The effect on my poor sister was most painful, she shrieked out lustily; strove hard to unsheath me, wriggled her body in all directions to effect this; but I was too securely engulphed for that, and all her struggles only enabled me the more easily to sheathe him up to the very hairs.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

Unknowing of the course to Pyle design'd, A sudden horror seized on either mind; The prince in rural bower they fondly thought, Numbering his flocks and herds, not far remote.
— from The Odyssey by Homer

When he looked up and pushed his hair aside, his dark eyes had a miserable blank non-expectance of sympathy in them, but he only said, coolly— "Perhaps some one else may turn up.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

But my life for it he was either practically conversant with his subject, or else marvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

“And thus,” to use the words of the Parliamentary History, “were seen, in the space of eight months, the rise, progress, and fall of that mighty fabric, which, being wound up by mysterious springs to a wonderful height, had fixed the eyes and expectations of all Europe, but whose foundation, being fraud, illusion, credulity, and infatuation, fell to the ground as soon as the artful management of its directors was discovered.”
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

It is that instinctive need of having a worship in common that is the chief suffering of every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning of times.
— from The Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Tribulation and anguish on the soul of every man that doeth evil.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures: Et sermone opus est modo tristi, sæpe jocoso, Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetæ, Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque Extenuantis eas consultò.
— from An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires by Alexander Pope

He would have had Congress apply six or eight millions to the purchase of arms and stores, to the building of forts or of ships, and to the organization of the militia; and with a firm party behind him and such measures of preparation, he would have spoken to Mr. Canning and to Napoleon with as much authority as it was in his power to command.
— from The Life of Albert Gallatin by Henry Adams

A door at the far end was half open, and inside the room there were two ladies—one of them very little and old and shrivelled, and the other a pretty, brown-haired, pliant creature, whom I recognised instantly as our visitor of that stormy October evening more than two years ago.
— from The Romance of a Plain Man by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

This may reduce a little the confusions that are inevitable in the study of early man tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago.
— from Early Man in the New World by Joseph A. Hester

Among three hundred popes, or anti-popes, of which history presents us with the names, we know none of them more imposing than Innocent III; his pontificate is most worthy the attention and study of European monarchs: there they may learn to what extent temporal power, united with ecclesiastical functions, amplifies and perverts them; to what universal supremacy was the papacy destined; in fine, what tyranny did it not exercise over princes, and over people, whenever political circumstances, even in a small degree, favoured sacerdotal ambition.
— from The Project Gutenberg Collection of Works by Freethinkers With Linked On-line and Off-line Indexes to 157 Volumes by 90 Authors; Plus Indexes to 15 other Author's Multi-Volume Sets. by Various

But what he accomplished at least gave rise to a school of exact military thought far in advance of any that had preceded it.
— from Before the War by Haldane, R. B. Haldane (Richard Burdon Haldane), Viscount

He sat by the side of Emily Merton, the Major—I knew he was a colonel or general, only by means of a regular Manhattan promotion, which is so apt to make hundreds of counts, copper captains, and travelling prodigies of those who are very small folk at home—the Major sat next, and, at his side, I saw a lady, whom I at once supposed to be Lucy.
— from Afloat and Ashore: A Sea Tale by James Fenimore Cooper

“By the power of imagination; by the influence of eloquent words; by a stirring swell of elevated music, the mind may be excited; the feelings may be tendered, and we may pour forth verbal supplication, whilst the heart is unchanged.”
— from On Singing and Music by Society of Friends

As this rock is hard to crush and difficult to be transported some seventy or eighty miles to this part of New Jersey, I found that in order to construct all of the road from this best material it would take more money than the bonds would provide; so I had half of the depth which forms the foundation made of good dry sedimentary rock.
— from The Future of Road-making in America by Archer Butler Hulbert

The canoes were to be carried some seven or eight miles through the wood, across the neck of land between the two lakes, and were then to be launched again on Lake Champlain, so that, by following the east shore of that lake, they would pass Ticonderoga at a safe distance.
— from With Wolfe in Canada: The Winning of a Continent by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

It is true, the Jewish nation expected the Messiah to come, surrounded by all the splendours of eastern magnificence; that he would deliver them from the Roman power, and, after a reign more glorious than Solomon's, establish a kingdom which should remain unshaken till time shall be no more.
— from Jesus, The Messiah; or, the Old Testament Prophecies Fulfilled in the New Testament Scriptures, by a Lady by Anonymous