I consented, with the best grace I could, to go down another dance, for I had had time to recollect myself; and therefore resolved to use some exertion, and, if possible, to appear less a fool than I had hitherto done; for it occurred to me, that, insignificant as I was, compared to a man of his rank and figure; yet, since he had been so unfortunate as to make choice of me for a partner, why I should endeavour to make the best of it.
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

gûlĕ′-diskaʻnihĭ′—the turtle-dove; literally, “it cries, or mourns, for acorns,” from gulĕ′ , acorn, and diskaʻnihĭ′ , “it cries for them” ( di- , plural prefix, -hi , habitual suffix).
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

I had a garden, I used to take care of my flowers, and I had two sons!” Then releasing her hold of the leper, she ran away singing, “I had a garden and flowers, I had two sons, a garden, and flowers!” [ 217 ] “What have you been able to do for that poor woman?”
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

Thus the empirical exposition of aesthetical judgements may be a beginning of a 150 collection of materials for a higher investigation; but a transcendental discussion of this faculty is also possible, and is an essential part of the Critique of Taste.
— from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant

But I was more at a letter from my Lord Duke of Albemarle to-day, pressing us to continue our meetings for all Christmas, which, though every body intended not to have done, yet I am concluded in it, who intended nothing else.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Where he findeth, as in the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he condescendeth to be the taster; and showeth, by his own example, the innocuous nature of the prescription.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

Remorse at length became so strong that it almost forced from me a public confession of my fault at the beginning of my ‘Emilius’, and the passage is so clear, that it is astonishing any person should, after reading it, have had the courage to reproach me with my error.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In all mythologies gods have always enjoyed the companionship of beautiful maidens, and goddesses the love of heroic youths; and they have often taken them to their world as the Tuatha De Danann took the great heroes of the ancient Celts to the Otherworld or Avalon, and as they still in the character of modern fairies abduct brides and young mothers, and bridegrooms or other attractive young men whom they wish to have with them in Fairyland (see our chapters iv-vi ).
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

Then the incipient assassin held a basin of water under my chin and slopped its contents over my face, and into my bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense of washing away the soap and blood.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

At length she came out more frequently, and they became companions on the quarter-deck.
— from Cord and Creese by James De Mille

The most charming man I ever met except your dear self"—and she smiled graciously and lowered her voice as if what she was about to tell was in the strictest confidence—"was a shrivelled-up old prince who once called on my father and myself in Vienna.
— from The Fortunes of Oliver Horn by Francis Hopkinson Smith

The question turned upon literary productions and the comparative merit of the compositions of modern French and foreign authors.
— from Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud (Being secret letters from a gentleman at Paris to a nobleman in London) — Complete by Lewis Goldsmith

"Well, Frank, you may count on me for anything, except the last proposition:" and so they shook hands, and Frank rode back to Greshamsbury.
— from Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope

“You were on the scene at this very moment,” he proceeded, after a brief contemplation of my face, “and you must have seen this man when he lifted the jewel and handed it back to Mr. Grey.
— from The Woman in the Alcove by Anna Katharine Green

"In the year 1614, while Don Antonio de Figueroa was governing those Provinces of Yucatan, some of the Itzaex came to the City of Merida, feigning an embassy (?) in order to cover other and more private ends.
— from History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Hard University. Vol. VII. by Philip Ainsworth Means

Or in the small hours I might make a confidant of my father, and when I had finished reading he would say thoughtfully, ‘That lassie is very natural.
— from Margaret Ogilvy by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie