The whirlwind of the attack was, at that moment, so violently concentrated upon Enjolras and upon the door of the wine-shop, that no one saw Jean Valjean sustaining the fainting Marius in his arms, traverse the unpaved field of the barricade and disappear behind the angle of the Corinthe building.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

I feel my heart seized by por vértigo infernal..., mi alma perdida an infernal dizziness... my soul va cruzando el desierto de la vida is crossing life’s desert without a goal, cual hoja seca que arrebata el viento.
— from Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla

But to follow this will it is necessary to know it, and above all to distinguish it from the particular will, beginning with one's self: this distinction is always very difficult to make, and only the most sublime virtue can afford sufficient illumination for it.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I visited them all with pleasure, and they related to me several very curious anecdotes.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The most of us starve: some put up with the pickle: for my part I purchase my spirits vivente corpore, in which case I find they keep very well.”
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

My first idea, after that of being presented, was that of my frequently wanting to retire; this had made me suffer very considerably at the theatre, and might torment me the next day when I should be in the gallery, or in the king’s apartment, amongst all the great, waiting for the passing of his majesty.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Professor Wilson, in a poetical notice of Blackwood’s Magazine, writes: “Few things more sweetly vary civil life Than a barbarian, savage Tinkler tale; Our friend, who on the Gipsies writes in Fife, We verily believe promotes our sale.”
— from A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the Gipsy Language by Walter Simson

We had made some very congenial acquaintances in Christ Church.
— from The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd by L. P. (Louis Pope) Gratacap

In addition to the causes to which I have alluded as especially influential in country places, to produce such a state of [Pg 70] feeling, may be mentioned a sectarian spirit, the bane of many small villages, creating needless prejudices, dividing the community into discordant fragments, and forcing a man to stand, in a degree at least, not on his own merits, but on the preference of the sect with which he may be connected.
— from Ten Years Among the Mail Bags Or, Notes from the Diary of a Special Agent of the Post-Office Department by James Holbrook