Sebastian

“Beautiful,' [his wife] would murmur, nudging Septimus that he might see. But beauty was behind a pane of glass. Even taste had no relish to him. He put down his cup on the little marble table. He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the tea-shop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him--he could not feel.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Dor wondered whether, if he should ever happen to be a ghost for eight hundred years, zombies might begin to look good to him. He doubted it.”
― Piers Anthony, Castle Roogna

“...all the woods and strands of Naples re-echoed with — 'O! giorno felíce! O! giorno felíce!' 'You see,' said Paulo, when they had departed, and he came to himself again, “you see how people get through their misfortunes, if they have but a heart to bear up against them, and do nothing that can lie on their conscience afterwards; and how suddenly one comes to be happy, just when one is beginning to think one never is to be happy again!”
― Ann Radcliffe, The Italian

“Misty dreamers had not a chance with her; since, though she did not talk - talking would have been altogether repugnant to her silent nature.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, Der Sandmann