"You are a great chieftain now, John Carter," she said, "and I must do your bidding, though indeed I am glad to do it under any circumstances.
— from A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

I did intend to read it, straight on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

“If I may not be your wife, dear lord,” she answered, “I must die.” “Alas!” said he, “I pray heaven that may not be; for in sooth I may not be your husband.
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

Throwing up the window-sash as Mr. Winkle was rushing into the chair, she no sooner caught sight of what was going forward below, than she raised a vehement and dismal shriek, and implored Mr. Dowler to get up directly, for his wife was running away with another gentleman.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

But the Sublime in nature—if we are passing upon it a pure aesthetical judgement, not mixed up with any concepts of perfection or objective purposiveness, in which case it would be a teleological judgement—may be regarded as quite formless or devoid of figure, and yet as the object of a pure satisfaction; and it may display a subjective purposiveness in the given representation.
— from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

“It was the date of that strange adventure,” interrupted Madame de Chevreuse.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

All these silly animals in my dwelling came at the last to seek my help as they were dissatisfied.
— from The Rainbow Book: Tales of Fun & Fancy by M. H. (Mabel Henrietta) Spielmann

It was asserted by him, almost from the date of his marriage with the lady who is now his widow,—falsely stated, as I myself do not doubt,—that when he married her he had a former wife living.
— from Lady Anna by Anthony Trollope

He did not dislike children: as a general rule, mothers in the other end of Carlingford, indeed, declared the doctor to be wonderfully tender and indulgent to his little patients: but those creatures, with their round staring eyes, the calm remarks they made upon their father's slovenly indolence and their mother's imbecility—their precocious sharp-sightedness and insubordination, moved Dr Rider with a sharp prevailing inclination, intensifying by times almost into action, to whip them all round, and banish the intolerable brats out of sight.
— from The Doctor's Family by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Sometimes the place is sadly and stupidly altered in my dream, and I am irritated; at other times it is improved and enriched, and the very landscape is idealized into a nobler and more perfect beauty.
— from Philip Gilbert Hamerton An Autobiography, 1834-1858, and a Memoir by His Wife, 1858-1894 by Eugénie Hamerton

I do sincerely trust it may be eventually effected in a way satisfactory to the South, and I most deeply deplore the steps taken by the Radical side of the House to set the two (North and South) by the ears again.
— from Abraham Lincoln by Charnwood, Godfrey Rathbone Benson, Baron

I will do my painful duty, because it is sternly and inexorably my duty; but, I wish to God, I had never set my eyes on you.
— from At the Mercy of Tiberius by Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans

It gladdened me most to see this melancholy shadow of a man for once bathed and even pervaded with a sunshine; and I must doubt whether any literary success of my own ever gave me so much pleasure.
— from Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Volume 2 (of 2) by Nathaniel Hawthorne