Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast Clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of Pan, And heard the goat-foot snoring as he passed, And leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran Like a young fawn unto an olive wood Which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood; And sought a little stream, which well he knew, For oftentimes with boyish careless shout The green and crested grebe he would pursue, Or snare in woven net the silver trout, And down amid the startled reeds he lay Panting in breathless sweet affright, and waited for the day.
— from Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

Ursula was just coming to the stage when Andersen and Grimm were being left behind for the "Idylls of the King" and romantic love-stories.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

Freundschaft ist ein Knotenstock auf Reisen, / Lieb' ein Stäbchen zum Spazierengehn —Friendship is a sturdy stick to travel with; love a slender cane to promenade with. Chamisso.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth, was killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by a summer lightning; at his own warm open window he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon the dreamy afternoon, till some one touched him, when he fell.
— from Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville

A very agricola laboriosus was I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows where; they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I the home-staying, laborious native of the soil.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Reverence for ancestral virtue and example, so far from being weakened, is strengthened, and as for devotion to king and ruler, law and society, Christianity lends nobler motives and grander sanctions, while showing clearly, not indeed the way of the eight million or more gods, but the way to God—the one living, only and true, even through Him who said "I am the Way."
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis

She was the sister of our neighbour, Kotlovitch, a ruined landowner who had on his estate pine-apples, marvellous peaches, lightning conductors, a fountain in the courtyard, and at the same time not a farthing in his pocket.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

But he wrote back a kind and respectful letter to Mrs. Rebecca, then living at a boarding-house at Florence.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

It was no more necessary for him to delay the writing of Prince Arthur till his son had died than it was for Dickens to wait till he had killed a real Little Dorrit by slow poison.
— from William Shakespeare by John Masefield

The black worm Miss Ruth consented to keep, and Roy, lifting him by his horn, dropped him on the green worm's back.
— from Miss Elliot's Girls Stories of Beasts, Birds, and Butterflies by Mary Spring Corning

"The brightest traits in the American character will derive their luster, not from the laurels picked from the field of blood, not from the magnitude of our navy and the success of our arms," he proclaimed, "but from our exertions to banish war from the earth, to stay the ravages of intemperance among all that is beautiful and fair, to unfetter those who have been enthralled by chains, which we have forged, and to spread the light of knowledge and religious liberty, wherever darkness and superstition reign....
— from William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist by Archibald Henry Grimké

Southey followed up to Keswick, and rather liked the situation.
— from Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 05 Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors by Elbert Hubbard

Thus was formed a romantic character, absolutely without any vulgar trait; living to ideal ends, without any mixture of self-indulgence or compromise, such as lowers the value of benevolent and thoughtful men we know; abstemious, refusing luxuries, not sourly and reproachfully, but simply as unfit for his habit; quiet and gentle as a child, in the house.
— from The Negro and the Nation A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement by George Spring Merriam

He is the only man of the writer’s acquaintance who keeps a really large herd of domestic Jews.
— from The Cradle of Mankind; Life in Eastern Kurdistan by Edgar Thomas Ainger Wigram

Many shore towns owned whaleboats and gear, each with its trained crew, and some kept a regular lookout, day by day, whose duty it was promptly to announce the appearance of any whale in the offing.
— from The Book of the Ocean by Ernest Ingersoll

Meat of newly killed animals requires longer cooking than meat which has been hung for a time.
— from The Story of Crisco by Marion Harris Neil

The sheet brass speedily puts an excellent polish upon the rod, and such a packing is more easily kept, and requires less tallow than where hemp alone is employed.
— from A Catechism of the Steam Engine by Bourne, John, C.E.

The one feature of The Mountain that shed the brownest horror on its woods was the existence of the terrible region known as Rattlesnake Ledge, and still tenanted by those damnable reptiles, which distil a fiercer venom under our cold northern sky than the cobra himself in the land of tropical spices and poisons.
— from The Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes: An Index of the Project Gutenberg Editions by Oliver Wendell Holmes