What is the giving of one's life in battle or in a wreck at sea to save another, in comparison with the perpetual sacrifice of many mothers of a living death lasting for half a century or more?
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

‘When they haue walkt thorow the streetes, weare their hats ore their eye-browes, like pollitick [131] penthouses, which commonly make the shop of a Mercer, or a Linnen Draper, as dark as a roome in Bedlam.’
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson

It is true, no men own a less dependence on me, yet have they reason to confess themselves indebted for no small obligations.
— from In Praise of Folly Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts by Desiderius Erasmus

With some difficulty I made out a little door, which I judged to be the only one by which she could pass, but to go from there to the casino was no small matter, since one was obliged to fetch a wide course, and with one oar I could not do the passage in less than a quarter of an hour, and that with much toil.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The moon, as Wardle had foretold, was rapidly on the wane; large tiers of dark, heavy clouds, which had been gradually overspreading the sky for some time past, now formed one black mass overhead; and large drops of rain which pattered every now and then against the windows of the chaise, seemed to warn the travellers of the rapid approach of a stormy night.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

How many do we see amongst them of my humour, who despise taking physic themselves, are men of a liberal diet, and live a quite contrary sort of life to what they prescribe others?
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

For any one to wish to derive the necessity of space-relations, known in intuition or perception, from the principle of contradiction by means of a logical demonstration is just the same as for the feudal superior of an estate to wish to hold it as the vassal of another.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

Two officers, one with a scarf over his uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse, the other in an overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyínka Street, talking.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Many of the boys held inwardly a well-founded notion that there would be serious parental objections to a plan of this kind, but their ready imaginations caught fire at the idea and they were soon in the midst of a lively discussion of plans that gradually settled down from the wild and fantastic to the faintly feasible.
— from The Dogs of Boytown by Walter A. (Walter Alden) Dyer

At this time a very audacious old man came in one of their canoes to the Capitana , with a very long and thick lance of palm wood, well balanced; and he had on a sort of cloak or hood made of a leaf dyed crimson, and a hat they had given him from the launch.
— from The Voyages of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, 1595 to 1606. Volume 1 by Pedro Fernandes de Queirós

Therefore let him, this little man of a little day, when his few years are done go to the tomb in ignorance, and his companions with him, they who might have been as wise as I am.”
— from When the World Shook Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

When we behold the hardened and regardless sinner, who perhaps mocks at the idea of practical religion, as well as the boasting, disdainful infidel, who not only mocks, but tramples on the holy ordinances of religion, could we behold him prostrate on the couch of death, then indeed, we would find an awful lesson in the contradiction of his previous pretentions to attempt to mock, or at least disregard every thing that was sacred.
— from Life and Confession of Sophia Hamilton Who was Tried, Condemned and Sentenced to be Hung, at Montreal, L. C. on the 4th of August, 1845, for the Perpetration of the Most Shocking Murders and Daring Robberies Perhaps Recorded in the Annals of Crime by William H. Jackson

Mr. Radcliffe, when the party were at the highest of their mirth, observing a little door open in the corner of the room, passed through it followed by thirteen of the prisoners; and succeeded in finding their way, unmolested, to the debtor's side, where the turnkey, not knowing them, and supposing [Pg 497] them to be visiters to the prisoners, allowed them to pass on.
— from Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume III. by Thomson, A. T., Mrs.

Again the scene changed, and she saw him riding through the flowering meads of Andredswold, looking down on her with a grave and luminous pity.
— from Uther and Igraine by Warwick Deeping

He is more honest and less speculative; more honorable and less litigious; more sincere with less pretension; superior to trickery or low intrigue; more open and less designing; of nobler motives and less hypocrisy; more refined and less presumptuous, and altogether a man of more chivalrous spirit and purer aspirations.
— from The Memories of Fifty Years Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the Southwest by W. H. (William Henry) Sparks

Flowers are laid at her feet, love affairs are confided to her advocacy, and as the shadows deepen across the great quadrangle, a weeping girl prostrates herself before the smiling goddess, and, raising brown arms in earnest supplication, kisses the stone slab at the feet of the [89] beautiful statue, popularly endowed with some occult virtue which the loosely-held Mohammedanism of a later day has failed to discredit or deny.
— from Through the Malay Archipelago by Emily Richings

wherefore you have Commanded of me these most poisonous compounds Which are the movers of a languishing death,
— from Cymbeline by William Shakespeare