I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever be my lot; but I was not confined to my own identity, and I could people the hours with creations far more interesting to me at that age, than my own sensations.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I only want to drum into the heads of these curs the fact that the liberals are the most insidious enemies of freedom—that party programmes strangle every young and vigorous truth—that considerations of expediency turn morality and justice upside down—and that they will end by making life here unbearable.
— from An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen

Plato becomes more conservative as he grows older, and he would govern the world entirely by men like himself, who are above fifty years of age; for in them he hopes to find a principle of stability.
— from Laws by Plato

My head was light perhaps; but I began to love the prospect, I began to glory in the thought of such a death, alone in the desert, with the wild eagles besieging my last moments.
— from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

When I regarded Spiritualism as a vulgar delusion of the uneducated, I could afford to look down upon it; but when it was endorsed by men like Crookes, whom I knew to be the most rising British chemist, by Wallace, who was the rival of Darwin, and by Flammarion, the best known of astronomers, I could not afford to dismiss it.
— from The New Revelation by Arthur Conan Doyle

Their long chats were enlivened by merry laughter, which left some gaiety in the mournful home throughout the ensuing week.
— from Truth [Vérité] by Émile Zola

The captain of the frigate Jouan , when in the Indian Sea, on October 26th, 1871, in 13° 20′ N. lat., and 60° 30′ E. long., that is to say, about 200 leagues to the west of the Laccadive Islands, saw, in very fine weather, the sea, which was at that time very calm, covered with medusæ, and the greater part of these were escorted by many little fishes of the genus Ostracion , the species of which he was unable t
— from Animal Parasites and Messmates by P. J. van (Pierre Joseph) Beneden

It is not my intention at this time to enter into an argument to prove this, for I have before said that I consider it quite immaterial in the present discussion; but I will offer some few observations, to demonstrate to the Senate that there was nothing very unreasonable in the wish expressed by Mr. Lewis and Mr. Dallas, to show that the constitution was susceptible of another construction.
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 3 (of 16) by United States. Congress

Her mother had kept her, when a child, very much in the dark as to their antecedents, and, as the social position of the family had been well established by Mrs. Lindon when Nina was very young, the girl always had grown up with the idea that she was a lady; and in spite of a few wants in her
— from Geoffrey Hampstead: A Novel by Stinson Jarvis

The beast she tried first had rough milk; this would do for her well enough, but my lord must have of the best.
— from The Forest Lovers by Maurice Hewlett

It appeared clear to me that the doctrine of Eternal Punishment was taught in the Bible, and the explanations given of the word "eternal" by men like Maurice and Stanley, did not recommend themselves to me as anything more than skilful special pleading— evasions, not clearings up, of a moral difficulty.
— from Autobiographical Sketches by Annie Besant

"Who will ever be my lover, though I have denied him, though I have left him to die!
— from Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France by Stanley John Weyman

"As to my personal or movable property, so called because it can be moved, as is so well explained by my learned friend the bishop of Vannes—" (D'Artagnan shuddered at the dismal remembrance attached to that name)—the procureur continued imperturbably—"they consist— "1.
— from The Vicomte de Bragelonne Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" by Alexandre Dumas