[ A popular phrase, equivalent to: “How should I think of doing such a thing?”] Note 272 ( return ) [ Published by Senkovski, and under the censorship of the Government.]
— from A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov

"'Please expound the holy stanzas as the meaning occurs to you.'
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

But to regard them as par excellence the humane studies involves a deliberate neglect of the possibilities of the subject matter which is accessible in education to the masses, and tends to cultivate a narrow snobbery: that of a learned class whose insignia are the accidents of exclusive opportunity.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

"Nay; not so, my little Pearl," answered the minister; for, with the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon him; and he was already trembling at the conjunction in which—with a strange joy, nevertheless—he now found himself—"not so, my child.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Pours the black wine, and sees the flames aspire; The youth with instruments surround the fire: The thighs thus sacrificed, and entrails dress'd, The assistants part, transfix, and roast the rest: Then spread the tables, the repast prepare; Each takes his seat, and each receives his share.
— from The Iliad by Homer

In almost every generation, nevertheless, there happened to be some one descendant of the family gifted with a portion of the hard, keen sense, and practical energy, that had so remarkably distinguished the original founder.
— from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

It pleased Ethan to have surprised a pair of lovers on the spot where he and Mattie had stood with such a thirst for each other in their hearts; but he felt a pang at the thought that these two need not hide their happiness.
— from Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

As the scene progresses, the image of the Jack-in-the-box becomes more apparent, so that at last the characters themselves adopt its movements,—Sganarelle pushing Pancrace, each time he shows himself, back into the wings, Pancrace returning to the stage after each repulse to continue his patter.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson

"I think it's perfectly epic to have such a secret.
— from The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit; Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos by Hildegard G. Frey

The neophyte having made an offer of scents and [Pg 109] unguents (betel-nut, paun, etc.) to his spiritual guide (guru), the latter, after certain formalities, draws four circles in the form of a cross, in honour of the Tri Ratna (trinity), on the ground, and the neophyte, seated in a prescribed position, recites the following text: "I salute Lord Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and entreat them to bestow on me the Pravrajya Vrata."
— from The Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity by Arthur Lillie

If he looked directly, he saw all that had happened in the world in the past; and if he reversed the crystal, he saw all that should happen in the future; but if he held the pentacle edgewise, then he saw the present, which no man ever sees, and was the greatest magic of all.
— from The Treasure of the Isle of Mist by W. W. (William Woodthorpe) Tarn

Then Niels was ordered to take off all his clothes, piece by piece, even to his shirt, and dress the dead man in them.
— from The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales Including Stories by Feodor Mikhailovitch Dostoyevsky, Jörgen Wilhelm Bergsöe and Bernhard Severin Ingemann by Various

How he wished he had had nothing to do with that house; and yet, it was a privilege even to have seen her, to have heard her voice, to have done her a slight service.
— from Tempest-Driven: A Romance (Vol. 1 of 3) by Richard Dowling

At that moment it seemed to me agony past endurance that he should accuse and judge me falsely; that he should call my love hypocrisy; I thought I would rather die, than meet him in the way he prescribed, as life could have no greater misery in store for me than this; but by degrees I grew conscious that there was not so heavy a load on my breast, so racking an anguish in my brain, as I had known in those hours when, tortured with anxiety, I had been commanded to smile; when, degraded in my own eyes, and condemned by my own heart, I had been placed by him on a pinnacle, from which I dreaded each moment to be hurled.
— from Ellen Middleton—A Tale by Georgiana Fullerton

So they went out and took their fill of Quebec with appetites keen through long fasting from the quaint and old, and only sharpened by Montreal, and impartially rejoiced in the crooked up-and-down hill streets; the thoroughly French domestic architecture of a place that thus denied having been English for a hundred years; the porte-cocheres beside every house; the French names upon the doors, and the oddity of the bellpulls; the rough-paved, rattling streets; the shining roofs of tin, and the universal dormer-windows; the littleness of the private houses, and the greatness of the high-walled and garden-girdled convents; the breadths of weather-stained city wall, and the shaggy cliff beneath; the batteries, with their guns peacefully staring through loop-holes of masonry, and the red-coated sergeants flirting with nursery-maids upon the carriages, while the children tumbled about over the pyramids of shot and shell; the sloping market-place before the cathedral, where yet some remnant of the morning's traffic lingered under canvas canopies, and where Isabel bought a bouquet of marigolds and asters of an old woman peasant enough to have sold it in any market-place of Europe; the small, dark shops beyond the quarter invaded by English retail trade; the movement of all the strange figures of cleric and lay and military life; the sound of a foreign speech prevailing over the English; the encounter of other tourists, the passage back and forth through the different city gates; the public wooden stairways, dropping flight after flight from the Upper to the Lower Town; the bustle of the port, with its commerce and shipping and seafaring life huddled close in under the hill; the many desolate streets of the Lower Town, as black and ruinous as the last great fire left them; and the marshy meadows beyond, memorable of Recollets and Jesuits, of Cartier and Montcalm.
— from Their Wedding Journey by William Dean Howells

I lose the power even to hope sometimes.
— from Swords Reluctant by Max Pemberton

Presently Earl thought he saw something in the brush along the water front, and, taking up a half-decayed stick, he threw it at the spot.
— from To Alaska for Gold; Or, The Fortune Hunters of the Yukon by Edward Stratemeyer