We took courage, however, from despair, and what, by dint of cutting steps in the soft stone with our bowie knives, and swinging at the risk of our lives, to small projecting points of a harder species of slaty rock which now and then protruded from the general mass, we at length reached a natural platform, from which was perceptible a patch of blue sky, at the extremity of a thickly-wooded ravine.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

Out of the which street runneth up Bartholomew lane south to the north side of the Exchange; then more east, out of the former street from over against the Friars Augustine’s church south gate, runneth up another part of Brode street south to a pump over against St. Bennet’s church.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

Observing once a pumpkin, Of bulk so huge on stem so small, "What meant he," cried a bumpkin, "Great Jove, I mean, who made us all, By such an act capricious?
— from The Fables of La Fontaine Translated into English Verse by Walter Thornbury and Illustrated by Gustave Doré by Jean de La Fontaine

Then there came forth from the fairy bag a black hat and a pair of beautiful silk gloves.
— from Little Folks (September 1884) A Magazine for the Young by Various

Well, then, attend to me, and you will see how, in the opening and shutting of an eye, I sweep away all your difficulties, and supply all those deficiencies which you say check and discourage you from bringing before the world the story of your famous Don Quixote, the light and mirror of all knight-errantry.” “Say on,” said I, listening to his talk; “how do you propose to make up for my diffidence, and reduce to order this chaos of perplexity I am in?” To which he made answer, “Your first difficulty about the sonnets, epigrams, or complimentary verses which you want for the beginning, and which ought to be by persons of importance and rank, can be removed if you yourself take a little trouble to make them; you can afterwards baptise them, and put any name you like to them, fathering them on Prester John of the Indies or the Emperor of Trebizond, who, to my knowledge, were said to have been famous poets: and even if they were not, and any pedants or bachelors should attack you and question the fact, never care two maravedis for that, for even if they prove a lie against you they cannot cut off the hand you wrote it with.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

n a patch of blue skin found at the tip of the vertebral column of infants.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

Then she gave them each a piece of bread, saying, "There is something for your dinner; do not eat it before the time, for you will get nothing else."
— from Grimm's Fairy Stories by Wilhelm Grimm

And she says to me, ‘Well, Sarah Ann, she mayn’t be a good child, an’ she mayn’t be a pretty one, but she’s a child, an’ children needs children.’
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

and the word itself.)— —By the golden beard of Jupiter—and of Juno (if her majesty wore one) and by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by the bye was no small number, since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods aerial and aquatick—to say nothing of the beards of town-gods and country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the infernal goddesses your whores and concubines (that is in case they wore them)—all which beards, as Varro tells me, upon his word and honour, when mustered up together, made no less than thirty thousand effective beards upon the Pagan establishment;—every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of being stroken and sworn by—by all these beards together then—I vow and protest, that of the two bad cassocks I am worth in the world, I would have given the better of them, as freely as ever Cid Hamet offered his—to have stood by, and heard my uncle Toby's accompanyment.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

You are put out because she understands nothing of the philosopher's stone?
— from The Maid of Honour: A Tale of the Dark Days of France. Vol. 1 (of 3) by Lewis Wingfield

When we reach the other home— not a place of bodiless shades; not a confused throng of nameless spirits, but a home of brothers in our Father's house—next to seeing the Saviour, next to having the old times re-united, will be the comfort of meeting some one that we have helped home.
— from Five Sermons by Henry Benjamin Whipple

That lady made the day for exercise, to travel, work, wait on and labour in each his negotiation and employment; and that we may with the more fervency and ardour prosecute our business, she sets before us a clear burning candle, to wit, the sun's resplendency; and at night, when she begins to take the light from us, she thereby tacitly implies no less than if she would have spoken thus unto us:
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 3 by François Rabelais

He had plastered his hair so sleekly that it shone like a piece of black satin, and oh!
— from Marion: The Story of an Artist's Model by Winnifred Eaton

But Lee Renaud staunchly refused to be stalled, even though his supply of working material was nothing much beyond bits of tin, iron, some barbed wire, old nails, broken glass, and pieces of brass salvaged from old cartridges.
— from Stand By: The Story of a Boy's Achievement in Radio by Hugh McAlister

Then we cut down trees into lengths of six feet, with which we made a pile on both sides.
— from Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages by Anonymous

“A patch of brown surrounded by grass or bushes.”
— from With Rod and Line in Colorado Waters by Lewis B. France