Remitting in good part the labor of his slaves, he now approves himself a man, or rather devil, of great abilities in the way of cajoling or coercing others into acquiescence with his own ulterior designs, however at first abhorrent to them.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville
No matter how he feels about himself, unduly elated or unduly depressed, he may still truly know his own worth by measuring it by the outward standard he applies to other men, and counteract the injustice of the feeling he cannot wholly escape.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James
This squalid officer fell from beggar to blackmailer, and one ugly day he got his hold upon his brother, the prince.
— from The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
Lily, to whom family reunions were occasions of unalloyed dulness, had persuaded her aunt that a dinner of "smart" people would be much more to the taste of the young couple, and Mrs. Peniston, who leaned helplessly on her niece in social matters, had been prevailed upon to pronounce Grace's exile.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The lover of the person you have been with kept a lady in society for some time in great splendour, but all the rest of us despised her.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova
The other ushers disgusted him.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant
Some five of us doctors have died in this place....
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf
In speaking her manner is self-possessed without ranting or unpleasant demonstrations, her tones slightly monotonous.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper
This movement of thought, which clothed external objects in all the wealth of undeciphered dreams, has long lost its momentum and yielded to a contrary tendency.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
And thus the lady excused to herself, as so many of us do, her lack of true charity.
— from Crying for the Light; Or, Fifty Years Ago. Vol. 3 [of 3] by J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie
And again, in his ode upon Dr. Harvey: “And dance, like fairies, a fantastic round.” Pluquet, in his “Contes Populaires de Bayeux,” tells us that the fairy rings, called by the peasants of Normandy “Cercles des fées,” are said to be the work of fairies.
— from Folk-lore of Shakespeare by T. F. (Thomas Firminger) Thiselton-Dyer
“Ever, my dearest Reilly, yours, and yours only, until death, “Helen Folliard.”
— from Willy Reilly The Works of William Carleton, Volume One by William Carleton
His pent-up eagerness to denounce the present methods of Christianity, his fullness of utterance, defeated his purpose.
— from Condensed Novels: New Burlesques by Bret Harte
Urban at this juncture pressed Francesco Maria hard; and in 1624 the last Duke of Urbino devolved his lordships to the Holy See.
— from Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete Series I, II, and III by John Addington Symonds
Lonely night-birds sent forth their cries, so like human wails that they were fairly startling; noisome reptiles, disturbed by her approach, slid away through the gloom with venomous hisses; but still Sybil passed on, upright, defiant, her hand clenching the weapon concealed in her dress with a tight grasp, and her eyes flashing with the fearful enjoyment which the scene produced upon her mind, to which excitement was necessary as oxygen is to the air.
— from Sybil Chase; or, The Valley Ranche: A Tale of California Life by Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
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