“Sir,” said Griflet, “I beseech thee make me a knight;” and Merlin also advising the king to grant his request, “Well,” said Arthur, “be it then so,” and knighted him forthwith.
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

A wild glist of wind, laden with all the fragrance of hills and woods, would put out my light, and I would fling aside my dress and lie down on my bed, my eyes closed and my body thrilling with delight, and there around me in the breeze, amid all the perfume of the woods and hills, floated through the silent gloom many a caress and many a kiss and many a tender touch of hands, and gentle murmurs in my ears, and fragrant breaths on my brow; or a sweetly-perfumed kerchief was wafted again and again on my cheeks.
— from The Hungry Stones, and Other Stories by Rabindranath Tagore

To send a lad to London town, They met upon a day; And mony a knight, and mony a laird, This errand fain wad gae.
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

O mony a knight, and mony a laird, This errand fain wad gae; But nae ane could their fancy please, O ne'er a ane but twae.
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

“In the country those men came from, they care just as much about killing a man, as you care about emptying the ashes out of your pipe.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Besides Mitford, Siebold and myself, the other guests were the Prince of Bizen, the Court Noble Ohara Jijiû, Kido, Machida, Mori (afterwards known as Mori Arinori), Kanda Kôhei [pg 411] a professor at the School of Languages and editor of one of the recently established Yedo newspapers, and Tsudzuki Shôzô of Uwajima.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

He has many a kick and many a blow to bear on account of it; and there is nobody to stand up for him.
— from Wanderings in South America by Charles Waterton

They might be deaf to the "equalities" proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence or blind to the moral sin of slavery, but they comprehended a rifle which could be fired ten times a minute and kill a man at a thousand yards.
— from Abraham Lincoln: a History — Volume 01 by John G. (John George) Nicolay

I told all I knowed as they must clear out, for I meant to do my dooty; and they saw that it was sense, for there’d be no chance for them again a man as knowed as much as I did, so they went off.”
— from The Star-Gazers by George Manville Fenn

“Knew he wouldn’t be lendin’ his countenance to murderin’ and killin’ and maimin’ and injurin’.”
— from Sudden Jim by Clarence Budington Kelland

You see, I, who have studied medicine and know as much as most doctors, can tell him all the symptoms from the time Miss McLean was found."
— from Nuggets in the Devil's Punch Bowl, and Other Australian Tales by Andrew Robertson

The besieging army was destroyed; whether, as Kingsley suggests, “by a stream of poisonous vapours as often comes forth out of the ground during earthquakes and eruptions of burning mountains, and kills all men and animals that breathe it,” or by a pestilence, or by the simoom, we cannot tell.
— from The Preacher's Complete Homiletic Commentary on the Books of the Bible, Volume 15 (of 32) The Preacher's Complete Homiletic Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, Volume I by Alfred Tucker

Worship makes a servant, knowledge makes a knower, abstinence makes an ascetic, sincere seeking makes an earnest aspirant, sacrifice of all the world
— from Letters from a Sûfî Teacher by Sharaf al-Din Ahmad ibn Yahya Maniri

At Hilo, Hawaii, he leaves his younger brothers Kumukahi and Haehae; at Kohala, his priests Mookini and Kaluawilinae; at Maui, a follower, Honuaula; at Oahu his sisters Makapuu and Makaaoa.
— from The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai by S. N. Haleole

A man represented with his arms folded, and who did everything, who was the greatest force ever known, the most concentrated, the most mordant, the most acid of all forces; a singular genius who carried armed civilization in every direction without fixing it anywhere; a man who could do everything because he willed everything; a prodigious phenomenon of will, conquering an illness by a battle, and yet doomed to die of disease in bed after living in the midst of ball and bullets; a man with a code and a sword in his brain, word and deed; a clear-sighted spirit that foresaw everything but his own fall; a capricious politician who risked men by handfuls out of economy, and who spared three heads—those of Talleyrand, of Pozzo de Borgo, and of Metternich, diplomatists whose death would have saved the French Empire, and who seemed to him of greater weight than thousands of soldiers; a man to whom nature, as a rare privilege, had given a heart in a frame of bronze; mirthful and kind at midnight amid women, and next morning manipulating Europe as a young girl might amuse herself by splashing water in her bath!
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac