Gradually she drew nearer to me, and ever and anon her silken finger tips touched my hands or arms as if they were a keyboard and she was about to begin to execute a soft and dainty bit of music; and I noticed that her fingers had some delightful perfume upon them.
— from Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey by Ingersoll Lockwood

Such men think only just so much as is necessary to carry out their will for the moment.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer

I always write my letters post-haste—so precipitately, that though I write intolerably ill, I rather choose to do it myself, than to employ another; for I can find none able to follow me: and I never transcribe any.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

in a very abrupt tone of displeasure.—The Scot took umbrage at the manner of his reply, and bristling up, ‘If I had known (said he) that you did not care to tell your name, I should not have asked the question—The leddy called you Matt, and I naturally thought it was Matthias:—perhaps, it may be Methuselah, or Metrodorus, or Metellus, or Mathurinus, or Malthinnus, or Matamorus, or—’ ‘No (cried my uncle laughing), it is neither of those, captain: my name is Matthew Bramble, at, your service.—The truth is, have a foolish pique at the name of Matthew, because it favours of those canting hypocrites, who, in Cromwell’s time, christened all their children by names taken from the scripture.’
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

The door was just going to be closed in consequence, when an inquisitive boarder, who had been peeping between the hinges, set up a fearful screaming, which called back the cook and housemaid, and all the more adventurous, in no time.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Until then my advice is not to let him know your arrival in Venice.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

thus these two Imparadis't in one anothers arms The happier Eden, shall enjoy thir fill Of bliss on bliss, while I to Hell am thrust, Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire, Among our other torments not the least, 510 Still unfulfill'd with pain of longing pines; Yet let me not forget what I have gain'd From thir own mouths; all is not theirs it seems: One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge call'd, Forbidden them to taste:
— from The Poetical Works of John Milton by John Milton

They may answer it now; they can take ten years, or twenty years, or a generation, or a century to think of it.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

Mr Catlin, however, says, p. 44: “From the translation of their name, already mentioned (Nu-mah-ká-kee, pheasants), an important inference may be drawn in support of the probability of their having formerly lived much farther to the south, as that bird does not exist on the prairies of the Upper Missouri, and is not to be met with short of the hoary forests of Ohio and Indiana, eighteen hundred miles south of the last residence of the Mandans.
— from Tradition, Principally with Reference to Mythology and the Law of Nations by Arundell of Wardour, John Francis Arundell, Baron

The man didn’t say anything for a minute, and I noticed the engineer was looking pretty uncomfortable.
— from Mark Tidd: His Adventures and Strategies by Clarence Budington Kelland

As Jim and I strode briskly across the moor towards our destination, I bearing the box under my arm, I narrated to my wondering friend the story of the past few days.
— from Miriam: A Tale of Pole Moor and the Greenfield Hills by D. F. E. Sykes

Then the rocket moved along its new trajectory slightly and the merciless beam shifted, blazed on the sketch of a knight in armor impaling Pegasus with his lance.
— from The Scarlet Lake Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story by Harold L. (Harold Leland) Goodwin

But a purely chemical, or purely molecular adsorption, is not the only form of the hypothesis on which we may rely.
— from On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

there is a Supreme Being, who governs the world, and is present with it, who takes up his more special habitation in good men, and is nigh to all who call upon him, to sanctify and assist them!
— from The Life of Col. James Gardiner Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 by Philip Doddridge

So anxious was I, when younger, to find some rational justification for poetry and religion, and to show that their magic was significant of true facts, that I insisted too much, as I now think, on the need of relevance to fact even in poetry.
— from Soliloquies in England, and Later Soliloquies by George Santayana

But as in this latter case, both the objects of the mind are ideas; notwithstanding there is an easy transition betwixt them; that transition alone is not able to give a superior vivacity to any of the ideas, for want of some immediate impression.
— from Philosophical Works, v. 1 (of 4) Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Published by the Author by David Hume