My heart turns faint, my mind sinks in darkness and confusion when I think of it.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

[cp. medmicel ] medtrumnes (met-; y 2 ) f. weakness, infirmity, sickness, illness, disease , AO, CP.
— from A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary For the Use of Students by J. R. Clark (John R. Clark) Hall

Further than this, how extraordinarily the ways of God have been manifested beyond example: the sea is divided, a cloud has led the way, the rock has poured forth water, it has rained manna, everything has contributed to your greatness; you ought to do the rest.
— from The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

he answered. ‘Do you suppose I dread any change of that sort? I expected such a transformation on raising the lid—but I’m better pleased that it should not commence till I share it.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

According to this sense, I define a CHURCH to be, "A company of men professing Christian Religion, united in the person of one Soveraign; at whose command they ought to assemble, and without whose authority they ought not to assemble."
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

O my sweet Ithamore, go set it down; And come again so soon as thou hast done, For I have other business for thee. ITHAMORE.
— from The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe

The depth to which an artist may find current experience to be sunk in discord and confusion is not his special concern; his concern is, in some measure, to lift experience out.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

They may observe, to take only one point, the curious analogy between the early stages of dramatic composition and those soliloquies in which Iago broods over his plot, drawing at first only an outline, puzzled how to fix more than the main idea, and gradually seeing it develop and clarify as he works upon it or lets it work.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

I hate that secretiveness; it destroys all confidence.
— from The Silver Box: A Comedy in Three Acts by John Galsworthy

She is dressed, and crying bitterly in her own room; but she’s better, and quite quiet.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

She is dressed and can go down at once."
— from Traitor and True: A Romance by John Bloundelle-Burton

The season had so far advanced, and the weather become so severe, that together with the information given me by Mr. Correa, so early as September, that your friends even then were dissuading the journey, I had set it down as certain it would be postponed to a milder season of the ensuing year.
— from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9) Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private by Thomas Jefferson

It may seem a jest to call the teaching of Atîśa a reform, for he professed the Kâlacakra, the latest and most corrupt form of Indian Buddhism, but it was doubtless superior in discipline and coherency to the native superstitions mixed with debased tantrism, which it replaced.
— from Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 by Eliot, Charles, Sir

Barrie was snubbed into instant silence; but as Aline and Somerled walked away together they heard her appeal confidentially to Basil, in a tone of passionate interest: "What shall I do about clothes?
— from The Heather-Moon by A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson

The players were of the average of the spectators in dress and carriage, but in the heavy atmosphere of the rooms, which was very hot and very bad, they all alike looked dull.
— from Roman Holidays, and Others by William Dean Howells

We have never yet seen it done, and confess our own inability for the task.
— from Abolition a Sedition, by a Northern Man by Calvin Colton

Again she involuntarily drew a comparison in her mind between Marcantonio and some one, something she could not define.
— from To Leeward by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford

She was sewing on a quilt when I arrived; humming an old plantation song that ran: Angels in de water, walkin' by de light; Po' sinners stand in darkness an' cannot see de light!
— from Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume I, Alabama Narratives by United States. Work Projects Administration

And they also show that the rate at which the earth spins is diminishing and continues to diminish—that is to say, that our day is growing longer and longer, and that the heat at the centre of the earth wastes slowly.
— from The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells