I love you next to my own father and mother, and to leave you is the chief concern I have at quitting this place; but I am sure it is certain ruin if I stay.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

"Everything is sold, father; but we don't know all about the mill and the land yet," said Tom, anxious to ward off any question leading to the fact that Wakem was the purchaser.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

‘I am not so presumptuous as to believe that,’ said he, ‘though you tell it me; but if it were so, I am rather particular in my notions of a companion for life, and perhaps I might not find one to suit me among the ladies you mention.’
— from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

There could be no doubt that this extraordinary alteration of purpose in the matter of the signature was due to his influence, and that his discovery of my application to London yesterday, and of my having received an answer to it to-day, had offered him the means of interfering with certain success.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

“As for the letter,” said Sancho, “she did not read it, for she said she could neither read nor write; instead of that she tore it up into small pieces, saying that she did not want to let anyone read it lest her secrets should become known in the village, and that what I had told her by word of mouth about the love your worship bore her, and the extraordinary penance you were doing for her sake, was enough; and, to make an end of it, she told me to tell your worship that she kissed your hands, and that she had a greater desire to see you than to write to you; and that therefore she entreated and commanded you, on sight of this present, to come out of these thickets, and to have done with carrying on absurdities, and to set out at once for El Toboso, unless something else of greater importance should happen, for she had a great desire to see your worship.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

It is the first thing you look for when you rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests upon at night.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

"As for the letter," said Sancho, "she did not read it, for she said she could neither read nor write; instead of that she tore it up into small pieces, saying that she did not want to let anyone read it lest her secrets should become known in the village, and that what I had told her by word of mouth about the love your worship bore her, and the extraordinary penance you were doing for her sake, was enough; and, to make an end of it, she told me to tell your worship that she kissed your hands, and that she had a greater desire to see you than to write to you; and that therefore she entreated and commanded you, on sight of this present, to come out of these thickets, and to have done with carrying on absurdities, and to set out at once for El Toboso, unless something else of greater importance should happen, for she had a great desire to see your worship.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Would it make her as miserable as to lose you altogether?
— from The Little Moment of Happiness by Clarence Budington Kelland

As soon as ever I got to know you I began both to realise myself and to love you; for until you came into my life I had been a lonely man—I had been, as it were, asleep rather than alive.
— from Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Some had gone to Heart's Content, hoping to witness the arrival of the fleet, but not so many as the last year, for the memory of their disappointment was too fresh, and they feared the same result again.
— from Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made by James Dabney McCabe

On the first of May, after their last year together at college, Frank Ashurst and his friend Robert Garton were on a tramp.
— from The Works of John Galsworthy An Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy by John Galsworthy

Send me all the letters you receive, even those from the people you trust, from your friends....
— from My Memoirs by Marguerite Steinheil

"But aren't you glad to see me?" asked the lovely young woman.
— from Far-away Stories by William John Locke