“You must be mistaken about Rosanna Spearman,” I said.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

" "One can't make a religion," said Irene sadly.
— from The Crown of Life by George Gissing

[240] often had after small wrongs, trifling quarrels, on first awaking in a summer morn after refreshing sleep, I shall experience after death for those few wounds too deep and broad for the vis medicatrix of mortal life to fill wholly up with new flesh—those that, though healed, yet left an unsightly scar which, too often, spite of our best wishes, opened anew at other derangements and indispositions of the mental health, even when they were altogether unconnected with the wound itself or its occasions—even as the scars of the sailor, the relics and remembrances of sword or gun-shot wounds (first of all his bodily frame giving way to ungenial influences from without or from within), ache and throb at the coming in of rain or easterly winds, and open again and bleed anew, at the attack of fever, or injury from deficient or unwholesome food—that even for these I should enjoy the same delightful annihilation of them, as of ordinary wrongs after sleep.
— from Anima Poetæ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“I consoled myself with the reflection that, if the play made a real success, I should gain some prestige as an author, and find an easier hearing for future work.
— from The Mystery of Murray Davenport: A Story of New York at the Present Day by Robert Neilson Stephens

The literature of the day is professedly comic, and of the few works which are not made ludicrous by the design of their authors, the majority are rendered so in spite of it.
— from The Comic English Grammar: A New and Facetious Introduction to the English Tongue by Percival Leigh

Surely, that sunshine which is the chosen type and image of His love must be healing through all the recesses of our daily life, drying damp and mould, defending from moth and rust, sweetening ill smells, clearing from the nerves the vapors of melancholy, making life cheery.
— from Household Papers and Stories by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Margot and Ronald smiled in sympathy even as they looked.
— from Big Game: A Story for Girls by Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.

The little birds were soon chirpping and flying about merrily and Ralph said it sounded as if they kept saying, “thank you.”
— from Cinderella; Or, The Little Glass Slipper, and Other Stories by Anonymous

—Women too early married always remain small in stature, weak, pale, emaciated, and more or less miserable.
— from Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics by B. G. (Benjamin Grant) Jefferis