Their piety would be like their names, like their faces, like their clothes, and it was idle for him to tell himself that their humble and contrite hearts, it might be, paid a far richer tribute of devotion than his had ever been, a gift tenfold more acceptable than his elaborate adoration.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

If Minos represents conscience, as some would have it, Dante is here again assailed by misgivings as to his enterprise, and is quieted by reason in the person of Virgil.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

—We have a low estimation of good people, because they are gregarious animals: we know how often an invaluable golden drop of goodness lies concealed beneath the most evil, the most malicious, and the hardest exterior, and that this single grain outweighs all the mere goody-goodiness of milk-and-watery souls.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I only give my authority to his excesses, and relieve his conscience at the expense of my own.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In short, every thing that is generally unamiable in his season of life, was, in him, repaired by so many advantages, that he existed a proof, manifest at least to me, that it is not out of the power of age to please, if it lays out to please, and if, making just allowance, those in that class do not forget, that if must cost them more pains and attention, than what youth, the natural spring-time of joy, stands in need of: as fruits out of season require proportionally more skill and cultivation, to force them.
— from Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) by John Cleland

But I mean always to help everywhere and every one.
— 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

'If he '—he pointed with his skinny fore-finger up the stairs—'is so hard with you (he's a brute, Nance, a brute-beast), why don't you—' 'Well?' said the girl, as Fagin paused, with his mouth almost touching her ear, and his eyes looking into hers.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Then she took another tack and headed west for nearly 400 miles; then shaped her course north for 300 miles, and then headed east again for 700 miles; so that in January she was almost in the same latitude and longitude that she had been in the previous June.
— from Derelicts: An Account of Ships Lost at Sea in General Commercial Traffic And a Brief History of Blockade Runners Stranded Along the North Carolina Coast, 1861-1865 by James Sprunt

"I have news for you, Mr. Eversleigh," said Matthews, after they had exchanged a few words.
— from The Mystery of Lincoln's Inn by Robert Machray

I was for some time entirely at a loss how to account for it, and felt very much like giving the hostler, who stood at a little distance, eyeing me as though he expected a kicking, a piece of my mind, when I happened to remember that, as I was that afternoon descending a steep hill, my horse had stepped upon a rolling stone, and almost thrown me from the saddle; and I noticed that he limped a little afterward; but I thought it was nothing serious, and had almost forgotten the circumstance.
— from Frank in the Woods by Harry Castlemon

STREET Contents PAGE An Unrecorded Philadelphia Romance the Franklin Family helped into Flower 15 The Love-story of the Noted Nathaniel Moore and "The Heavenly Ellen," a Belle of Chambers Street, New York City 59 A True Picture of the Last Days of Aaron Burr 99 The Poetic Courtship of Philip Freneau, the Poet of the Revolution, and Beautiful Eleanor Forman 123
— from Through the Gates of Old Romance by Weymer Jay Mills

In assimilating each of the smaller towns or villages which it has made itself up of London has left them so much of their original character that though merged, they are not lost; and in cases where they have been so long merged as to have experienced a severance of consciousness, or where they are only nominally different sections of the vast whole, they have each its own temperament.
— from London Films by William Dean Howells

TOC He had dayly attending vppon hym in hys priuye garde sixe hundred noble men and gentlemen, and eche of them thrée or foure seruants, and some hadde twenty seruaunts or moe, according to his estate: and in this maner he had thrée thousand men attendant in his court, and some affirm more, al the which were fed in his house of the meate that came from his table.
— from The pleasant historie of the conquest of the VVeast India, now called new Spayne atchieued by the vvorthy Prince Hernando Cortes, marques of the Valley of Huaxacac, most delectable to reade by Francisco López de Gómara

The large sitting-room at the colonel's quarters had been darkened since early morning, and the heat excluded as much as possible, for the colonel was threatened with a severe attack of the torturing headache that sprang from the badly-healed wound in his forehead.
— from Overland Tales by Josephine Clifford

On this building, both architect and mason appear to have exhausted all the skill of their craft, to produce an edifice, which shall transport the sense of sight, if not the mind it influences, to those glorious middle ages, for the revival of which some few enthusiastic ladies and gentlemen of the nineteenth century are working so desperately.
— from Paddington: Past and Present by William Robins

One of Napoleon's greatest admirers was Mr. Fox, who, speaking of him one day, said, "If we even shut our eyes on the martial deeds of this great man, we must allow that his eloquence alone has elevated the French people to a higher degree of civilization than any other nation in Europe,—they have advanced a century during the last five years.
— from Secret History of the Court of England, from the Accession of George the Third to the Death of George the Fourth, Volume 2 (of 2) Including, Among Other Important Matters, Full Particulars of the Mysterious Death of the Princess Charlotte by Hamilton, Anne, Lady