Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days, dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues before I could see her as she really was.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

None, truly, if my eyes deceive me not.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Grant that I may ever desire and wish whatsoever is most pleasing and dear unto Thee.
— from The Imitation of Christ by à Kempis Thomas

Now we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in one general definition; but in spite of this, there can be no two ideas more essentially distinct than that which we attach to a metal, and that which we attach to the luminiferous ether.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

It is true, I might expatiate, did the subject require it, on the many and various objects with which the soul will be entertained in those heavenly regions; when I reflect on which, I am apt to wonder at the boldness of some philosophers, who are so struck with admiration at the knowledge of nature as to thank, in an exulting manner, the first inventor and teacher of natural philosophy, and to reverence him as a God; for they declare that they have been delivered by his means from the greatest tyrants, a perpetual terror, and a fear that molested them by night and day.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

As surprise is the real essence of them so also stealthy approach is the chief condition of execution: but this is more easily done with small bodies than with large, and for the columns of a whole Army is seldom practicable.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

By Himself I AM now growing in years, and—since I understand that Shakespeare and Mr. Emmons are deceased—it is not impossible that I may even die.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

I could not without tears in my eyes discourse with him further, but at last did pitch upon telling the truth of the whole to Mr. Coventry as soon as I could, and to that end did use means to prevent Sir W. Batten (who came to town last night) from going to that end to-day, lest he might doe it to Sir G. Carteret or Mr. Coventry before me; which I did prevail and kept him at the office all the morning.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

[107] so fast that it made everybody dizzy to look at it.
— from Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers by David Cory

I never, in after-life, formed a friendship so close, so fervent, and upon which, in all its progress, I could look back with feelings of such unalloyed pleasure, upon whose termination I must ever dwell with so deep, so yet unembittered a sorrow.
— from Two Ghostly Mysteries A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and the Murdered Cousin by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Then suddenly in the actual face of the thing itself my excitement drained from me like a tide receding.
— from Gold by Stewart Edward White

But no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea, or so correct as not to include many equivocally denoting different ideas.
— from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton

Maria Ruthven lived to rear a goodly brood of children, and Samuel Pepys records that she used to send a sort o' creepy feeling down the backs of callers by innocently introducing her children thus: "This is my eldest daughter, whose father was Sir Anthony Van Dyck, of whom you have doubtless heard; and these others are my children by my present husband, Sergeant Nobody.
— from Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 04 Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters by Elbert Hubbard

Then, in my evening dress and opera-hat, I gained the streets and ran, some twenty Neapolitan ruffians, with their knives drawn, pursuing.
— from Stromboli and the Guns by Francis Henry Gribble

It is quite in vain to try to convince her that college lectures only improve one for the worse, and that I might do myself and the world more good by devoting myself to English literature and diction, the one only thing in which it is ever possible that I might ever distinguish myself.
— from The Story of My Life, volumes 1-3 by Augustus J. C. (Augustus John Cuthbert) Hare

“I should think that I might even discipline myself to forget that such a person as Alderman Kensit existed.”
— from Fanny's First Novel by Frank Frankfort Moore

It is yellow now, and worn so where folded that it makes eight different pieces when spread out.
— from The Four Canadian Highwaymen; Or, The Robbers of Markham Swamp by J. E. (Joseph Edmund) Collins