"I know quite enough of myself," said Bella, with a charming air of being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, "and I don't improve upon acquaintance."
~
Our Mutual Friend
by
Charles Dickens
"Next," said Mrs Wilfer with a wave of her gloves, expressive of abdication under protest from the culinary throne, "I would recommend examination of the bacon in the saucepan on the fire, and also of the potatoes by the application of a fork. Preparation of the greens will further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly demeanour."
~
Our Mutual Friend
by
Charles Dickens
Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.
~
Our Mutual Friend
by
Charles Dickens
The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.
~
The Newcomes
by
William Makepeace Thackeray
One of the hardest conditions of boyhood is the almost continuous strain put upon the powers of invention by the constant and harassing necessity for explanations of every natural act.
~
Penrod
by
Booth Tarkington
"Exactly. She does not shine as a wife even in her own account of what occurred. I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind, as you are aware, Watson, but my experience of life has taught me that there are few wives having any regard for their husbands who would let any man's spoken word stand between them and that husband's dead body. Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her."
~
The Valley of Fear
by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"One dumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell. Picture to yourself the unilateral development - the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!"
~
The Valley of Fear
by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Dear me, Watson, is it possible that you have not penetrated the fact that the case hangs upon the missing dumb-bell?"
~
The Valley of Fear
by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
~
Babbitt
by
Sinclair Lewis
Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.
~
Babbitt
by
Sinclair Lewis