As great to me as late; and, supportable To make the dear loss, have I means much weaker Than you may call to comfort you, for I Have lost my daughter.
— from The Tempest The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] by William Shakespeare

The death of a lawful prince excited the compassion of his people; his life might have perplexed the victorious Romans; and the lieutenant of Justinian, by a crime of which he was innocent, was relieved from the painful alternative of forfeiting his honor or relinquishing his conquests.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

Her woman came up, just as he had led me to my closet, and was returning to her lady; and she very humbly said, Excuse my intrusion, good sir!—I hope I may come to my lady.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

By any meanes, our thing of learning saies so: Where he himselfe will edifie the Duke Most parlously in our behalfes: hees excellent i'th woods; Bring him to'th plaines, his learning makes no cry.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

At last, when he described his despair and told them how, when he left Madame Hohlakov's, he thought that he'd “get three thousand if he had to murder some one to do it,” they stopped him again and noted down that he had “meant to murder some one.”
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She directed Margaret to pack up a basket in the very drawing-room, to be sent there and then to the family; and was almost angry with her for saying, that it would not signify if it did not go till morning, as she knew Higgins had provided for their immediate wants, and she herself had left money with Bessy.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

The Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece,—Shakspeare, in the Tempest, and Midsummer Night's Dream,—and most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost, conform to this rule; and the most humble novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose fiction a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest specimens of poetry.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

In the meantime, the actors had obeyed his injunction, and the public, seeing that they were beginning to speak again, began once more to listen, not without having lost many beauties in the sort of soldered joint which was formed between the two portions of the piece thus abruptly cut short.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

I have sometimes thought it possible that my own aptitude and affinity for that language may have been inherited from him, and that his labors may in a manner have overcome many difficulties for me by the wonderful process of transmission.
— from Philip Gilbert Hamerton An Autobiography, 1834-1858, and a Memoir by His Wife, 1858-1894 by Eugénie Hamerton

Farther out, as the bottom fell away, the rollers became more uniform and powerful; heavy sweeping seas met the cat-boat, from their hollows looming mountainous to the man in the tiny cockpit; who was nevertheless aware that to a steamer they would be negligible.
— from The Black Bag by Louis Joseph Vance

If a fire should unfortunately take place under such circumstances, the loss of human life might be very great, as the chance of fifty, eighty, or one hundred people escaping, in the confusion of a sudden night alarm, by one or two ladders to the roof, could scarcely be calculated on, and the time such escape might necessarily occupy, independent of all chance of accidents, would be considerable.”
— from Curiosities of Civilization by Andrew Wynter

Had a shell fallen in the little drawing-room, no one could have looked more surprised.
— from The Weathercock: Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias by George Manville Fenn

I am grateful to you, Jack, for having led me to secure this prize.
— from The Harlequin Opal: A Romance. Vol. 3 (of 3) by Fergus Hume

LX To whom the king: "He likes me well therefore, I knew him whilom in the court of France When I from Egypt went ambassador, I saw him there break many a sturdy lance,
— from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso

Cut off my head; leave me nothing but my heart.”
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

Harry Luttrell made a little movement.
— from The Summons by A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason

gibed Helen; so 26 they traded, and each found her load much more comfortable than the one she’d had before—which says a good deal for the powers of imagination.
— from Winona of the Camp Fire by Margaret Widdemer

This procession from beginning to end, where it passed our house, lasted more than two hours; there were so many things there that I could not write them in a book, so I let it alone.
— from Records of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries by Albrecht Dürer