“Paul Vasili” continues his sketch with some paragraphs about the Prince’s vast penchant for lower-class dissipated females, concluding with the warning that if ever he comes under the influence of a’ really able woman “it will be necessary to follow his actions with great caution.”
— from The Young Emperor, William II of Germany A Study in Character Development on a Throne by Harold Frederic

And if I may give my opinion, they seemed to be under a blast from Heaven: for if we will not allow a visible curse to pursue visible crimes, how shall we reconcile the events of things with the divine justice?
— from The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Neither the light nor the murmur of the century finds its way to these low depths; nobody ever reads the newspaper, even the penny paper; vocations can here shape themselves and become fixed like crystals, intact and rigid, and all of a piece; they are better protected than in the upper layers, less exposed to mundane infiltrations; they run less risk of being disturbed or thwarted by curiosity, reason and skepticism, by modern ideas; the outside world and family surroundings do not, as elsewhere, interfere with their silent internal workings.
— from The Modern Regime, Volume 2 by Hippolyte Taine

Then out of the darkness a pleasant voice called her somewhat peremptorily by name.
— from The Laughing Cavalier: The Story of the Ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness