But between them there was still a gulf, and no one could pass from the one to the other.
— from Timaeus by Plato

Be not her maid since she is envious; Her vestal livery is but sick and green, And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
— from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

I stroked it gently, on which the mutinous rogue seemed to swell, and gather a new degree of fierceness and insolence; so that finding it grew not to be trifled with any longer, I prepared for rubbers in good earnest.
— from Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) by John Cleland

then, recruited, spoke: "What moves this journey from my native sky, A goddess asks, nor can a god deny.
— from The Odyssey by Homer

But Dobbin was of too simple and generous a nature to have any doubts about Amelia.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

As long ago as the time of James I. it was said that "the libel ought to be only [34] against the ship and goods, and not against the party."
— from The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Such a grand and noble thing is disinterested virtue, that the sufferer was more ashamed, than the inflicter of the injury, of having it known, that, after so many splendid services performed in the interests of Philip, he had got such a return as that for his loyalty.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

On the other side, all governments are not of the same nature: some are less voracious than others, and the differences between them are based on this second principle, that the further from their source the public contributions are removed, the more burdensome they become.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He scampered across, grabbed a nut, and rushed back to the window-sill, where he ate the nut.
— from Happy Jack by Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) Burgess

"In Spain," a great and noble writer has said, Pg 147 "was the point put upon honour."
— from From Capetown to Ladysmith: An Unfinished Record of the South African War by G. W. (George Warrington) Steevens

This custom, which was once so prevalent, has not yet died out, for in Norfolk, whenever servants are going after new situations, a shoe is thrown after them, with the wish that they may succeed in what they are going about.
— from Domestic folk-lore by T. F. (Thomas Firminger) Thiselton-Dyer

Baby did the same, and got a nasty fall on the stone flags, so I asked W. if he would ask Ferdinand to put a strip of carpet on the steps (there were only four).
— from Chateau and Country Life in France by Mary King Waddington

We have found him to have shaped a great and noble mould of humanity, separate indeed from our experience, but allied through a thousand channels with our sympathies.
— from Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3 I. Agorè: Polities of the Homeric Age. II. Ilios: Trojans and Greeks Compared. III. Thalassa: The Outer Geography. IV. Aoidos: Some Points of the Poetry of Homer. by W. E. (William Ewart) Gladstone

No age will come in which it will cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th of July, 1776.
— from Thomas Jefferson, a Character Sketch by Edward Sylvester Ellis

The self assurance gave away nervousness.
— from Terminal Compromise by Winn Schwartau