Does it do more than transpose into reason, so to speak, a continuous and strong impulse—a craving for a mild sun, a bright and bracing atmosphere, southern plants, sea breezes, short meals of meat, eggs, and fruit, hot water to drink, quiet walks for days at a time, little talking, rare and cautious reading, living alone, pure, simple, and almost soldier-like habits—a craving, in short, for all things which are suited to my own personal taste?
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The dinner done, Mrs. Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all away, first sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr. Bagnet and the visitor may not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

That they are the vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit, that they are but a shadow, a blast, a bubble, and things of no continuance.
— from Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Mary White Rowlandson

In less than a week, this indomitable engineer had carried his moving caravan over slues and branches, across bottoms and along divides, and pitched his tents in the very heart of the city of Stone’s Landing.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner

5. Be able to row, pole, scull, and steer a boat; also bring a boat properly alongside and make fast.
— from Boy Scouts Handbook The First Edition, 1911 by Boy Scouts of America

I will give eighteen hundred thousand crowns to anyone that will set me on shore, all berayed and bedaubed as I am now.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Po Shih said that all that was necessary was to throw rocks into the sea and build a bridge across them.
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

Men shall yet rise up, father against son and brother against brother, and kill one another for the great Catholic idea of abolishing slavery.
— from Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy by Bernard Shaw

Yet he was sad at board and bed And savage in the fight.
— from The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Upton, a little town of some importance in the more primitive times of Severn navigation, has now scarcely anything but a bridge and small market to live upon.
— from The Rivers and Streams of England by A. G. (Arthur Granville) Bradley

In modern breaks the driving seat and boot are built almost exactly like those of a coach, where the footboard is well over the horses’ quarters.
— from Hints on Driving by C. Morley (Charles Lewis William Morley) Knight

There are storks and birds, and beetles and butterflies, and crabs and lobsters, made so cunningly of shells, that only touch convinces you they are not alive.
— from Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: First Series by Lafcadio Hearn

At six in the morning, with the summer air bright and beautiful around them, they are all going again to the castle, merry and talkative in reaction from the long constraint.
— from Life on a Mediaeval Barony A Picture of a Typical Feudal Community in the Thirteenth Century by William Stearns Davis

The trousseau—with the exception of such articles as it was considered more desirable to purchase in New York or Philadelphia—was ready, all the arrangements for the wedding feast had been made, and but a day or two intervened between that and the one which was to see Annis become a bride and set out upon her wedding tour.
— from Elsie at the World's Fair by Martha Finley

It seemed a very living part Of her own self; and bud and blade, And heat and cold, and sun and shade, And dawn and sunset, Spring and Fall, Held raptures for her, one and all.
— from Poems of Progress and New Thought Pastels by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

This is one of the very few days in my life in which I have felt mere living to be a luxury, and what it is to be akin to seas and breezes, and birds and insects, and to know why nature sings and smiles.
— from The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither by Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy) Bird

One of them, about fifteen years old, and who at the present time must, if still alive, be a bishop, attracted my notice by his features as much as by his talents.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 01: Childhood by Giacomo Casanova

But the spider, which spins a web and projects in mid-air a gossamer structure of marvelous symmetry and beauty, and builds an ambush from which to spring upon his prey, was probably one of the first instructors of adolescent man, and must have seemed to him a very deity.
— from Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans Second annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-81, pages 179-306 by William Henry Holmes

[Pg 201] work; the rest of the way is clear enough now, and I want him to come down here with me, and learn to rope a steer and bust a bronco and go camping, and have a good out-doors time of it for his last college vacation.”
— from The Delafield Affair by Florence Finch Kelly