Well, and how is it I have no sense of smell and yet I feel there's a stench?"
— from Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And yet I fancy, there is a certain way of making it familiar to us, and in some sort of making trial what it is.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

For these things I would have crawled on with her for twenty years, if for twenty years longer her life of endurance had been protracted.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

The Tatar conqueror took possession of an inanimate capital, strewed with brave defenders, the smoke yet issuing from the recesses where lay consumed the once fair object of his desire; and since this devoted day the cavern has been sacred: no eye has penetrated its gloom, and superstition has placed as its guardian a huge serpent, whose ‘venomous breath’ extinguishes the light which might guide intruders to ‘the place of sacrifice.’
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

I appear today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which there is no resurrection.
— from A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

In the east end of Fore street is More lane: then next is Grub street; of late years inhabited, for the most part, by bowyers, fletchers, bow-string makers, and such like occupations, now little occupied; archery giving place to a number of bowling-
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

Gentle lady, When I did first impart my love to you, I freely told you all the wealth I had Ran in my veins, I was a gentleman;
— from The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

“You are completely mistaken, sir,” said Monte Cristo coldly, who felt the perfidious manœuvre of the young man, and understood the bearing of his words; “you only acquired my protection after the influence and fortune of your father had been ascertained; for, after all, who procured for me, who had never seen either you or your illustrious father, the pleasure of your acquaintance?—two of my good friends, Lord Wilmore and the Abbé Busoni.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

After the DHS has held you illegally for three months, would they ever let you go?
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

It was now too late, and the settlements were too much exhausted, for another expedition, so the fall and winter were employed by the English in preparations for an active campaign the next year in force to crush out all resistance.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

Yet I finished the day with eighteen grayling, to be placed to the contra account against a most complete soaking.
— from Lines in Pleasant Places: Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler by William Senior

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.
— from The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels

Mr. Bobbsey gave his older son a pleased look, and then replied: "Yes, I found that one of our lumber wagons was going within half a mile of the village of Lemby, so I let the boy ride with the driver.
— from The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat by Laura Lee Hope

When I reached New York, I for the first time learned that the place was changed to "Cooper Institute."
— from The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete by Abraham Lincoln

I divined at once that she had thrown him over, that there had been an awful scene, and his mother had written a horrid letter, that he had come back and abjectly apologised, that he said she had destroyed his faith in women (the usual thing), that he went on sending letters for a whole year: in fact, that it made her quite uncomfortable....
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 107, October 20, 1894 by Various

I hope and think I have been really cautious in what I state on this subject, although all that I have given, as yet, is FAR too briefly.
— from Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2 by Charles Darwin

I assure you I feel the utmost respect for these flowers of the soul, cut and sent in moments of enthusiasm that are worthy of all reverence.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

That this community, so young in years, yet withal so rich in exploits, may, in the months immediately ahead, as well as in the years immediately following this coming Jubilee, maintain, untarnished and unimpaired, its record of service to our beloved Faith, that it may further embellish, through still nobler feats, its annals, is the dearest wish of my heart, and the object of my constant supplications at the Holy Threshold.
— from Citadel of Faith by Effendi Shoghi

Your thoughts are no longer under your own control; they come and go, they combine and disperse according to their own pleasure; and yet you inwardly feel that this will not last, it cannot last; that the time must come when you will once more have the mastery.
— from Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine by Berthold Auerbach