Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?"
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

And with that we come to the last point of all; the point at which we can perceive the needs of women, like the rights of men, stopped and falsified by something which it is the object of this book to expose.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Accordingly I hid myself in some thick underwood, determining to devote the ensuing hours to reflection on my situation.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Nevertheless, whether she forgot and forgave, or whether she could hit upon no other way of taking vengeance, she was perfectly agreeable to me during the rest of my stay in Milan.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Up, and by water to White Hall, and thence walked to St. James’s, and there to Mr. Wren’s; and he told me that my business was done about my warrant on the Maybolt Galliott; which I did see, and though it was not so full in the reciting of my services as the other was in that of Sir W. Pen’s, yet I was well pleased with it, and do intend to fetch it away anon.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

This is that famed Martial law, with its Red Flag, its 'Drapeau Rouge:' in virtue of which Mayor Bailly, or any Mayor, has but henceforth to hang out that new Oriflamme of his; then to read or mumble something about the King's peace; and, after certain pauses, serve any undispersing Assemblage with musket-shot, or whatever shot will disperse it.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

Thou hast therefore given to me who am so weak, Thy sacred Body and Blood, for the refreshing of my soul and body, and hast set Thy Word for a lantern to my feet.(3) Without these two I could not properly live; for the Word of God is the light of my soul, and Thy Sacrament the bread of life.
— from The Imitation of Christ by à Kempis Thomas

How little has been done in the region of mind since that calamity, and by what isolated and spasmodic efforts?
— from The Revival of Irish Literature Addresses by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G, Dr. George Sigerson, and Dr. Douglas Hyde by George Sigerson

I can't set down the whole, tho' right worthy, having dedicated the remainder of my sheet to something else.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5 The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 1796-1820 by Charles Lamb

Whether the rights of men shall be equal is not a matter of opinion but of right, and consequently of principle; for men do not hold their rights as grants from each other, but each one in right of himself.
— from The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Volume III. 1791-1804 by Thomas Paine

Amid such fields and forests, over mountain roads, and listening to the roar of mountain streams, we came down to Ambarrawa, a place of note in Java, as containing the strongest fortress in the island.
— from From Egypt to Japan by Henry M. (Henry Martyn) Field

The brethren of St. Francis, though they made one or two exchanges of the kind that Glaucus made with Diomedes, had the sense to put the canvases they elected to preserve beyond the reach of Marshal Soult, and the Salon of Trabella holds inter alia the "St. Francis at the foot of the Cross," "Justa and Rufina," "St. Thomas of Villanueva," and two Conceptions.
— from Murillo by S. L. (Samuel Levy) Bensusan

It had been one of the recommendations of Mr. Snow Harris to the Admiralty that his copper plates, though expensive at first, would always be worth their money as old metal; and the irony of fate would have it that the conversion of copper into silver was not to be long in waiting.
— from Lightning Conductors: Their History, Nature, and Mode of Application by Anderson, Richard, F.C.S.

The epoch of the rise of modern spiritualism was analogous to that when the classical and oriental spiritualism rose into the sphere of the educated consciousness In both periods the marvellous ‘phenomena’ were practically the same, and so were the perplexities, the doubts, the explanatory hypotheses of philosophical observers.
— from Cock Lane and Common-Sense by Andrew Lang

He is clogged by no dull system of realities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted prejudices, by nothing that belongs to the mighty trunk and hard husk of nature and habit, but is drawn up by irresistible levity to the regions of mere speculation and fancy, to the sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spirit floats in 'seas of pearl and clouds of amber.'
— from Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners by William Hazlitt

‘I am sure you wish me well, sir,’ said Madame de Bourke in a dignified way, ‘but I require to be certified of the safety of the rest of my suite, my steward, my lackey, and my husband’s secretary, a young gentleman of noble birth.’
— from A Modern Telemachus by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge