Before you can say 'come' and 'go,' And breathe twice, and cry 'so, so,' Each one, tripping on his toe, Will be here with mop and mow.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

If I had had a horse worth a cent—but no, the minute he saw that buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight up in the air and stood on his heels.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

There are jests which you would be ashamed to make yourself, and yet on the comic stage, or indeed in private, when you hear them, you are greatly amused by them, and are not at all disgusted at their unseemliness;—the case of pity is repeated;—there is a principle in human nature which is disposed to raise a laugh, and this which you once restrained by reason, because you were afraid of being thought a buffoon, is now let out again; and having stimulated the risible faculty at the theatre, you are betrayed unconsciously to yourself into playing the comic poet at home.
— from The Republic by Plato

King Ethelred ordered a great assault; but the Danes defended themselves bravely, and King Ethelred could make nothing of it.
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States.
— from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A revised text with introductions, notes and dissertations by J. B. (Joseph Barber) Lightfoot

Her husband's character is not good, but it is as good as Bareacres', who has played a little and not paid a great deal, who cheated you out of the only legacy you ever had and left you a pauper on my hands.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Is not this a universal law among all Greeks and barbarians alike, that one should defend oneself against those who take the initiative in doing one a wrong?
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 2 by Emperor of Rome Julian

I delicately moved away all obstacles, and gently and by degrees consummated this sweet robbery, and when at last I abandoned myself to all the force of passion, she awoke with a sigh of bliss, murmuring, “Ah!
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

I look in with loving eyes, For folded here, with well-known care, A goodly gathering lies, The record of a peaceful life— Gifts to gentle child and girl, A bridal gown, lines to a wife, A tiny shoe, a baby curl.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The newspapers which dish up the same stories day after day are grabbed at by citizens eager to obtain the first news of the military movements.
— from The Campaign Round Liège by J. M. (John McFarland) Kennedy

Many a time the earl himself had dined, merrily and heartily, at that simple table, with the mistress—active, energetic, cheerful, and refined—sitting at the head of it, and the children, a girl and boy, already admitted to take their place there, quiet and well-behaved—brought up from the first to be, like their parents, gentlemen and gentlewomen.
— from A Noble Life by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

It was nearly as good as being married to her.
— from Slaves of Freedom by Coningsby Dawson

Peter rolled his eyes and grinned again, before falling to, with a fairly good appetite, upon the rich food spread before him.
— from Beasts & Men Folk Tales Collected in Flanders and Illustrated by Jean de Bosschère by Jean de Boschère

[42] "Yes, they're firing, and charging, and doing all manner of stunts, and the camera men are grinding away, but they aren't using any film," went on Paul.
— from The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm by Laura Lee Hope

The quest of beauty is scarcely a profession, and it caused his parents some concern to find him pausing irresolute on the threshold of manhood, instead of setting himself a goal and bracing his energies for its achievement.
— from Poems by Alan Seeger

You know that Mr. Roosevelt long ago classified trusts for us as good and bad, and he said that he was afraid only of the bad ones.
— from The New Freedom A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People by Woodrow Wilson

A generation ago Ben Nevis had not been crowned by revolutionary surveyors, and Ben Macdhui was still held monarch of Scottish mountains, keeping his state among the Cairngorms, that here have half-a-dozen truncated peaks over or hardly under 4000 feet, Ben Muich Dhui, as Gaelic purists would have us call it, Brae-riach, Cairntoul, the Peak of Cairngorm, Ben-a-bourd, and Ben A’an, heads of the grandest mountain mass in the British Isles.
— from Bonnie Scotland Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope Moncrieff by A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope) Moncrieff

Their leader advanced to Lieutenant T——— as he stepped out of the boat, and holding out his hand said, “Good mornin' What you want?” Pleased at finding a man who spoke English, the lieutenant told him he had come to buy some turtle and get a boatload of young cocoanuts, and showed him the tobacco and knives intended for payment.
— from The Ebbing Of The Tide South Sea Stories - 1896 by Louis Becke