" On this Dolon would have caught him by the beard to beseech him further, but Diomed struck him in the middle of his neck with his sword and cut through both sinews so that his head fell rolling in the dust while he was yet speaking.
— from The Iliad by Homer

: rise-bushes , sticks cut for burning, DG.—AS.
— from A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 by A. L. (Anthony Lawson) Mayhew

Farmers, butchers, drovers, dirty, uncouth men from whom she shrank instinctively stared down at her as she sat on her seat, then went to get their drink, talking in unabated tones.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

All that is proved in its favour by direct experience, is that mankind have been able to exist under it, and to attain the degree of improvement and prosperity which we now see; but whether that prosperity has been attained sooner, or is now greater, than it would have been under the other system, experience does not say.
— from The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill

Therefore, after the connection had continued three years, carefully fostered by D’Artagnan, who found his bed and his mistress more agreeable every year, each doing credit to the other, the mistress conceived the extraordinary desire of becoming a wife and proposed to D’Artagnan that he should marry her.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but, rising up in fury, said, he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that the services you had performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish the fire by discharge of urine in her majesty’s apartment (which he mentioned with horror), might, at another time, raise an inundation by the same means, to drown the whole palace; and the same strength which enabled you to bring over the enemy’s fleet, might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back; that he had good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as treason begins in the heart, before it appears in overt-acts, so he accused you as a traitor on that account, and therefore insisted you should be put to death.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

This letter from Bellario doth commend A young and learned doctor to our court.
— from The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

Was it possible, after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset?
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Wherever, throughout the archipelago, there is a group of the insurgent army, it is a fact beyond dispute, that all contiguous towns contribute to the maintenance thereof.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

It must be faced, be dealt with.
— from The Call of the Blood by Robert Hichens

Sometimes a little realgar is added to the sulphuret of antimony, and frequently, when the fire burns dim and badly, a very small quantity of very finely powdered charcoal or lampblack will make it perfect.
— from A System of Pyrotechny Comprehending the theory and practice, with the application of chemistry; designed for exhibition and for war. by James Cutbush

Some wonder was caused at Le Hurel when he failed to appear, but the rumour was started that he had been seen sailing away in a little fishing boat he used to hire for the season, from Bec du Nez, and which the murderers had had the forethought to scuttle and sink.
— from Guernsey Folk Lore a collection of popular superstitions, legendary tales, peculiar customs, proverbs, weather sayings, etc., of the people of that island by MacCulloch, Edgar, Sir

“Copia de oficio del Conde de Florida blanca [D. Francisco Antonio Moñino] al conde de Baños;” San Lorenzo el Real, 11 Oct. 1778
— from Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Spanish Language in the British Museum. Vol. 4 by Pascual de Gayangos

Death and the thoughts of death are painful and cause a shudder and fear because death has a sting.
— from The Gospel Day; Or, the Light of Christianity by Charles Ebert Orr

During the great siege of Florence the mantle of Savonarola seemed to have fallen upon the heroic Prior of Santa Maria Novella, Fra Benedetto da Foiano.
— from The Story of Florence by Edmund G. Gardner

Frederika Bremer did not allow her supposititious title of Sitti to blind her to the fact that she was before all a poet and a woman of letters.
— from Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century by W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport) Adams

It’s going to pour: I felt just now no less than four Big drops of rain.
— from Artful Anticks by Oliver Herford