Next morning I noticed the first symptoms of the disease the hateful widow had communicated to me, but in three or four days I found it was of a very harmless character, and a week later I was quite rid of it.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

‘Now then, friend, stir yourself!’
— from Master and Man by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

One evening they came over for a visit, and naturally the first subject upon which the conversation turned was the neighborhood and its history; and then Grandmother Majauszkiene, as the old lady was called, proceeded to recite to them a string of horrors that fairly froze their blood.
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Nevertheless these facts show on what slight and mysterious causes the lesser or greater fertility of species when crossed, in comparison with the same species when self-fertilised, sometimes depends.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.
— from Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore

The more people gradually became separated from the dogmas, the more did they seek some sort of justification for this separation in a cult of the love of humanity: not to fall short in this respect of the Christian ideal, but to excel it if possible, was the secret stimulus of all the French free-thinkers from Voltaire to Auguste Comte; and this latter with his famous moral formula “vivre pour autrui” has indeed out-christianised even Christianity!
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I was young enough for them not to feel shy, and they chattered merrily about one thing and another.
— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

This was not the first storm she had raised up against Madam d’Houdetot, from whom she had made a thousand efforts to detach her lover, the success of some of which made the consequences to be dreaded.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

So needest thou for such a thirst a physician, not an inn-keeper, and a drug from the chemist, not one fetched from the providers of banquets.
— from Tudor school-boy life: the dialogues of Juan Luis Vives by Juan Luis Vives

In the navy they frequently served as river pilots.
— from The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 by Virginia. History, Government, and Geography Service

I do not say it is right, for I cannot think it is, that our sympathies should generally be with the evil-doer, but it is very difficult not to feel sorry for the man who, being down, is struck his bitterest blow by those of his own household; and Dolly—well, Dolly did not think if she were in Mr. Werner's shoes she would like to tell the unvarnished truth to Leonora.
— from Mortomley's Estate: A Novel. Vol. 3 (of 3) by Riddell, J. H., Mrs.

136 Brederode gaily waved the mantle he had snatched up as a pretence at a disguise, and laughed over the edge of his triple ruff which was something broken and something stained, and the couple plunged through the gates and out on to the road where the Cardinal was commencing his stately, if tedious, progress towards Namur, the first stage of the journey.
— from Prince and Heretic by Marjorie Bowen

e, who died of his wounds after the action.—R.B.] [Footnote 7: Coilus, King of the Picts, from whom the district of Kyle is said to take its name, lies buried, as tradition says, near the family seat of the Montgomeries of Coilsfield, where his burial—place is still shown.—R.B.] [Footnote 8: Barskimming, the seat of the Lord Justice— Clerk.—R.B.]
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

The doctrine grew up in an age when men were ignorant of the fundamental laws of Nature, and among a people who, though otherwise richly gifted, had no turn for sustained thought.
— from What Is and What Might Be A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular by Edmond Holmes

HIS BOOK Take mine advice, and go not near Those faces, sour as vinegar; For these, and nobler numbers, can Ne'er please the supercilious man.
— from A Selection from the Lyrical Poems of Robert Herrick by Robert Herrick

Your mother was—" Here he leaned forward and whispered a name that fairly stunned his hearers.
— from Jane Cable by George Barr McCutcheon

"You are indeed right, my Endymion," says she softly—"you are indeed right: love is the highest poetry, and he who possesses the true and real needs not the fantastic semblance.
— from The Youth of the Great Elector by L. (Luise) Mühlbach