Yet it was under these circumstances that his genius yielded its best fruits.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

"My family begins with me, yours ends with you." Iphicrates, when upbraided by a young aristocrat for his low birth.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

To escape from arrangements that tortured me, my heart sought refuge in the world of ideas, when as yet I was unacquainted with the world of realities, from which iron bars excluded me.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

I feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I want you to be mine, I want to be yours, I want us to be united by the most holy ties.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend.
— from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

During a period of two hundred years, Italy was unequally divided between the kingdom of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

For as yet it was uncertain which county contained it, that princely residence—the old manor-house or baronial hall—in which henceforth they would live together in affluence.
— from The Return of the Prodigal by May Sinclair

The piece was a West End success so brilliant that even if you belonged to the intellectual despisers of the British theatre you could not hold up your head in the world unless you had seen it; even for such as you it was undeniably a success of curiosity at least.
— from The Pretty Lady by Arnold Bennett

Your interference was unwarrantable; but I say nothing of that.
— from A Sister of the Red Cross: A Tale of the South African War by L. T. Meade

“What’s left of it is layin’ over yonder in what used to be the cellar.
— from In the Sixties by Harold Frederic

[pg 396] caused my enlargement thus far, I ardently hope, that your candour and generosity will plead with you in my behalf, when I state that it was not originally my design; but having taken up my pen in order to present a copy of an almanac which I have calculated for the succeeding year, I was unexpectedly led thereto.
— from History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens by George Washington Williams

" "Yes, I will undertake it: for, I repeat, she loves you still, and the proof is she saves you.
— from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas

“Illustrious sultan,” said his vizir, the sage Pilpay, “though I have but a very imperfect knowledge of your royal library, yet I will undertake to deliver you a very brief and satisfactory abstract of it.
— from The Every-day Book and Table Book. v. 3 (of 3) Everlasting Calerdar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac by William Hone

"Yes; I went up to tea with 'im. 'E looks years better already."
— from Winding Paths by Gertrude Page

He denied hotly, for instance, that Evadne had any natural affection, and yet it was upon that woman's weakness of hers that he set to work at once, proving himself to be possessed of a perfect, if unconscious, knowledge of her most vulnerable point; and he displayed much ingenuity in his manner of making it a means of torture.
— from The Heavenly Twins by Sarah Grand