So she made the change, and straightway fancied that everything was spoiled by it; not recognizing that it was the nervousness of the juncture, and her own native squeamishness as an old maid, that wrought all the seeming mischief.
— from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

An æsthetic bias is native to sense, being indeed nothing but its form and potency; and the influence which æsthetic habits exercise on thought and action should not be regarded as an intrusion to be resented, but rather as an original interest to be built upon and developed.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Our mission was to find quarters for the legation, and after consultation with them we went to inspect a yashiki behind the castle, which had been occupied in the spring by Iga no Kami, Keiki's principal minister.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

The sun is a good sun, but it never gilds this house.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

“It would be with the greatest pleasure, sir, but I never play except when I am under arrest.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

“I have no such letter, I promise you,” answered Sophia; “and, if he be a murderer, he will soon be in no condition to give you any further disturbance.”
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Thus the second mode employed by speculative reason of demonstrating the existence of a Supreme Being, is not only, like the first, illusory and inadequate, but possesses the additional blemish of an ignoratio elenchi—professing to conduct us by a new road to the desired goal, but bringing us back, after a short circuit, to the old path which we had deserted at its call.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. (Harriet Ann) Jacobs

“No,” replied Eyvind, “I can take no baptism, for I am an evil spirit placed in a man’s body by Lapland sorcery, because in no other way could my father and mother {422} have a child,” and with that he died.
— from A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III by Henry Charles Lea

It was this wisdom, sustained by, if not born of, integrity and disinterestedness, that distinguished the highest class of our Revolutionary and Constitutional statesmen, culminating in Washington, and in no one of his contemporaries more manifest than in John Jay.
— from The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 Devoted To Literature And National Policy by Various

The Major, unaccustomed as he was to these vicissitudes of Kamchatkan travel, held out like a Spartan; but I noticed that for the last ten miles he rode upon a pillow, and shouted at short intervals to Dodd, who, with stoical imperturbability, was riding quietly in advance: "Dodd!
— from Tent Life in Siberia A New Account of an Old Undertaking; Adventures among the Koraks and Other Tribes In Kamchatka and Northern Asia by George Kennan

They may lack moral courage; they may exaggerate their misfortunes, lose the sense of proportion, but the man who plunges the dagger in his heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps from some roof and dashes himself against the stones beneath, is not and cannot be a physical coward.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 07 (of 12) Dresden Edition—Discussions by Robert Green Ingersoll

Henry II. had expected as much, and had ordered Coligny, who was commanding in Picardy and Flanders, to hold himself in readiness to take the field as soon as he should be, if not forced, at any rate naturally called upon, by any unforeseen event.
— from A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 4 by François Guizot

The Lord knew that we were penniless, and should be in need of fresh supplies today for the Orphans, therefore He moved the hearts of some of His children to remember us, in answer to our prayer.
— from A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller. Part 2 by George Müller

The WATER SNAKE is much like the Rattle Snake in shape and size, but is not endowed with the same venomous powers, being quite harmless.
— from Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768 by Jonathan Carver

As I have said before, I naturally look at things differently from others.
— from The Pomp of Yesterday by Joseph Hocking