Let me beseech your grace not to do so: His fault is much, and the good King his master Will check him for’t: your purpos’d low correction Is such as basest and contemned’st wretches For pilferings and most common trespasses, Are punish’d with.
— from The Tragedy of King Lear by William Shakespeare

as good reason The father- all whose joy is nothing else But fair posterity- should hold some counsel In such a business.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

This is shown by throwing the Corn-mother into the river in order to secure rain and dew for the crops; by making the Old Woman heavy in order to get a heavy crop next year; by strewing grain from the last sheaf amongst the young crops in spring; and by giving the last sheaf to the cattle to make them thrive.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

Night fell; weary creatures took quiet slumber all over earth, and woodland and wild waters had sunk to rest; now the stars wheel midway on their gliding path, now all the country is silent, and beasts and gay birds that haunt liquid levels of lake or thorny rustic thicket lay couched asleep under the still night.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

The child is safe at Brookland Hall, With Lady Arundel, Who wants to keep her for a month; Why, yes; I think she may— Such friends as Lady Arundel Are not met with every day.
— from The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan Every Child Can Read by John Bunyan

Holland proceeds with great caution in Sumatra and Borneo, from fear of losing everything.
— from The Philippines a Century Hence by José Rizal

Indeed, a Spartan who was at Athens while the courts were sitting, and who learned that some man had been fined for idleness, and was leaving the court in sorrow accompanied by his grieving friends, asked to be shown the man who had been punished for gentlemanly behaviour.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

We were told that this would not be the case; that we were by nature a poetical people, a nation easily duped by words, ready to array clouds in splendour, and bestow honour on the dust.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Under the shady roof Of branching Elm Star-proof, Follow me, 90 I will bring you where she sits Clad in splendor as befits Her deity. Such a rural Queen All Arcadia hath not seen. 3. SONG.
— from The Poetical Works of John Milton by John Milton

“Certainly,” I said, “and before you come to Venice, for everybody would laugh at you, if you could not write.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

In fact the whole myth is obviously one which recounts the 'Harrying of Hell,' so common in savage and barbarian myth, and probably invented to reassure the savage as to the terrors of the next world, and to instruct him in the best methods of foiling its evil inhabitants.
— from An Introduction to Mythology by Lewis Spence

But in considering and judging the attitude of the British public on this question of cotton it should always be remembered that the great mass of the people sincerely believed that America was responsible for the distress in Lancashire.
— from Great Britain and the American Civil War by Ephraim Douglass Adams

Of course I shall always be happy to see Polly O'Neill at any time or place in this world or the next; still, a postponed pleasure is not as agreeable as one that takes place on time.
— from The Camp Fire Girls Across the Seas by Margaret Vandercook

“With God’s help I’ll carry it safely and bring his safely, my queen,” said I. “And tell me how he looks.
— from Rupert of Hentzau: From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim Sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

Thou knowest well I am a fool and a sinner, and a miserable creature in soul and body.
— from Matelda and the Cloister of Hellfde Extracts from the Book of Matilda of Magdeburg by of Magdeburg Mechthild

The grateful rain was collected in sails and buckets, and saved by every means, and afforded important relief to all remaining on board.
— from Antony Waymouth; Or, The Gentlemen Adventurers by William Henry Giles Kingston

Still, no doubt you find it no less awkward to wait: and since you have come all the way from Lincoln to collect it—" "Steady a bit," Mr. Wright interrupted; "I never said that.
— from Hetty Wesley by Arthur Quiller-Couch

THE OPPOSITE OF A "RETURN TO NATURE" Civilization is still advancing by leaps and bounds.
— from Is civilization a disease? by Stanton Coit

A gentleman is chivalrous; and there is a corresponsive quality in a lady , which makes her delicately sensitive about unjustly imposing on that chivalry, or which, in emergencies of sickness or disaster, enables her to be the chivalrous in spirit , and bear on her slender shoulders the burden that is temporarily dropped when some stroke of Providence lays the strong man low.
— from Etiquette by Agnes H. Morton

So that if a man should well consider of all the od crotchets in such a builders braine, he would thinke his head to haue euen inough of those affaires onelie, & therefore iudge that he should not well be able to deale in anie other.
— from Holinshed Chronicles: England, Scotland, and Ireland. Volume 1, Complete by William Harrison