Then, donning his gown and hat again, he kissed the lady once more and bidding her be of good hope, took leave of her and repaired whereas Aldobrandino lay in prison, occupied more with fear of imminent death than with hopes of deliverance to come. Tedaldo, with the gaoler's consent, went in to him, in the guise of a ghostly comforter, and seating himself by his side, said to him, 'Aldobrandino, I am a friend of thine, sent thee for thy deliverance by God, who hath taken pity on thee because of thine innocence; wherefore, if, in reverence to Him, thou wilt grant me a little boon that I shall ask of thee, thou shalt without fail, ere to-morrow be night, whereas thou lookest for sentence of death, hear that of thine acquittance.'
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

He was a man of twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, of unprepossessing countenance, obsequious to his superiors, insolent to his subordinates; and this, in addition to his position as responsible agent on board, which is always obnoxious to the sailors, made him as much disliked by the crew as Edmond Dantès was beloved by them.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

So if the animals of the totemic species are the object of rites, it is not because the ancestral souls are believed to reside in them.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

In this way all mystical idealism falls to the ground, for (as may be seen already in Plato) it inferred from our cognitions a priori (even from those of geometry) another intuition different from that of the senses (namely, an intellectual intuition), because it never occurred to any one that the senses themselves might intuite a priori .
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant

But one was counter to the hearth, and rose High that the highest-crested helm could ride Therethrough nor graze: and by this entry fled The damsel in her wrath, and on to this Sir Gareth strode, and saw without the door King Arthur's gift, the worth of half a town, A warhorse of the best, and near it stood The two that out of north had followed him: This bare a maiden shield, a casque; that held The horse, the spear; whereat Sir Gareth loosed A cloak that dropt from collar-bone to heel, A cloth of roughest web, and cast it down,
— from Idylls of the King by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

As I had now nobody left alive in the village, who had concerned enough about what should become of me, to start any objections to this scheme, and the woman who took care of me after my parents' death, rather encouraged me to pursue it, I soon came to a resolution of making this launch into the wide world, by repairing to London, in order to seek my fortune, a phrase which, by the bye, has ruined more adventurers of both sexes, from the country, than ever it made or advanced. Nor did Esther Davis a little comfort and inspirit me to venture with her, by piquing my childish curiosity with the fine sights that were to be seen in London: the Tombs, the Lions, the King, the Royal Family, the fine Plays and Operas, and, in short, all the diversions which fell within her sphere of life to come at; the detail of all which perfectly turned the little head of me.
— from Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) by John Cleland

Seeing this, Don Quixote raised his eyes to heaven, and fixing his thoughts, apparently, upon his lady Dulcinea, exclaimed, “Aid me, lady mine, in this the first encounter that presents itself to this breast which thou holdest in subjection; let not thy favour and protection fail me in this first jeopardy;” and, with these words and others to the same purpose, dropping his buckler he lifted his lance with both hands and with it smote such a blow on the carrier’s head that he stretched him on the ground, so stunned that had he followed it up with a second there would have been no need of a surgeon to cure him.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Amurath received him with honor and dismissed him with gifts; but the gracious approbation of the Turkish sultan announced his supremacy, and the approaching downfall of the Eastern empire.
— 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

It winds in and out through the scattered clumps of low pitch pine and thickets of scrub oak, and finally leads to a still brook all afloat in midsummer with pond lilies.
— from Everyday Adventures by Samuel Scoville

They frequently appear as distinct cysts, the walls of which are semi-cartilagenous; at other times they seem to be nothing more than a coagulum of blood: they seldom project much from the ovary, and in no instance have they the peculiar structure of the corpus luteum, nor the external cicatrix, nor are they capable of being injected.
— from A System of Midwifery by Edward Rigby

They want it for the fur trade; for a colony; for an outlet to the sea; for the communication across the continent; for a road to Asia; for the command of one hundred and forty thousand Indians against us; for the port and naval station which is to command the commerce and navigation of the North Pacific Ocean, and open new channels of trade with China, Japan, Polynesia, and the great East.
— from Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850 by Thomas Hart Benton

They managed to get the miniature aeroplane over to the shack, though it was no light burden, taken all in all.
— from The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron by Robert Shaler

He had been a great gambler in his youth, and lost enormous sums at Crockford’s and on the turf, so that when he died, in 1850, he had nothing to leave his only son, my Lucy’s father, but three or four thousand pounds, very soon muddled away in unfortunate business speculations.
— from The Sack of Monte Carlo: An Adventure of To-day by Walter Frith

He went at once to the stable for the feeding and found everything strangely quiet—the stilling influence of a great frost on animal life.
— from The Reign of Law; a tale of the Kentucky hemp fields by James Lane Allen

Exactly in the midst thereof is fixed a smooth handle made of wood, by which the Roundelier doth carry it, holding it a foot or more above his master’s head, directing the centre thereof as opposite to the sun as possibly he may.
— from The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 2 by R. V. (Robert Vane) Russell

As I looked out across sandhills and ocean toward the soft summer sunrise, I made out the steamer Pará of the “Lloyd-Brazileiro” already at anchor a stone’s-throw from the shore.
— from Working North from Patagonia Being the Narrative of a Journey, Earned on the Way, Through Southern and Eastern South America by Harry Alverson Franck