and there went off with Sir W. Warren and took occasion to desire him to lend me L100, which he said he would let the have with all his heart presently, as he had promised me a little while ago to give me for my pains in his two great contracts for masts L100, and that this should be it.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

But to her utter amazement she found that to proceed along the room was by no means the way to disengage themselves from the crowd; it seemed rather to increase as they went on, whereas she had imagined that when once fairly within the door, they should easily find seats and be able to watch the dances with perfect convenience.
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

This, well considered, plainly shows that the will is perfectly distinguished from desire; which, in the very same action, may have a quite contrary tendency from that which our will sets us upon.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

I was abashed how to find expression for my thanks; but she was no less abashed at the thought of hearing them; begged us to lose no time and to hold our peace, saying (very properly) that the heart of our matter was in haste and silence; and so, what with one thing and another, she had set us on the Lothian shore not far from Carriden, had shaken hands with us, and was out again at sea and rowing for Limekilns, before there was one word said either of her service or our gratitude.
— from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

So, if we are not to lose all comfort in life through the fear of evils, some of which are uncertain in themselves, and others, in the time at which they will occur, we should look upon the one kind as never likely to happen, and the other as not likely to happen very soon.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer

She now first perceived the weakness of which she had been guilty; and though it caused the utmost perturbation in her mind, yet it had the effect of other nauseous physic, and for the time expelled her distemper.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

What Machiavelli beheld round him in Italy was a civic disorder in which there was oppression without statecraft, and revolt without patriotism.
— from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain

“I am not at all surprized,” answered the other, “that to one whose affections and thoughts are fixed on the world my hours should appear to have wanted employment in this place: but there is one single act, for which the whole life of man is infinitely too short: what time can suffice for the contemplation and worship of that glorious, immortal, and eternal Being, among the works of whose stupendous creation not only this globe, but even those numberless luminaries which we may here behold spangling all the sky, though they should many of them be suns lighting different systems of worlds, may possibly appear but as a few atoms opposed to the whole earth which we inhabit?
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Some were anchored oyster-like, and of gigantic size, lying as traps with shells apart, like the mouth of some terrible monster lying hidden among the weeds; others with strange, striped shells crawled snail-like over the bottom, amidst many so small that they were mere specks.
— from Jack at Sea: All Work and No Play Made Him a Dull Boy by George Manville Fenn

But there were others who saw only the meanness of the place, its almost defencelessness, its fluxes and fevers, the fewness of its inhabitants and the number of its graves.
— from By order of the company by Mary Johnston

But among her thoughts, what others would say and think of her conduct was hardly present.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

All went well with Birdalone when she had left the Isle of Increase Unsought, much as it had on her first voyage, save that now she was both clad and victualled, and her heart, if yet it harboured fear, was also full of new and strange hope; and oft, even as she sat there amidst the waste of waters, she wondered what new longing this was which wrought so sweet a pain in her, that it made her cheeks burn, and her eyes dim, and her hands and her limbs restless.
— from The Water of the Wondrous Isles by William Morris

We usually picture to ourselves St. Stephen as perishing beneath a deadly hail of missiles, raised upon him by an infuriated mob, before whom he is flying, just as men are still maimed or killed in street riots; and we wonder therefore when or where St. Stephen could have found time to kneel down and commend his spirit to Christ, or to pray his last prayer of Divine charity and forgiveness under such circumstances as those we have imagined.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 1 by George Thomas Stokes

With that wit of which she is so proud, she should have been the first to laugh at this piece of childishness, which was not particularly new.
— from Memoirs of Madame la Marquise de Montespan — Complete by Madame de Montespan

From this spot we can see most of the places to which our weary steps have wandered in turn; and as we sit here in peace, may the recollections of the past, which I have striven to reawaken, touch each place, as it rises in your memory, with a ray of gold as bright as that which the setting sun throws o'er them now!
— from Walks near Edinburgh by Margaret Warrender

When at last we reached the top of the Head, and our trouble was over, we sat down on the breezy front of the hill and looked far away across the restless water, where the sea line melted into the blue haze of the Scotch coast.
— from The Pilots of Pomona: A Story of the Orkney Islands by Robert Leighton