The Afghan and Persian wildernesses also have their Ghúl-i-Beában or Goblin of the Waste, a gigantic and fearful spectre which devours travellers; and even the Gael of the West Highlands have the Direach Ghlinn Eitidh , the Desert Creature of Glen Eiti, which, one-handed, one-eyed, one-legged, seems exactly to answer to the Arabian Nesnás or Empusa .
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

The joyous day gan early to appeare, And faire Aurora from the deawy bed Of aged Tithone gan herselfe to reare With rosy cheekes, for shame as blushing red; 455 Her golden locks for haste were loosely shed About her eares, when Una her did marke Clymbe to her charet, all with flowers spred; From heaven high to chase the chearelesse darke, With merry note her loud salutes the mounting larke.
— from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I by Edmund Spenser

This piece of information made my heart bound with joy, and I discovered great eagerness to accept the proposal; upon which he assured me I should dance with her at the next assembly, if he had any influence in that quarter: so saying, he went round, spoke to her some minutes, and, as I imagined, pointed at me; then returning, told me, to my inexpressible pleasure, that I might depend upon what he had promised, for she was now engaged as my partner.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

Again did Gwenllian essay to sit and take the breeches in hand, when there came upon the table a double rap, much louder than the first, a rap, in fact, that made all the chairs and kettles ring.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

de ole mammy ’long down de little road dat’s lef’ ’twix’ her en de grave, en—” Tom relished this tune less than any that had preceded it, for it began to wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he interrupted and said with decision, though without asperity, that he was not in a situation to help her, and wasn’t going to do it.
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

It makes use of drapery, not as a covering, but as a means of exhibiting the form, a method of exposition that gives much exercise to the understanding, for it can only arrive at a perception of the cause, the form of the body, through the only directly given effect, the drapery.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

Donec gratus eram tibi, &c. 3335 .
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

As the morning went on, and the fires began to be kindled, and the windows to open, and the people to appear out of the houses, my concern and despondency grew ever the blacker.
— from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Quoth Dioneo, "Madam, had I a tabret, I would sing 'Come truss your coats, I prithee, Mistress Burdock,' or 'Under the olive the grass is'; or will you have me say 'The waves of the sea do great evil to me'?
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

Damião de Goes estimated the number of blacks imported into Lisbon alone during the 16th century at 10,000 or 12,000 per annum.
— from Man, Past and Present by A. H. (Augustus Henry) Keane

De ole nigger’s des got ernuff to git to Salisbury, but ef he can’t fine er frien’ dere to hep him on he’ll walk.
— from Tar Heel Tales by H. E. C. (Henry Edward Cowan) Bryant

If we really forced General Elections upon free laborers who definitely disliked General Elections, then it was a thoroughly undemocratic thing to do; if we are democrats we ought to undo it.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

No greater contrast can be conceived than between the subtle, shuffling Italian, patient as he is false, and Gondi, bold, liberal, independent, generous even to his enemies, incapable of envy or deceit, grasping each turn of fortune with the ready adaptiveness of genius, and swaying the passions of men by his fiery eloquence; a daring statesmen, a resolute reformer, one of whom Cromwell had said—"that he, De Retz, was the only man in Europe who despised him."
— from Old Court Life in France, vol. 2/2 by Frances Minto Dickinson Elliot

Der Garabed explained the difficulty.
— from By Far Euphrates: A Tale by Deborah Alcock

[Pg 90] Who wast before the dawn, give ear to me!
— from Kentucky in American Letters, 1784-1912. Vol. 2 of 2 by John Wilson Townsend