Now that she learned he was there, nevertheless, she felt no eagerness to receive him.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James

For the opposite state of things to this could only exist on the supposition that the Author of Nature or the Supreme Artificer (ὁ δημιουργός, as Socrates and Plato loved to phrase it) delighted in inspiring creatures with a desire, and providing them with a machinery, to do things the direct effect of which is to make them miserable; that is to say, if the demiurge were a demon; of which demoniacal government of the world, however, happily there is no sign; for not even the most tortured victim of toothache, as Dr. Paley observes, has yet found himself warranted in drawing the conclusion that teeth in general were made for no other purpose than that people might be tormented with such excruciating pangs.
— from Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism by John Stuart Blackie

"He now sallied forth, not 'equal to both,' but 'armed for either field.'
— from Maxims and Hints on Angling, Chess, Shooting, and Other Matters Also, Miseries of Fishing by Richard Penn

[A] , been [43] learning another branch of the gentle art, called "Spinning a minnow;" and he now sallied forth, not "equal to both," but "armed for either field," and walked with a confident step to a celebrated spot below the mill.
— from Maxims and Hints on Angling, Chess, Shooting, and Other Matters Also, Miseries of Fishing by Richard Penn

“I understand nothing,” said Frederic; “nothing except that my life is miserable, wrecked, a thing of captivity and torture.”
— from Round the Corner Being the Life and Death of Francis Christopher Folyat, Bachelor of Divinity, and Father of a Large Family by Gilbert Cannan

It was better, he said, I should know that my father’s estate would not sell for nearly enough to clear the mortgages on it, that it would {15} require at least a hundred thousand dollars to meet and pay a debt due in three years.
— from The Spanish Galleon Being an account of a search for sunken treasure in the Caribbean Sea. by Charles Sumner Seeley

And her will I not set free; nay, ere that shall old age come on her in our house, in Argos, far from her native land, where she shall ply the loom and serve my couch.
— from The Iliad by Homer