of Worship—the first Ma sh riqu’l-A dh kár of the western world.
— from Citadel of Faith by Effendi Shoghi

This shows how little you can do with a girl, even if she have occasional fits of bravery.
— from The Dew of Their Youth by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett