Meanwhile I smile prettily at you, after the fashion of a stage dancer executing the final pirouette which has exhausted her strength and left her breathless.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

A woman’s mind is strangely penetrating, and yours, I am told, has an intuitive faculty more to be relied upon than the reasoning of men.
— from The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katharine Green

"I've given up my independence," said Primrose, "and yet I never felt more happy or more thankful."
— from The Palace Beautiful: A Story for Girls by L. T. Meade

Mr. Austin, if I thought basely of marriage, I should perhaps accept your offer.
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 15 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Mamma is somewhat particular, as you know; and our family solicitor, Mr. Sharpus, who is his legal friend also, speaks most warmly of him.
— from Under the Red Dragon: A Novel by James Grant

"I ain't so foolish as to show myself in such places, an' you ought'er let your head be cut off before takin' all these chances."
— from The Princess and Joe Potter by James Otis

Perhaps in the history of mankind there has never been a vast project of conquest conceived and matured in so protracted and yet so desultory a manner, as was this famous Spanish invasion.
— from PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete by John Lothrop Motley