My eyes seek you vainly, you are no longer there to smile upon me; it is all over—I shall never again see the little roost whence you used to blow kisses and wave your hand so tenderly.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

Had they been allowed to go on, it is impossible that they should not, at some time or another, have attempted to restrain the production of the particular articles of which they had thus usurped the monopoly, not only to the quantity which they themselves could purchase, but to that which they could expect to sell with such a profit as they might think sufficient.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

What efforts of patience, courage, and resignation did it not cost the troops of Napoleon, Massena, Soult, Ney, and Suchet to sustain themselves for six years against three or four hundred thousand
— from The Art of War by Jomini, Antoine Henri, baron de

If the ends which form the mark seem narrow and selfish to adults, it is only because adults (by means of a similar engrossment in their day) have mastered these ends, which have consequently ceased to interest them.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

We are not so stupid, or so careless, as that Imperial forgetter of his dreams, that we should need a seer to remind us of the form of them.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

O my Conservative friends, who still specially name and struggle to approve yourselves 'Conservative,' would to Heaven I could persuade you of this world-old fact,
— from Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle

png 028 Not Summer’s crown of scent the red rose weaves Nor hawthorn blossom over bloom-strewn grass, Nor violet’s whisper when the children pass, Nor lilac perfume in the soft May eves, Nor new-mown hay, crisp scent of yellow sheaves, Nor any scent that Spring-time can amass And Summer squander, such a magic has As scent of fresh wet earth and fallen leaves.
— from All Round the Year by Caris Brooke

Fortunately, the bushes had afforded us some protection; they were so numerous and so thick that one could scarcely see twenty rods ahead of him, and with their great overhanging branches had kindly kept the falling snow out of our faces, at least while we slept.
— from The Recollections of a Drummer-Boy by Henry Martyn Kieffer

Toupet (Francis), the cruel bailiff, had such a stiff neck and sore throat that he could hardly move—so he was rubbed hard with Elliman's Embrocation and sent to bed as soon as the répétition was over.
— from Letters of a Diplomat's Wife, 1883-1900 by Mary King Waddington

All the dogs a barkin’, the women servants screeching, the old gentleman commandin’, and me colleen huggin’ the Angel tight an’ saying never a say, though the poor Dago Eyetalian was trembling himself into his grave, till all a sudden like, up flies Glory, heedin’ dogs nor no dogs, an’ flings herself at Broadacres’ feet, demanding her grandpa!
— from A Sunny Little Lass by Evelyn Raymond

Of course incidental difficulties would sometimes arise; but in general she managed everything so nicely and systematically that matters fell into their own time and place as regularly as possible.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865 A Monthly Eclectic Magazine by Various

But he had done so in the expectation that he should never again see the squire in this world.
— from Mr. Scarborough's Family by Anthony Trollope

Jim got a piece of canvas, a sail-maker’s needle, and some twine, with a pig of iron ballast which had been used in one of the boats.
— from Peter Trawl; Or, The Adventures of a Whaler by William Henry Giles Kingston

A Grateful People On the 20th of August, 1672, the city of the Hague, always so lively, so neat, and so trim that one might believe every day to be Sunday, with its shady park, with its tall trees, spreading over its Gothic houses, with its canals like large mirrors, in which its steeples and its almost Eastern cupolas are reflected,—the city of the Hague, the capital of the Seven United Provinces, was swelling in all its arteries with a black and red stream of hurried, panting, and restless citizens, who, with their knives in their girdles, muskets on their shoulders, or sticks in their hands, were pushing on to the Buytenhof, a terrible prison, the grated windows of which are still shown, where, on the charge of attempted murder preferred against him by the surgeon Tyckelaer, Cornelius de Witt, the brother of the Grand Pensionary of Holland was confined.
— from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas