It seemed to me that the beauty of the trees was hers also, and that, as for the spirit of those horizons, of the village of Roussainville, of the books which I was reading that year, it was her kiss which would make me master of them all; and, my imagination drawing strength from contact with my sensuality, my sensuality expanding through all the realms of my imagination, my desire had no longer any bounds.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

“To deliver up millions of men, superior minds, scientists, even geniuses, to the caprice and will of a being who, in an instant of gaiety, madness, intoxication or love, would not hesitate to sacrifice everything for his exalted fancy, would spend the wealth of the country amassed by others with difficulty, would have thousands of men slaughtered on the battle-fields, all this appears to me—a simple logician—a monstrous aberration.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

Later, when visiting her irrepressible brother-in-law, Aaron McLean, she made some especially nice cream biscuits for supper, and he said, "I'd rather see a woman make such biscuits as these than 044 solve the knottiest problem in algebra."
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

They had no connexion with Multan (Skt. Mūlasthānapura), (Smith, EHI , 96; McCrindle, Alexander , 350 ff.).]
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

“I mean Stephen Morley,” said Egremont recalling his position, “whom I met in Marney Abbey.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

There is no talisman in the word “parent” which can generate miracles of affection, and I can well believe that my own child might find it less of a calamity to lose both Arowhena and myself when he is six years old, than to find us again when he is sixty—a sentence which I would not pen did I not feel that by doing so I was giving him something like a hostage, or at any rate putting a weapon into his hands against me, should my selfishness exceed reasonable limits.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

In my present unpardonably crazy state, any cold might send me skipping, either back to Davos, or further off.
— from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Then Mary said: "My soul extols the Lord, 001:047 And my spirit triumphs in God my Saviour; 001:048 Because He has not turned from His maidservant in her lowly position; For from this time forward all generations will account me happy, 001:049
— from Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Luke by Richard Francis Weymouth

And I have never been able to decide whether she was concealing, playfully, some little folly or awkwardness of her own, or, behind her light manner, some more serious experience.
— from The Blue Wall A Story of Strangeness and Struggle by Richard Washburn Child

"Mother sent me," stammered Ellen—"I wish, if you please, sir—mamma wished me to look at merinoes, sir, if you please."
— from The Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner

My ideas of Paris are all derived from reading Balzac, who has certainly created the most delightful, gay and mysterious, sad, mystic, sordid, everything one could wish in a city of dreams and realities.
— from An Anarchist Woman by Hutchins Hapgood

I have borne much, suffered much, sought even the court of Charles, which my whole soul loathes, to obtain the transferment to thee of all my earthly possessions, and now do not refuse to relieve me of their heavy charge.”
— from Home Scenes and Heart Studies by Grace Aguilar

Direct her gaze as she might, she met some eye watching her, some couple enjoying her confusion.
— from Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France by Stanley John Weyman