This may give a landsman some notion of what is done on board ship.—All the first part of a passage is spent in getting a ship ready for sea, and the last part in getting her ready for port.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

Monaghan did all in his power to supply her place; he lighted the fires, swept the house, milked the cows, nursed the baby, and often cooked the dinner for me, and endeavoured by a thousand little attentions to show the gratitude he really felt for our kindness.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

All governments have reaped fruit from their devotion; impious men and actions have everywhere had suitable events.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

fireside read a good part of “The Advice to a Daughter,” which a simple coxcomb has wrote against Osborne, but in all my life I never did nor can expect to see so much nonsense in print Thence to my Lord’s, who is getting himself ready for his journey to Hinchingbroke.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

In short, he said, the words of the paper made it clear she meant to kill herself on the completion of the betrothal, and gave her reasons for putting an end to herself all which was confirmed, it was said, by a dagger they found somewhere in her clothes.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

George told us about a man he had known, who had come up the river two years ago and who had slept out in a damp boat on just such another night as that was, and it had given him rheumatic fever, and nothing was able to save him, and he had died in great agony ten days afterwards.
— from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

M. Dandolo, rather surprised, asked a second question: he wished Paralis to give his reasons for the denial.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Rousseau has already given his reasons for objecting to a limited Sovereignty (Book I, chap, vi): it follows absolutely that we must take the best machinery we can find for the execution of the State's functions.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Throwing the weight of my chest upon his shoulders I reached over him and with my free hand finally grasped his right foreleg below the knee, and pulled it up clear of the ground.
— from The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations by William T. (William Temple) Hornaday

Odin, exhausted and breathless, was meantime filling the dishes which the gods held ready for the Magic Mead, but so hurried was he that some of it was spilt; a few scattered drops fell on to the earth below.
— from Told by the Northmen: Stories from the Eddas and Sagas by E. M. (Ethel Mary) Wilmot-Buxton

She had been too much tired to hear anything the night before, but to-night there was scratching, nibbling, careering, fighting, squeaking, recoil and rally, charge and rout, as the grey Hanover rat fought his successful battle with his black English cousin all over the floors and stairs—nay, once or twice came rushing up and over the bed—frightening its occupant almost out of her senses, as she cowered under the bed-clothes, not at all sure that they would not proceed to eating her.
— from Love and Life: An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

Carl’s first care was to get himself ready for the journey that was to come off on the morrow.
— from Carl the Trailer by Harry Castlemon

Of justice, freedom, honor sing, Of peace for all mankind, With love let glad hozannas ring, From ev’ry heart and mind; Our country’s flag, our emblem fair, Inspires us with zeal To love and cherish, do and dare, All for our country’s weal.
— from Poems of Peace and War by Elizabeth H. Connor

"God," he replied, "found the remedy in the ill.
— from Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry by Charles Baudelaire

If he did, he would have to give his reasons for declining the proposition, and that would make Tom mad, and perhaps provoke him to quarrel.
— from Now or Never; Or, The Adventures of Bobby Bright by Oliver Optic

"Mr. Blake, the sub-agent sent by Colonel Crowell, had superseded Mr. Brearly, and was engaged in giving his receipts for the corn delivered under the contract.
— from A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America by S. A. (Simon Ansley) Ferrall

Thus the tints and shadows of a great history rest faintly even upon this out-of-the-way and serene little town.
— from The Tenants of Malory, Volume 1 by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Therefore we cannot but believe that into this spirit, so possessed with the hunger and thirst for righteousness, and precisely because it was so possessed by it, the characteristic doctrines of Jesus, which brought a new aliment to feed this hunger and thirst,—of Jesus whom, except in vision, he had never seen, but who was in every one's words and thoughts, the teacher who was meek and lowly in heart, who said men were brothers and must love one another, that the last should often be first, that the exercise of dominion and lordship had nothing in them desirable, and that we must become as little children,—sank down and worked there even before Paul ceased to persecute, and had no small part in getting him ready for the crisis of his conversion.
— from St. Paul and Protestantism, with an Essay on Puritanism and the Church of England by Matthew Arnold