In its combination of commercial enterprise, social organisation, mythical background, and magical ritual, to say nothing of the wide geographical range of its operations, this singular institution appears to have no exact parallel in the existing anthropological record; but its discoverer, Dr. Malinowski, may very well be right in surmising that it is probably a type of institution of which analogous, if not precisely similar, instances will hereafter be brought to light by further research among savage and barbarous peoples.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

[418] and in King John , And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath Out of the bloody finger-ends of John; and in Lucrece , And, bubbling from her breast, it doth divide In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood Circles her body in on every side, Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

And full as much, for more there cannot be, I do detest false, perjur'd Proteus.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Brother impress'd, deserted, died; now no folks, left alone in the world, is in a singularly nervous state; came in hospital with intermittent fever.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

The nephew and daughter of Constantine, who could ill brook the insolence of a subject, expressed their resentment by instantly delivering Domitian to the custody of a guard.
— 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 is well for gentlemen to talk of the age of chivalry; but remember the starving brutes whom they lead—men nursed in poverty, entirely ignorant, made to take a pride in deeds of blood—men who can have no amusement but in drunkenness, debauch, and plunder.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

Wenn alle untreu werden, / So bleib' ich dir doch treu —Though all deny thee, yet will not I ever.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

I have no desire to magnify the service I render thee in making thee acquainted with so renowned and honoured a knight, but I do desire thy thanks for the acquaintance thou wilt make with the famous Sancho Panza, his squire, in whom, to my thinking, I have given thee condensed all the squirely drolleries that are scattered through the swarm of the vain books of chivalry.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

but I dinna doot there will be something in the stone," said my father, who, at the mention of the dominie's belief, cast away all questioning.
— from The Pilots of Pomona: A Story of the Orkney Islands by Robert Leighton

They passed slowly along, under the drooping elms and willows, past the monuments on either hand—here, resting on a low brick wall, a slab of marble, once white, now gray and moss-grown, from which the hand of time had well nigh erased the carved inscription; here a family vault, built into the side of a mound of earth, from which only the barred iron door distinguished it; here a pedestal, with a time-worn angel holding a broken fragment of the resurrection trumpet; here a prostrate headstone, and there another bending to its fall; and [26] among them a profusion of rose bushes, on some of which the early roses were already blooming—scarcely a well-kept cemetery, for in many lots the shrubbery grew in wild unpruned luxuriance; nor yet entirely neglected, since others showed the signs of loving care, and an effort had been made to keep the walks clean and clear.
— from The Colonel's Dream by Charles W. (Charles Waddell) Chesnutt

I feel no desire that this man, as a man, should be convicted; but I do desire that all persons inclined to infringe on our rights of property should know that there is a law hero to punish them, and I am happy that the law has been so clearly laid down by the court.
— from Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, For Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) in Washington Jail Including A Narrative Of The Voyage And Capture Of The Schooner Pearl by Daniel Drayton

For thy sake, beloved, I dare die.’
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 6, December 1849 by Various

If X. had not cheered me up, I should be in doleful dumps, but X. is alive anyway, and life is all in all.
— from Vailima Letters Being Correspondence Addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, November 1890-October 1894 by Robert Louis Stevenson

So Sir Martin Conway ( The Alps , A. & C. Black) insists, describing dawn on the Alps as it comes to the "active mountaineer, keenly awake, with the blood alive within him and a day of hopes ahead."
— from Switzerland by Frank Fox