Grief and Weeping are indeed frequent Companions, but, I believe, never in their highest Excesses.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

The failure to find God among the stars, or even the attempt to find him there, does not indicate that human experience affords no avenue to the idea of God—for history proves the contrary—but indicates rather the atrophy in this particular man of the imaginative faculty by which his race had attained to that idea.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Then said the forward wench, 'I know not if thou have ever considered how straitly we are kept and how no man dare ever enter here, save the bailiff, who is old, and yonder dumb fellow; and I have again and again heard ladies, who come to visit us, say that all other delights in the world are but toys in comparison with that which a woman enjoyeth, whenas she hath to do with a man.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

The wife replied, “We have nothing in the house except seven or eight chestnuts.
— from Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Faries by Yuk Yi

Of course, for myself I had no objection to it, as I was not in the habit either of starting or stumbling, and had only been used to depend on my driver for guidance and encouragement.
— from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Out of danger at home, many of the nobles kept watch like birds of prey on the surrounding country, and were always ready to fall, not only upon their enemies, but also on their neighbours, in the hope either of robbing them when off their guard, or of obtaining a ransom for any unwary traveller who might fall into their hands.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

“Then it will be necessary to waken him and take him with us,” said the renegade, “and everything of value in this fair mansion.” “Nay,” said she, “my father must not on any account be touched, and there is nothing in the house except what I shall take, and that will be quite enough to enrich and satisfy all of you; wait a little and you shall see,” and so saying she went in, telling us she would return immediately and bidding us keep quiet without making any noise.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Intemperance, violation of chastity, and vice of all kinds are discordant notes in the human economy which tend to destroy the great harmony of life.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

If we now introduce the human element wisely, I see no danger.
— from The Bright Messenger by Algernon Blackwood

Simple as were the funeral rites in the primitive communities, they were not lacking in the impressiveness of heartfelt sorrow nor in the homely expressions of sympathy for the bereaved and respect for the dead.
— from A Hero of Ticonderoga by Rowland Evans Robinson

It was not ingratitude that he ever minded; it was treachery, that really maddened him past forgiveness.
— from My Mark Twain (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) by William Dean Howells

A little disorder naturally, in this household equipped at hazard, as choice things could be picked up.
— from The Nabob by Alphonse Daudet

We need not imagine, we do not imagine, that he ever became a man of great learning in the law; but we do find it impossible to believe that he continued to be a man of great ignorance in it.
— from Patrick Henry by Moses Coit Tyler

I had buried my money in a safe place and there was nothing in the house except a loaf of bread and a few small coins, barely enough to last three days.
— from A Word, Only a Word — Complete by Georg Ebers

When I saw him here that night I told him every single thing, I trusted the carrying-out of everything I had arranged to him.
— from The Bittermeads Mystery by E. R. (Ernest Robertson) Punshon

For a minute or two he was filled with dismay, and real terror clutched at his heart-strings, for to be without means of making a fire in the desolate Northland, is to have entered the valley of the shadow of death.
— from The Lady of North Star by Ottwell Binns

An officer crawled out to some of this jetsam the other day, and, putting up his head from the wreckage, found nothing in the horizon except one solitary figure standing about two hundred yards in front of him; and it was a German.
— from Letters from France by C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow) Bean

Life seemed to resolve itself, not into the harmonious end of tragedy, but into more tragedy.
— from Rose MacLeod by Alice Brown