The chief aim of women in making their toilette is to please men, but how poor is the judgment of most men in such matters compared to the unerring instinct of the generality of women!
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

D’Artagnan had been a hundred times in the same room with the queen since he had become lieutenant of the musketeers, but her majesty had never once spoken to him.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

Some have a vague impression that he was mysteriously moulded by his great father: that he inherited the genius, the eloquence, the state craft of Chatham.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

Mitya would have said something more, but he broke off and went
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I undressed hastily, followed her with bare feet, and laid myself beside her.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

If all machines were to be annihilated at one moment, so that not a knife nor lever nor rag of clothing nor anything whatsoever were left to man but his bare body alone that he was born with, and if all knowledge of mechanical laws were taken from him so that he could make no more machines, and all machine-made food destroyed so that the race of man should be left as it were naked upon a desert island, we should become extinct in six weeks.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

But whatever might be his opinion of the matter, our two ladies seemed to entertain a different idea of it: for as soon as the pamphlet appeared, I could perceive their care of their patient considerably diminish, till at last it ended in a total neglect.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

As that amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds of our money, equal in those days to a million or two, the story must be held to savour of romance.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

and thou Mother Earth, Where I thy foster son receiv’d my birth, Hold fast the steel!
— from The Aeneid by Virgil

“Now, D’Arcy, my boy,” he continued, in his free and easy tone, “it’s stupid work lying here between the blankets; so if you’ll just give me the loan of some of your toggery till mine are dry, I’ll sit up at table and crack a bottle of wine with you.”
— from Salt Water: The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman by William Henry Giles Kingston

I asked; ‘and this country, with its glaring sunlight and impenetrable shade, its rank, exuberant, primordial peoples——’ I heard her give a short gasp in her throat; then she turned to me, bringing her white face, with its delicate features and great, luminous eyes, close to mine.
— from The Mountain of Fears by Henry C. (Henry Cottrell) Rowland

He refused to profit by the very valuable commencements made by his predecessors, especially by Hartley, Brown, and James Mill (if indeed any of those philosophers were known to him), and left the psychological branch of the positive method, as well as psychology itself, to be put in their true position as a part of Positive Philosophy by successors who duly placed themselves at the twofold point of view of physiology and psychology, Mr Bain and Mr Herbert Spencer.
— from Auguste Comte and Positivism by John Stuart Mill

A talent that's so uncertain and rudimentary here that most people don't believe it, might be highly developed out there.
— from Accidental Death by Peter Baily

He was a hasty, masterful man, but he was never rough to me.
— from A Crooked Path: A Novel by Mrs. Alexander

In the town he might be neglected, despised, picked for an easy mark, but here among his own people he was a ruler and leader by birth.
— from The Blood of the Conquerors by Harvey Fergusson

"Is there a state more blessed," he asked, "than that of a woman with child?...
— from The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche by H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken

I asked him why he did so, doubting whether he understood me; but he answered, that he could not imagine any one coming to such a place unless it were to feed sheep.
— from The Desultory Man Collection of Ancient and Modern British Novels and Romances. Vol. CXLVII. by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James