Ma dimmi: quei de la palude pingue, che mena il vento, e che batte la pioggia, e che s'incontran con si` aspre lingue, perche' non dentro da la citta` roggia sono ei puniti, se Dio li ha in ira?
— from Divina Commedia di Dante: Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Veteres maledictis incessit, vincit, et contra omnem antiquitatem coronatur, ipseque a se victor declaratur.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Narrow and steep though the streets were—in some cases so steep that they formed flights of what may be styled broad and shallow stairs—they were crowded with bronzed men in varied Eastern costume; Moors in fez and gay vest and red morocco slippers; Turks with turban and pipe; Cabyles from the mountains; Arabs from the plains; water-carriers with jar on shoulder; Jews in sombre robes; Jewesses with rich shawls and silk kerchiefs as headgear; donkeys with panniers that almost blocked the way; camels, and veiled women, and many other strange sights that our hero had up to that time only seen in picture-books.
— from The Middy and the Moors: An Algerine Story by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

"Why, Miss Maggie, what's the matter with you?" cried the man, in very evident concern.
— from Oh, Money! Money! A Novel by Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

A crowd of people assembled for the purpose of accomplishing, however worthy, a purpose in a questionable manner, is very easily converted into a riot, and when a crowd proposed to carry out an unlawful object by violence it soon becomes an uncontrollable mob, if encouraged in its purposes by the sympathy, either expressed or passive, of the community and the civil authorities.
— from Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877 Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878 by 1877 Pennsylvania. General Assembly. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July

And they had discovered, to their surprise, that the human physique—inferior though it might be to machines in ruggedness, speed, and other respects—was better equipped for traversing rough terrain than the most ingenious vehicle ever constructed.
— from World of the Drone by Robert Abernathy

Of these, the first may have been that her son had never signified the smallest intention to ask her consent, or any mistrust of his ability to dispense with it; the second, that the pension bestowed upon her by a grateful country (and a Barnacle) would be freed from any little filial inroads, when her Henry should be married to the darling only child of a man in very easy circumstances; the third, that Henry’s debts must clearly be paid down upon the altar-railing by his father-in-law.
— from Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens