But you, you are a pure and naïve creature; you, a gentle being whose life has been all but linked with mine at the will of a capricious and imperious heart; you who looked at me perhaps with contempt when I shed weak tears on the eve of our frustrated marriage; you, who cannot in any case look on me except as a comic figure—for you, for you is the last cry of my heart, for you my last duty, for you alone!
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I soon knocked off my Will, and we have just the same sum to dispose of, but her large sheets of paper are not covered yet.
— from A Lady of England: The Life and Letters of Charlotte Maria Tucker by Agnes Giberne

In short, abundant provisions and spacious cells yield females; scanty provisions and narrow cells yield males.
— from More Hunting Wasps by Jean-Henri Fabre

Already, yesterday, this [Pg 242] frightful news was burst upon me through the papers, and now comes your heart-rending narrative to engrave it for ever in letters of blood on my heart.
— from The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England, Volume 2 (of 6) Mémoires d'outre-tombe, volume 2 by Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de

It inhabits shady caverns, which are sometimes lighted by a golden gleam from the refractions of the confervoid shoots of its mycelium-like pro-embryo, which is perennial, and produces a new crop year after year.
— from On Molecular and Microscopic Science, Volume 1 (of 2) by Mary Somerville

Besides, you can't always prove a negative, can you?"
— from The Zankiwank and The Bletherwitch: An Original Fantastic Fairy Extravaganza by S. J. Adair (Shafto Justin Adair) Fitz-Gerald

"If my pay and profits are not cut, you may make my Ancestors' Oracle my master.
— from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling

,” said Soames suddenly, “I prefer that you should keep the watch going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with this end.”
— from The Works of John Galsworthy An Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy by John Galsworthy

The Samoyeds were wont to make circles of stones of rude blocks set up, and these are still to be seen in the districts they inhabit; and although these people are nominally Christians, yet they are secretly [Pg 59] addicted to their old paganism.
— from A Book of Dartmoor Second Edition by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould