This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

In order to properly understand the significance of these ceremonies, however, a proper understanding of the Malay system of rice-planting is essential, and I therefore quote in extenso a description of rice-culture, which possesses the additional interest of being translated from the composition of a Malay: 186 — “It is the established custom in Malacca territory [ 219 ] to plant rice once a year, and the season for doing so generally falls about the month of Zilkaʿidah or Zilhijah.
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

This sheaf, which remains standing in the field after the Rice-soul has been carried home and put to bed, is treated as a newly-made mother; that is to say, young shoots of trees are pounded together and scattered broadcast every evening for three successive days, and when the three days are up you take the pulp of a coco-nut and what are called “goat-flowers,” mix them up, eat them with a little sugar, and spit some of the mixture out among the rice.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

From that day forth, the owl has never dared to show herself by daylight, for if she does the other birds chase her and pluck her feathers out.
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

Ursula was not proposing to be friendly with the mocking stranger, and she gave him an ungentle look and retorted: “Who asked you to come here and pester me, I'd like to know?
— from The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories by Mark Twain

This legislative is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of any body else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law, which has not its sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed: for without this the law could not have that, which is absolutely necessary to its being a law,* the consent of the society, over whom no body can have a power to make laws, but by their own consent, and by authority received from them; and therefore all the obedience, which by the most solemn ties any one can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this supreme power, and is directed by those laws which it enacts: nor can any oaths to any foreign power whatsoever, or any domestic subordinate power, discharge any member of the society from his obedience to the legislative, acting pursuant to their trust; nor oblige him to any obedience contrary to the laws so enacted, or farther than they do allow; it being ridiculous to imagine one can be tied ultimately to obey any power in the society, which is not the supreme.
— from Second Treatise of Government by John Locke

A small light is on each side above, and in the middle, over the couch hangs a painting of a very old, very dignified gentleman, period 1860.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

[ Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris .
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

When she could hold a pen in her hand, she sent a despairing letter to Madame Valmonde.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin

Then he threw his cloak around him, and passed through the castle hall, and placed himself by the side of the queen, where no one saw him.
— from Grimms' Fairy Tales by Wilhelm Grimm

When a young man and a student, I well remember hearing some lectures from a person calling himself a physician, in which he took the ground that fifteen minutes was ample time in which to take a regular meal, and that all time spent in sleep in excess of four or five hours at most, was so much lost time; that if persons slept only five hours instead of eight, they would gain more than six years of time in the course of fifty; therefore, every person who was so much of a sluggard as to sleep eight hours instead of five, was responsible for wasting six years in fifty.
— from Insanity: Its Causes and Prevention by Henry Putnam Stearns

And what chance would there have been, Lefferts wrathfully questioned, of his marrying into such a family as the Dallases, if he had not already wormed his way into certain houses, as people like Mrs. Lemuel Struthers had managed to worm theirs in his wake?
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

At the surface of the other metal, which may be, and frequently is, copper, small bubbles of the gas called hydrogen are produced.
— from A-B-C of Electricity by Wm. H. (William Henry) Meadowcroft

Duchesneau himself, shortly after his arrival in the country, had a passing difficulty with the bishop, arising out of an idea he entertained, that, as intendant, he ought to rank next to the governor; and this wretched matter had also to be referred to the court, which promptly decided in the bishop's favour.
— from Count Frontenac Makers of Canada, Volume 3 by William Dawson LeSueur

Arrived in Toledo, she asked permission, before entering the palace, to go to the cathedral, for mass; and once within the walls of the sanctuary, she refused to go back to her guards, demanded the right of protection which the churches had always possessed in the Middle Ages, and, finally, told her story with such dramatic effect, that the clergy crowded about her, the nobles unsheathed their swords and swore to uphold her cause, and a revolution was begun which soon assumed great proportions and so frightened Pedro that he consented to take back his wife and send away the baleful Maria.
— from Women of the Romance Countries (Illustrated) Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 6 (of 10) by John R. (John Robert) Effinger

A scandal it assuredly did make, growing more scandalous as it spread, until the over-harbour people heard that the manse children had not only cleaned house and put out a washing on Sunday, but had wound up with an afternoon picnic in the graveyard while the Methodist Sunday School was going on.
— from Rainbow Valley by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

The early winter of 1791 brought with it a disastrous illness which shattered his health, doomed him for the rest of his days to an incessant battle with disease and finally carried him away prematurely at the age of forty-five.
— from The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller by Calvin Thomas

This same law of high treason,' he continued, with astonishing firmness and composure, 'is one of the blessings, Edward, with which your free country has accommodated poor old Scotland; her own jurisprudence, as I have heard, was much milder.
— from Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since — Volume 2 by Walter Scott

St. Augustine called him a Platonist and he did indeed try to convey Plato’s ideas to his contemporaries in works on The God of Socrates , Plato and his Doctrine and other lost writings.
— from Essays on the Greek Romances by Elizabeth Hazelton Haight

Suddenly she brought the performance to a close with a long slide that carried her, all panting, before Monsieur de Lucan, seated opposite to her.
— from Led Astray and The Sphinx Two Novellas In One Volume by Octave Feuillet