Perhaps some other day when the mists about Dux have dispersed, and some rays of the sun shine in upon me, I shall commit all these anecdotes to paper, but now I have not the courage to do so.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated; and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

For, to extend our thoughts a little further, the pressure which is brought to explain the cohesion of bodies [*dropped line] considered, as no doubt it is, finite, let any one send his contemplation to the extremities of the universe, and there see what conceivable hoops, what bond he can imagine to hold this mass of matter in so close a pressure together; from whence steel has its firmness, and the parts of a diamond their hardness and indissolubility.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

The doctor was a stout man in shabby clothes, and when he took off his hat I noticed that he was very bald.
— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

When the next full expiration follows, the mouth is slightly closed, and the lips, from causes hereafter to be discussed, are somewhat protruded; and this form of the mouth, if the voice be at all exerted, produces, according to Helmholtz, the sound of
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

When I first visited that place in 1832 it was a dull insignificant village, which might, I suppose, contain a population of 1200 or 1500.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

“You caused my husband’s death,” she added, “and I ask you to give me a thousand crowns; if you refuse me I shall commence a lawsuit against you, for as the Swiss officer has left, you are the only person I can prosecute.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

A brother's murderer, though on the high road met, a half-burnt house, an over-swift horse, (a horse is useless, if a leg be broken), no man is so confiding as to trust any of these.
— from The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson by Snorri Sturluson

He writes of Druids moaning along the edge of hyperborean cliffs, of elephants marching in set column across hot brown stretches of sand, of the black panther crouched among the scarlet cactus-blossoms, of the polar bear lamenting among the rocks, of the Syrian sages whose beards drip with myrrh as they sit in council under the fig-tree of Naboth.
— from Aspects and Impressions by Edmund Gosse

Man is so constituted as to experience a feeling of joy when a desired object is obtained, or a feeling of disappointment if it is not obtained.
— from The Gospel Day; Or, the Light of Christianity by Charles Ebert Orr

The amende , however, was made in subsequent communications, and improvements promised in the October edition.
— from Rambles on Railways by Roney, Cusack P., Sir

If, however, there awakened within him during the process, the stirrings of those impulses which characterize the superior mind, he could remove to his proper place––the central school––mayhap, in country districts, some two or three miles away; but when the intellectual impulses are genuine, two or three miles in such cases are easily got over.
— from Leading Articles on Various Subjects by Hugh Miller

what a vacancy then made, An empty, aching void; Our peace of mind in silence crushed, And hope’s bright boon destroyed.
— from Poems: With a Sketch of the Life and Experience of Annie R. Smith by Rebekah Smith

At Glinda's command the boat rose until it was on a level with the glass dome that covered the Skeezer village, when the Sorceress made it slowly circle all around the Great Dome.
— from Glinda of Oz In Which Are Related the Exciting Experiences of Princess Ozma of Oz, and Dorothy, in Their Hazardous Journey to the Home of the Flatheads, and to the Magic Isle of the Skeezers, and How They Were Rescued from Dire Peril by the Sorcery of Glinda the Good by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

Everything goes against me: I see cudgels and gibbets preparing for me on every side.
— from The Love-Tiff by Molière