What I feel is something indefinable, something exceedingly sweet and at the same time very grave and holy, a sort of religious ecstasy similar to the one which I experienced at the time of my first communion....
— from Calvary: A Novel by Octave Mirbeau

Aged as he now was, he had become weaker still, only retaining enough strength to kneel and beg God's forgiveness for thus suffering the merchants to invade the temple.
— from Truth [Vérité] by Émile Zola

The ridicule that may be thrown on the color, I despise, because I am sure of rendering essential service to my country.
— from Project Gutenberg Edition of The Memoirs of Four Civil War Generals by John Alexander Logan

Keith caught a glimpse of that face, and a sense of reckless elation shot through him.
— from The Soul of a Child by Edwin Björkman

We need not delay here further than to say that, while Fénelon looked into the heart of the people for the source of national strength, a succession of rapid events saved the king from the terrible alternative in which he was placed.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870 by Various

The Saracens, it seems, destroyed great part of the church and convent, which dates from the seventh century, or earlier, and one would imagine it had remained in the same state of ruin ever since; though it has probably been rebuilt and re-destroyed fifty tunes.
— from Béarn and the Pyrenees A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre by Louisa Stuart Costello

No matter how large the room may be, no place in it will suit him for a perch but just your nose, or the hand which happens to be busily engaged in some operation requiring extreme steadiness, to which a jerk would be fatal; and however many times he is rebuffed, he comes back, with the most unerring and fiendish precision, to exactly the self-same spot, till he has set up a maddening irritation, not only of the skin, but still more of the temper.
— from Home Life on an Ostrich Farm by Martin, Annie, Mrs.

A sort of religious enthusiasm seems to have been kindled by the sectarian strife of the period, and practices which purported to be religious, but were only immoral, were encouraged by the highest authorities.
— from The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World by William W. Sanger

One quick glance in either direction assured us of that; then we turned to the right and set out at a rapid pace, down the long passage past a succession of rooms exactly similar to the one we had just left—scores, hundreds of them.
— from Under the Andes by Rex Stout