Had my health definitely improved, had my parents allowed me, if not actually to go down to stay at Balbec, at least to take, just once, so as to become acquainted with the architecture and landscapes of Normandy or of Brittany, that one twenty-two train into which I had so often clambered in imagination, I should have preferred to stop, and to alight from it, at the most beautiful of its towns; but in vain might I compare and contrast them; how was one to choose, any more than between individual people, who are not interchangeable, between Bayeux, so lofty in its noble coronet of rusty lace, whose highest point caught the light of the old gold of its second syllable; Vitré, whose acute accent barred its ancient glass with wooden lozenges; gentle Lamballe, whose whiteness ranged from egg-shell yellow to a pearly grey; Coutances, a Norman Cathedral, which its final consonants, rich and yellowing, crowned with a tower of butter; Lannion with the rumble and buzz, in the silence of its village street, of the fly on the wheel of the coach; Questambert, Pontorson, ridiculously silly and simple, white feathers and yellow beaks strewn along the road to those well-watered and poetic spots; Benodet, a name scarcely moored that seemed to be striving to draw the river down into the tangle of its seaweeds; Pont-Aven, the snowy, rosy flight of the wing of a lightly poised coif, tremulously reflected in the greenish waters of a canal; Quimperlé, more firmly attached, this, and since the Middle Ages, among the rivulets with which it babbled, threading their pearls upon a grey background, like the pattern made, through the cobwebs upon a window, by rays of sunlight changed into blunt points of tarnished silver?
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

He may be to us an object of pity, perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or resentment; we shall not treat him like an enemy of society: the worst we shall think ourselves justified in doing is leaving him to himself, if we do not interfere benevolently by showing interest or concern for him.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

“Do you see that rose-colored silk curtain hanging on the wall over the mantel-piece?” Mary had not noticed it before, but she looked up and saw it.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Mary had not noticed it before, but she looked up and saw it.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

We shall not, I believe, be so very far out."
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

CXXVII In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name; But now is black beauty's successive heir, And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame:
— from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare

In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were it bore not beauty’s name: But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slandered with a bastard shame, For since each hand hath put on nature’s power, Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face, Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower, But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

“It is nothing, I believe, but some apprentice-lads baiting an ox,” observed Mr Harwood as they moved forward.
— from John Deane of Nottingham: Historic Adventures by Land and Sea by William Henry Giles Kingston

Abe Lorimer was not in bed, but sitting in a rocking-chair, looking very ill and wretched.
— from Daughters of the Dominion: A Story of the Canadian Frontier by Bessie Marchant

to be erronios and alltogether falce and fetched about with a trick beyond rule, soe that he wondered they should jumpe soe neare in ballance, being soe notably falce.
— from Diary of Richard Cocks, Volume 2 Cape-Merchant in the English Factory in Japan, 1615-1622, with Correspondence by Richard Cocks

Not even the Penal Laws could penetrate them, and behind the sure rampart of the language the Irish people, without leaders and notwithstanding the Penal Laws, re-knit their social order and peacefully penetrated the Garrison, so that at the end of the century they emerged from the ruins of the Penal Laws a Nation in bondage but still a Nation, with the language, culture, traditions and hopes of a Nation, and with the single will of a Nation.
— from Sinn Fein: An Illumination by P. S. (Patrick Sarsfield) O'Hegarty

The Captains would have gone on, but, "No! No!" insisted Black Buffalo, seizing the cable of Clark's departing pirogue.
— from The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark by Eva Emery Dye

There is, indeed, some obscurity in the origin of this term, nymphæ, which has not, I believe, been satisfactorily cleared up.
— from Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy by Havelock Ellis

His mummy's name is Bunny Brown, She has a comfy shed Upon a hillock in the field, Where Neddy's put to bed.
— from Our Story Book: Jingles, Stories and Rhymes for Little Folks by Various

The critics who had praised "Drusilla" were not impressed by "Broken Spears," but the critics who had been indifferent to "Drusilla" praised "Broken Spears" so extravagantly that six thousand copies of it were sold in six months, apart from the copies which were sold to the lending libraries, and the sale of "Drusilla," in consequence of the success of "Broken Spears," increased from three hundred and seventy-five copies to one thousand five hundred and eighty.
— from Changing Winds A Novel by St. John G. (St. John Greer) Ervine

He was a native of Nice in Bithynia, but spent the greater part of his life at the court of one of the Ptolemies.
— from A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels - Volume 18 Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, By William Stevenson by William Stevenson