In popular feeling, where sentiment and observation must both make themselves felt somehow or other, the tendency is to imagine that love is an absolute, non-natural energy which, for some unknown reason, or for none at all, lights upon particular persons, and rests there eternally, as on its ultimate goal.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

As no explanation was forthcoming, she shook off the subject as too difficult for a girl, and led him further into the wood, pausing every now and then at some particularly beautiful or familiar combination of the trees.
— from A Room with a View by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

This young lady, though she seems alone, and, in some measure, unprotected, is not entirely without friends; she has been extremely well educated, and accustomed to good company; she has a natural love of virtue, and a mind that might adorn any station, however exalted: is such a young lady, Sir Clement, a proper object to trifle with?-for your principles, excuse me, Sir, are well known.”
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

" There was something in the tone of her voice far more convincing than her words, and when she added, "She does not expect wages, for she has money of her own," Dr. Kennedy yielded the point, prophesying the while that there would be trouble with Hannah.
— from Cousin Maude by Mary Jane Holmes

Nor did Dudley fail to provide the new executive with fit support.
— from The Emancipation of Massachusetts by Brooks Adams

Then the way is shaded by the tender foliage of the noble elms, which flourish so mightily in this deep, strong soil that the elm is sometimes called the "Warwickshire weed.
— from Peeps at Many Lands: England by John Finnemore

I am one of those who believe that, at present, there is no evidence whatever for saying, that mankind sprang originally from any more than a single pair; I must say, that I cannot see any good ground whatever, or even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than one species of Man.
— from Man's Place in Nature, and Other Essays by Thomas Henry Huxley

Criticism never stops short nor ever wants for subjects on which to exercise itself: even if those I am able to foresee were taken from it, it would soon have discovered others.
— from Tales and Novels of J. de La Fontaine — Volume 01 by Jean de La Fontaine

There is not even warrant for supposing them to lie chiefly within that area.
— from Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886) by Martinengo-Cesaresco, Evelyn Lilian Hazeldine Carrington, contessa

“Unk-Wunk, Unk-Wunk,” grunted the lonely little hedgehog to his mother, as she peered in at him with her little dull eyes through the curtain of balsams, her cold manner showing no emotion whatever, for such is the nature of the hedgehog tribe that they rarely show much feeling over anything, no matter how tragic.
— from The Three Bears of Porcupine Ridge by Jean M. (Jean May) Thompson