My father and she did it on Sunday, when they were gone to church, in open daylight, in the midst of the garden; where, for aught they knew, many eyes might see them: which put me into such trouble, that I was almost mad about it, and presently cast about, how to have it back again to secure it here, the times being a little better now; at least at White Hall they seem as if they were, but one way or other I am resolved to free them from the place if I can get them.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

We are dead men, every mother’s son of us.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

The Fourth Bolgia: Soothsayers. Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. Virgil reproaches Dante's Pity.
— from Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell by Dante Alighieri

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

A wintry gale, which mingled with the rain, blew in gusts, the patrol searched all the doorways, alleys, enclosures, and obscure nooks, and in their search for nocturnal vagabonds they passed in silence before the elephant; the monster, erect, motionless, staring open-eyed into the shadows, had the appearance of dreaming happily over his good deed; and sheltered from heaven and from men the three poor sleeping children.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

She pretended not to understand what I meant, and on my explaining myself she had the impudence to tell me that I was mistaken.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

I had them all against me except my sister and my English friends, and my saintly guide, Father Vincent de Paul, who assured me that I was by no means bound to accept a man like that; and as for silencing scandal, it was much better to live it down.
— from Stray Pearls: Memoirs of Margaret De Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

The study of manorial evidence must start from a discussion as to terminology.
— from Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History by Paul Vinogradoff

He might have desired on the part of the maiden either more shyness, delicacy, and elusiveness, or more resonant emotion.
— from The Rough Road by William John Locke

"Not over the threshold, most excellent man!" said he, pushing him back.
— from Felicitas: A Tale of the German Migrations: A.D. 476 by Felix Dahn

The Jew understood it to mean the latter; and it would seem as if we might employ modern scientific discovery to enable us to decide in which sense the Bible did use the term.
— from The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences by Edward Hitchcock

I am always fearful of any punishment, beyond what the law publicly authorizes, being privately inflicted by any keeper or officer of a prison; for my experience most strongly proves that there are few men who are themselves sufficiently governed and regulated by Christian principle to be fit to have such power entrusted to their hands; and further, I observe that officers in prisons have generally so much to try and to provoke them that they themselves are apt to become hardened to the more tender feelings of humanity.
— from Elizabeth Fry by Emma Raymond Pitman

He decorates my apartments; he spends enormous sums upon my entertainments; my servants, my opera-box, all external matters are maintained with the utmost splendor.
— from A Daughter of Eve by Honoré de Balzac