Didn't hardly mean to—After that, when I was trying to stop the blood—It was terrible what it did to her shoulder, and she had beautiful skin—Maybe she won't die.
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

'Why Socrates, who was not a poet, while in prison had been putting Aesop into verse?'—'Because several times in his life he had been warned in dreams that he should practise music; and as he was about to die and was not certain of what was meant, he wished to fulfil the admonition in the letter as well as in the spirit, by writing verses as well as by cultivating philosophy.
— from Phaedo by Plato

Among others I spoke with Mrs. Lane, of whom I doubted to hear something of the effects of our last meeting about a fortnight or three weeks ago, but to my content did not.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Him will I deliver, though he sail even to Hades to free Ixion below from his brazen chains, as far as strength lies in my limbs, so that Pelias may not mock at having escaped an evil doom—Pelias who left me unhonoured with sacrifice.
— from The Argonautica by Rhodius Apollonius

When I did tell her, she was as thrilled as I was, and we two just sat over it and nursed it all afternoon and evening!
— from Over Periscope Pond Letters from Two American Girls in Paris October 1916-January 1918 by Esther Sayles Root

Look for the man who without hope of meretricious gain knows how to devote himself faithfully to noble service, and who without honeyed phrases gracefully pursues what is dear to his soul; as for you--you could borrow for yourselves a little of love's fire merely from the confectioner's kitchen.
— from Morituri: Three One-Act Plays Teja—Fritzchen—The Eternal Masculine by Hermann Sudermann

I was all blinded up with immoral designs, this here snake-blooded Timmins having put things over on me in stock deals from time to time till I'd got to lying awake nights thinking how I could make a believer of him.
— from Ma Pettengill by Harry Leon Wilson

Let us content ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold communion of spirit in such modes as are ordained to us—by letters (dipping our pens as deep as may be into our hearts) by heartfelt words, when they can be audible; by glances—through which medium spirits do really seem to talk in their own language—and by holy kisses, which I do think have something supernatural in them.
— from Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Volume 1 (of 2) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Faith without works is dead; thy hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost; thy gifts with which thy soul is possessed, are but such as are common to reprobates; thou art therefore disappointed; God reputes thee still but wicked, though thou comest and goest to the place of the Holy (James 2:19, 20; Job 11:20; 1 Cor 13:1-3).
— from Works of John Bunyan — Complete by John Bunyan

p. 296), under the year 1703, says: ‘Ever since the projected settlement at Darien, the genius of the nation had acquired a new direction; and as the press is the true criterion of the spirit of the times, the numerous productions on political and commercial subjects, with which it daily teemed, had supplanted the religious disputes of the former age.’
— from History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3 by Henry Thomas Buckle

What I did tell him sobered him at once, brought the quiet, somber mood, the thoughtful air.
— from The Rustlers of Pecos County by Zane Grey