It was a kind of triumph for me; on every side I heard regrets at my departure, and curses of the auditor.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

And so, after a little stay, and looking over a book or two there, we carried a piece of my Lord Coke with us, and to our dinner, where, after dinner, he read at my desire a chapter in my Lord Coke about perjury, wherein I did learn a good deal touching oaths, and so away to the Patent Office; in Chancery Lane, where his brother Jacke, being newly broke by running in debt, and growing an idle rogue, he is forced to hide himself; and W. Howe do look after the Office, and here I did set a clerk to look out some things for me in their books, while W. Hewer and I to the Crowne Offices where we met with several good things that I most wanted, and did take short notes of the dockets, and so back to the Patent Office, and did the like there, and by candle-light ended.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

When you read, read as Macaulay did, as Carlyle did, as Lincoln did—as did every great man who has profited by his reading—with your whole soul absorbed in what you read, with such intense concentration that you will be oblivious of everything else outside of your book.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

What chance would a few sheep, rabbits and squirrels, rats and mice, doves and chickens, have, among this ravenous multitude?
— from The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science: A Discourse by William Denton

He rather admired Miss Denham, and could not yet bring himself to believe that she was guilty.
— from A Coin of Edward VII: A Detective Story by Fergus Hume

The whitish fore wings of this species are tinged with grey or greenish grey, the cross lines and bands vary in intensity, and, as a rule, are more distinct and complete in the female than in the male.
— from The Moths of the British Isles, Second Series Comprising the Families Noctuidæ to Hepialidæ by Richard South

Jano and others, and Tumbling by young River and Miss Derrum, a child of nine years old.”
— from The Old Showmen and the Old London Fairs by Thomas Frost

Days elapsed in this dreadful condition of affairs; I saw my sceptre become merely a useless reed and my diadem a crown of thorns.
— from Memoirs of the Duchesse de Dino (Afterwards Duchesse de Talleyrand et de Sagan), 1836-1840 by Dino, Dorothée, duchesse de

Karl was taken possession of as well as herself, forced to rest a moment, drink a cordial draught from some one’s flask, and be praised, embraced, and enthusiastically blessed by the impetuous youths.
— from Proverb Stories by Louisa May Alcott

Lord Chelmsford, who was now on his way home to England, received most enthusiastic receptions at Maritzburg, Durban, and Capetown.
— from The Story of the Zulu Campaign by Edmund Verney Wyatt Edgell

VII.; and its general truths, which are those with which the landscape painter, as such, is chiefly concerned, require only a simple and straightforward application of those rules of which every other material object of a landscape has required a most difficult and complicated application.
— from Modern Painters, Volume 1 (of 5) by John Ruskin