It is needless to say I rejoiced over this godsend, and my joy was not less than my wonder as I strove to imagine how this good fortune could have come to us, but to me specially; for the evident unwillingness to drop the reed for any but me showed that it was for me the favour was intended.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

The knight gan fairely couch his steadie speare, And fiercely ran at him with rigorous might: The pointed steele arriving rudely theare, His harder hide would neither perce, nor bight, 140 But glauncing by forth passed forward right; Yet sore amoved with so puissaunt push, The wrathfull beast about him turned light, And him so rudely passing by, did brush With his long tayle, that horse and man to ground did rush.
— from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I by Edmund Spenser

This was observed by Motecusuma, who said, with a pleasing smile, that he was not exactly pleased when Tonatio (so they termed Alvarado) marked the game for Cortes, for he was guilty of Ixoxol in scoring, which means that he scored falsely, by continually marking one more than he ought.
— from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain. by Bernal Díaz del Castillo

He keeps strictly within bounds, and never comes near enough to gain from chance what he only desires to win from Sophy herself.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Cold and moist, cools the inflammation of the stomach, commonly called heart-burning: provokes sleep, resists drunkenness, and takes away the ill effects, of it; cools the blood, quenches thirst, breeds milk, and is good for choleric bodies, and such as have a frenzy, or are frantic.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

But I shall endeavor in this discourse to describe the paths I have followed, and to delineate my life as in a picture, in order that each one may also be able to judge of them for himself, and that in the general opinion entertained of them, as gathered from current report, I myself may have a new help towards instruction to be added to those I have been in the habit of employing.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

Our poet's success amongst the crowd of brilliant men and distinguished women who formed Fouquet's court, could never be understood, if we gave full credence to those stories of odd eccentricities, simplicities, and blunders of which he has so frequently been made the hero.
— from The Fables of La Fontaine Translated into English Verse by Walter Thornbury and Illustrated by Gustave Doré by Jean de La Fontaine

Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

But the day when this stern guardian first consented to admit Carew and Beddoes to my presence,—and that was not till I could sit up in bed and converse freely,—all that I had been curious about was made clear to me.
— from The Pride of Jennico: Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico by Egerton Castle

There he would spend days at a time with only his rifle and game for company.
— from American Leaders and Heroes: A preliminary text-book in United States History by Wilbur F. (Wilbur Fisk) Gordy

And she had laughed at this last and answered that that showed how little he knew about her, because neither she nor anyone, not even a Gloucester fisherman, could sail through the conglomerate mess in her uncharted top drawer.
— from The Camp Fire Girls on a Yacht by Margaret Love Sanderson

Here you have, then, Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse to the [11] life—certainly no more than an average sample of his kind; but as he is to go through a considerable variety of situation and circumstance, I thought you would like to have him as distinctly before your mind's eye as it was in my power to present him.—Well—he put his hat on, as I have said; buttoned the lowest two buttons of his surtout, and stuck his white pocket handkerchief into the outside pocket in front, as already mentioned, anxiously disposing it so as to let a little appear above the edge of the pocket, with a sort of careful carelessness—a graceful contrast to the blue; drew on his gloves; took his cane in his hand; drained the last sad remnant of infusion of chiccory in his coffee-cup; and, the sun shining in the full splendor of a July noon, and promising a glorious day, forth sallied this poor fellow, an Oxford Street Adonis, going forth conquering and to conquer!
— from Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. by Samuel Warren

On his death at the battle of Ravenna, his claims passed to his sister Germaine, Ferdinand conquers Spanish Navarre. July 1513.
— from Europe in the Sixteenth Century, 1494-1598, Fifth Edition Period 4 (of 8), Periods of European History by A. H. (Arthur Henry) Johnson

Poor old Jimmy had been ill at Beltana, and suffered greatly from colds and influenza.
— from Australia Twice Traversed The Romance of Exploration, Being a Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions into and Through Central South Australia and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876 by Ernest Giles

Ten, five, even three miles from the great fortified centers of the Japanese army in China, Chinese irregulars, peasant volunteers, spring up in the night.
— from The China of Chiang K'ai-Shek: A Political Study by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger