may my neck be strung, Before I kill a bird that sings so well."
— from The Fables of La Fontaine Translated into English Verse by Walter Thornbury and Illustrated by Gustave Doré by Jean de La Fontaine

Like cattle, with their eyes always looking down and their heads stooping to the earth, that is, to the dining-table, they fatten and feed and breed, and, in their excessive love of these delights, they kick and butt at one another with horns and hoofs which are made of iron; and they kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust.
— from The Republic by Plato

I know Adam Bede
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

[156] The affairs of the Lombards having, thanks to the valour and judgment of King Agilulf, been for some time prosperous and in quiet, it befell that one of the said queen's horse-keepers, a man of very low condition, in respect of birth, but otherwise of worth far above so mean a station, and comely of person and tall as he were the king, became beyond measure enamoured of his mistress.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

Said he, “By the exercise of their strong wills they have been busy for ages striving to unload their brains of the to them now useless stock of knowledge accumulated by their ancestors, and the natural consequence has been that the brains of these curious folk, who call themselves the Happy Forgetters, relieved of all labor and strain of thought, have absolutely shrunken rather than increased in size, so that with m
— from Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey by Ingersoll Lockwood

How can there be any human understanding that can persuade itself there ever was all that infinity of Amadises in the world, or all that multitude of famous knights, all those emperors of Trebizond, all those Felixmartes of Hircania, all those palfreys, and damsels-errant, and serpents, and monsters, and giants, and marvellous adventures, and enchantments of every kind, and battles, and prodigious encounters, splendid costumes, love-sick princesses, squires made counts, droll dwarfs, love letters, billings and cooings, swashbuckler women, and, in a word, all that nonsense the books of chivalry contain?
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Kosegarten, Bonn, 1848; by Kielhorn and Bühler in Bomb.
— from A History of Sanskrit Literature by Arthur Anthony Macdonell

I do not know any body who seems more to enjoy the power of doing what he likes than Mr. Darcy."
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

But the three which hung by the fireplace were stiff and queerly shaped, each full of knobs and bumps.
— from Half-Past Seven Stories by Robert Gordon Anderson

It is to be observed that the article to which we are indebted was published many years ago, and the author of it speaks of his own youth, when Piccini’s age was “as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly,” and before “time, the old clock-setter,” had nearly let him run the whole length of his chain without winding him up again.
— from The tragical acts, or comical tragedies of Punch and Judy by W. J. (William J.) Judd

Love tends to make man kinder and better through his complete identification with the existence of another.
— from Love: A Treatise on the Science of Sex-attraction for the use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence by Bernard Simon Talmey

At the end of a week, Frances not having returned to Whitehall, Sir Richard was honored by a visit from no less a person than the king, accompanied by the duchess and a gentleman in waiting.
— from The Touchstone of Fortune Being the Memoir of Baron Clyde, Who Lived, Thrived, and Fell in the Doleful Reign of the So-called Merry Monarch, Charles II by Charles Major

or the ancient kitchen and buttery, with its black woodwork, or the water-tower?
— from My Lords of Strogue, Vol. 2 (of 3) A Chronicle of Ireland, from the Convention to the Union by Lewis Wingfield

"Yes," broke in Sandy just then; "but we saw how the young chief looked hungrily at our pretty little sister, Kate, and both of us worried, for fear that some day he might return to give us trouble.
— from The Pioneer Boys on the Great Lakes; or, On the Trail of the Iroquois by St. George Rathborne

“Take me to the Pope, and I will answer him, for I know and believe that we should obey our Holy Father, the Pope, who is in Rome.”
— from The Story of Joan of Arc by Andrew Lang

His dress, it is told, was this:—he had a blue kirtle and blue breeches; shoes which were laced about the legs; a grey cloak, and a grey wide-brimmed hat; a veil before his face; a staff in his hand with a gilt-silver head on it and a silver ring around it.
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

We had to hobble the horses, and keep a bright lookout on every side, lest the treacherous Indians might steal upon us and catch us unprepared.
— from Snow Shoes and Canoes Or, The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory by William Henry Giles Kingston

The crime committed would be thus wiped out; the family of the murdered prince, and the neighbouring princes, who might be disposed to profit by the occasion, would be kept at bay; and, since the Church could only hold and govern and tax distant dependencies by means of governors and lieutenants, who so likely to step into such profitable places, as the powerful citizen who had gained the new state for the Holy Father?
— from A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2) by Thomas Adolphus Trollope