"Yes, in classe: in the second division." "Where there are sixty pupils," said I; for I knew the number, and with my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth like a snail into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape action.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

I have Physicians famed for skill, Each trained to cure some special ill: My sweetest lady, tell thy pain, And they shall make thee well again.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired the good Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking of an amorous object: “Leaning,” said he, “my shoulder to her shoulder, and my head to hers, as we were reading together in a book, I felt, without dissembling, a sudden sting in my shoulder like the biting of an insect, which I still felt above five days after, and a continual itching crept into my heart.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

“Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make, still to be sealing?
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

I was sitting in my study, looking through the accounts, when some one entered, saluting respectfully, and stood before me.
— from The Hungry Stones, and Other Stories by Rabindranath Tagore

The stillness of their aspect in each trace Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue: There is too much of man here, to look through With a fit mind the might which I behold; But soon in me shall Loneliness renew Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old, Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their fold.
— from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

How I looked around in all directions to discover something I had not yet seen in my short life!
— from Wagner as I Knew Him by Ferdinand Praeger

"I don't know," she answered between her sobs, "it 'most seems like it;" and taking up a book which lay upon the table, she drew from between its leaves a folded paper and handed it to him.
— from Bessie and Her Friends by Joanna H. (Joanna Hooe) Mathews

"For still in mutual sufferance lies The secret of true living; Love scarce is love that never knows The sweetness of forgiving.
— from Among the Hills, and other poems Part 5 From Volume I of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier by John Greenleaf Whittier

O she is my secret love.
— from Ideas of Good and Evil by W. B. (William Butler) Yeats

Besides, I'm afraid, if we do, I'll let myself go more than I mean to—it's all been stifled inside me so long—and be almost rough, and startle or hurt you.
— from The Old Gray Homestead by Frances Parkinson Keyes