And day comes almost hourly for his bite; He spurns my cunning, and defies my snares, For stones and sticks he just as little cares; He is a wizard, that is very sure, And for a wizard is there, sir, a cure?"
— from The Fables of La Fontaine Translated into English Verse by Walter Thornbury and Illustrated by Gustave Doré by Jean de La Fontaine

I had leisure to think, before the kitchen fire, of pretty little Emily’s dread of death—which, added to what Mr. Omer had told me, I took to be the cause of her being so unlike herself—and I had leisure, before Peggotty came down, even to think more leniently of the weakness of it: as I sat counting the ticking of the clock, and deepening my sense of the solemn hush around me.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Pardon, master; I will be correspondent to command, And do my spriting gently.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

" Yes, lad, I lie easy, I lie as lads would choose; I cheer a dead man's sweetheart, Never ask me whose.
— from A Shropshire Lad by A. E. (Alfred Edward) Housman

But I'm not going to give Maggie any more o' my Indy muslin and things, if she's to go into service again, when she might stay and keep me company, and do my sewing for me, if she wasn't wanted at her brother's."
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair; and, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I was quite low-spirited!
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

There sat at her Feet a Couple of Secretaries, who received every Hour Letters from all Parts of the World; which the one or the other of them was perpetually reading to her; and according to the News she heard, to which she was exceedingly attentive, she changed Colour, and discovered many Symptoms of Health or Sickness.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an Oake And peg-thee in his knotty entrailes, till Thou hast howl'd away twelue winters Ar. Pardon, Master, I will be correspondent to command And doe my spryting, gently Pro.
— from The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Below, Ewell was hurrying his men over the bridge, but it looked as if we should be doubled up on him ere he could cross and develop much strength.
— from Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War by Richard Taylor

And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do that is right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did; that I will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee.
— from The Bible, King James version, Book 11: 1 Kings by Anonymous

“Not if that’s what yer call a dawg, Mister,” said the other boy.
— from The Girls of Central High in Camp; Or, the Old Professor's Secret by Gertrude W. Morrison

I accordingly returned to Howell county and disbanded my soldiers.
— from A History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas Being an Account of the Early Settlements, the Civil War, the Ku-Klux, and Times of Peace by William Monks