"Et bien qu'il est voirs que chascuns hons egalement doit de son cors servir son seigneur ou sa commune, pour aler en ost en tens de besoingne; et bien que trestuit li autre royaume d'occident tieingnent ce pour ordenance, ciz pueple de Bretaingne la Grant n'en veult nullement, ains si dient: 'Veez-là: n'avons nous pas la Manche pour fossé de nostre pourpris, et pourquoy nous penerons-nous pour nous faire homes d'armes, en lessiant nos gaaignes et nos soulaz?
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

She gave the hint which led to the discovery of galvanic electricity, now so useful in the arts and in transmitting vocal or written language.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

the stockings be good enough, now summer is coming on, for the dust: I'll have a pair of silk against winter, that I go to dwell in the town.
— from Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson

My master alighted at an inn which he used to frequent; and after consulting a while with the innkeeper and making some necessary preparations, he hired the grultrud , or crier, to give notice through the town, of a strange creature to be seen at the sign of the Green Eagle, not so big as a splacnuck (an animal in that country, very finely shaped, about six feet long), and in every part of the body resembling a human creature, could speak several words, and perform a hundred diverting tricks.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World by Jonathan Swift

How long has it been since you got here?” “Four days,” responded the youth, rather offended. “Have you come as a government employee?” “No, sir, I’ve come at my own expense to study the country.” “Man, what a rare bird!”
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

Il est très gentil et naïf ,” she said again with the same smile.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

but there were powerful and powerless gods; each naturally sought to make himself one of the former; the plan therefore adopted was to incorporate the spirits of others with their own; thus, when a warrior slew a chief, he immediately gouged out his eyes and swallowed them, the atua tonga, or divinity, being supposed to reside in that organ; thus he not only killed the body, but also possessed himself of the soul of his enemy, and consequently the more chiefs he slew the greater did his divinity become.”
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

The former has been the aim of the great English novelists since Fielding, if not since Richardson [347] or even Defoe.
— from A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century by George Saintsbury

She tells us what she found when brought to the house of her husband:— Ampie salle, ampie loggie, ampio cortile E stanze ornate con gentil pitture, Trovai giungendo, e nobili sculture Di marmo fatte, da scalpel non vile.
— from Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 by Isaac Disraeli

“Their eyes watch for the morning-hue, Their little grain expelling night So shines and sings, as if it knew The path unto the house of light.
— from Spare Hours by John Brown

On the one hand, he saw that, for a certain average of years, not distinguished by any great enterprise, nor shaken by any great convulsion, a certain quantity of currency had sufficed for the wants of the nation.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Volume 62, No. 386, December, 1847 by Various

Dante’s representation of disembodied humanity is too pagan, too palpable, not ghostly enough, not spiritualized with hope and awe.
— from Essays Æsthetical by George Henry Calvert

Hancock carried every southern State; Garfield every northern State except New Jersey, Nevada, and California.
— from History of the United States, Volume 4 by Elisha Benjamin Andrews