“Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad, The nights are wholesome—then no planets strike, No fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm,
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

As I passed through the hall on my way to my chamber, the dying embers of the Yule-clog still sent forth a dusky glow, and had it not been the season when “no spirit dares stir abroad,” I should have been half tempted to steal from my room at midnight and peep whether the fairies might not be at their revels about the hearth.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

—A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow your souls bright.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

There was no motion in the dumb dead air, Not any song of bird or sound of rill; Gross darkness of the inner sepulchre Is not so deadly still As that wide forest.
— from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

He is therefore highly pleased that the higher men have all blossomed forth; they therefore require new festivals,—“A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow their souls bright.”
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“Why not?” said Dinah, “she an’t dead, is she?”
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

There was never any failures, nor lawing, nor wastefulness in our family, nor dying without wills––" "No, nor sudden deaths," said aunt Pullet; "allays the doctor called in.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

At a later period the luxury of side-dishes consisted in the quantity and in the variety of the pastry; Rabelais names sixteen different sorts at one repast; Taillevent mentions pastry called covered pastry, Bourbonnaise pastry, double-faced pastry, pear pastry , and apple pastry ; Platina speaks of the white pastry with quince, elder flowers, rice, roses, chestnuts, &c.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm; So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

An order had been issued, that, to avoid any serious accidents from them, no students' dogs should appear in public except led in a band.
— from The Student-Life of Germany by William Howitt

"Oh no!" said Dolly, starting, and laying both her hands upon one of the young officer's, as if in pleading or in hindering.
— from The End of a Coil by Susan Warner

In short, they are quite sure this other love-affair is not so deep seated as their own, but they like dearly to see it going forward.
— from Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers by Robert Louis Stevenson

The reader knows that gases and vapours, when imprisoned within a narrow space, do struggle as resolutely to escape as did Sterne's starling from his cage.
— from Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science by J. Hamilton (James Hamilton) Fyfe

So, Floyd, to his own no small danger, stood alone in accusing the man openly.
— from The Crock of Gold: A Rural Novel by Martin Farquhar Tupper

There is scarcely any irrigation; and though the soil is so productive that wherever the land is cultivated, good crops are commonly obtained by means of the spring rains, while elsewhere nature at once spontaneously robes herself in verdure of the richest kind, yet no sooner does summer arrive than barrenness is spread over the scene; the crops ripen and are gathered in; “the grass withereth, the flower fadeth;” the delicate herbage of the plains shrinks back and disappears; all around turns to a uniform dull straw-color; nothing continues to live but what is coarse, dry, and sapless; and so the land, which was lately an Eden, becomes a desert.
— from The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations. by George Rawlinson

It was now somewhat dry, so as to split easily; and with his axe and a set of wedges he attacked it.
— from The Desert Home: The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness by Mayne Reid