She had always felt that Charlotte's opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own, but she could not have supposed it possible that when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

There are those who hasten to answer this query in scathing terms and who say lightly and repeatedly that out of black slavery came nothing decent in womanhood; that adultery and uncleanness were their heritage and are their continued portion.
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

She took me in and treated me with the utmost kindness; indeed she wanted to make me immortal that I might never grow old, but she could not persuade me to let her do so.
— from The Odyssey Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original by Homer

Then he told of cunning Circe and her craft, and how he sailed to the chill house of Hades, to consult the ghost of the Theban prophet Teiresias, and how he saw his old comrades in arms, and his mother who bore him and brought him up when he was a child; how he then heard the wondrous singing of the Sirens, and went on to the wandering rocks and terrible Charybdis and to Scylla, whom no man had ever yet passed in safety; how his men then ate the cattle of the sun-god, and how Jove therefore struck the ship with his thunderbolts, so that all his men perished together, himself alone being left alive; how at last he reached the Ogygian island and the nymph Calypso, who kept him there in a cave, and fed him, and wanted him to marry her, in which case she intended making him immortal so that he should never grow old, but she could not persuade him to let her do so; and how after much suffering he had found his way to the Phaeacians, who had treated him as though he had been a god, and sent him back in a ship to his own country after having given him gold, bronze, and raiment in great abundance.
— from The Odyssey Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original by Homer

Her teeth—two rows of magnificent pearls—made one overlook the fact that her mouth was somewhat too large, and whether from habit, or because she could not help it, she seemed to be ever smiling.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Oh, but she could not presume to do that.
— from A True Friend: A Novel by Adeline Sergeant

In the king's service, of course?” Fanny would rather have had Edmund tell the story, but his determined silence obliged her to relate her brother's situation: her voice was animated in speaking of his profession, and the foreign stations he had been on; but she could not mention the number of years that he had been absent without tears in her eyes.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

With a sigh, she leaned her head on her hand, and tried to think it out, but she could not think.
— from Wild Margaret by Charles Garvice

Her eyes opened at last; the woman struggled bravely to show interest in the sight that half-cheered the others, but she could not.
— from Dave Darrin After the Mine Layers; Or, Hitting the Enemy a Hard Naval Blow by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

Dolores did not want to lower herself by showing jealousy or offence, but she could not help turning decidedly away, saying— “I am wanted.”
— from The Long Vacation by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

Fight against it as they may, they cannot see the difference between right and wrong; they can only, by struggling, come nearer to the light.
— from A Dozen Ways Of Love by L. (Lily) Dougall

The stir of clear and moving waters, though automatically, of course, the invariable note of the highest expressions of British scenery, can never be dispensed with by those reared among them.
— from The Rivers and Streams of England by A. G. (Arthur Granville) Bradley

There followed a period of beneficent social changes, no less radical than those which the new mechanical inventions had produced in the economics of industry.
— from The Rural Life Problem of the United States Notes of an Irish Observer by Plunkett, Horace Curzon, Sir