This is what I find principally wanting in their reasonings, and what I shall here endeavour to supply.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

“There is no use in my trying to make this child a Christian child, unless I save her from all the chances and reverses of slavery; and, if you really are willing I should have her, I want you to give me a deed of gift, or some legal paper.”
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

You have crushed me by referring again to my past life, and even while I am assuring you of my love and repentance, and while I still hope for a reconciliation, I tremble to feel that you can suspect me so unjustly.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

I begged thee to let me take the Road again, where I should have been safe; and thou hast sold me back to the English.
— from Kim by Rudyard Kipling

the gaunt Griffin glared From the huge helm, and the long lance of wreck and ruin flared Like a red rod of flame, stony and steeled The Gorgon’s head its leaden eyeballs rolled, And writhed its snaky horrors through the shield, And gaped aghast with bloodless lips and cold In passion impotent, while with blind gaze The blinking owl between the feet hooted in shrill amaze.
— from Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

This she enjoyed until a few years ago, when, after a long residence at Walsall, in Staffordshire, her days were closed.
— from An Historical Review of the Royal Marine Corps, from its Original Institution down to the Present Era, 1803 by Gillespie, Alexander, Major

His tutor had risen, and was ironically surveying his knees.
— from The Dark Flower by John Galsworthy

I forgave Circus right away when I saw he was really trying to join in with our fun and just hadn’t used his head, not thinking of the danger of forest fires at all.
— from The Sugar Creek Gang Digs for Treasure by Paul Hutchens

He was thinking of Lady Judith Topsparkle; wondering why she had so urgently invited him to Ringwood Abbey, when, if she had his sense of peril, she would assuredly have avoided his company.
— from Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3 by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

Your sister neglected her household and her children, giving herself over to a ridiculous ambition; whilst I----" She hesitates, deterred from proceeding by something in the captain's look: "Whilst you----" he begins.
— from Erlach Court by Ossip Schubin

Failure to reach agreements with international sponsors have denied Haiti badly needed budget and development assistance.
— from The 1998 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

But it was with the tempered warmth of a man who seeks to divest his thoughts and his purpose of the ardour of romance, and who, in serving his country, calculates on the gains to his own ambition.
— from The Parisians — Volume 11 by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron