I asked thee not my strength to scan, Or loss and profit in the plan.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

Lesches or Lescheos (as Pausanias calls him) of Pyrrha or Mitylene is dated at about 660 B.C.
— from Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica by Hesiod

There were so many places where one might deteriorate pleasantly: Port Said, Shanghai, parts of Turkestan, Constantinople, the South Seas—all lands of sad, haunting music and many odors, where lust could be a mode and expression of life, where the shades of night skies and sunsets would seem to reflect only moods of passion: the colors of lips and poppies.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

[ 24 ] A fable telling this story is in the collection of Arabic fables which bear the name of Locman, or Lokman, a personage some identify with Aesop himself.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

In 1501 he was sent to the university of Erfurt, where he went through the usual courses of logic and philosophy.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

They mumble out great store of legends and psalms, by them not at all understood; they say many paternosters interlarded with Ave-Maries, without thinking upon or apprehending the meaning of what it is they say, which truly I call mocking of God, and not prayers.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Volumes of letters and portfolios of testimonials, if you like!'
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

There is nothing left but a heap of 'ologies' and other technical terms invented by Polus, Theodorus, Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, and others, who have rules for everything, and who teach how to be short or long at pleasure.
— from Phaedrus by Plato

In that great, cold house, through which the shadow of death was creeping, she was the incarnation of life and promise, a curious contrast to her surroundings.
— from Mitchelhurst Place: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 2) by Margaret Veley

In this particular picture, which was an altarpiece in the church of Our Lady at Parma, we have in St. George the representation of religious magnanimity; in St. John, religious enthusiasm; in St. Geminiani, religious munificence; in St. Peter Martyr, religious fortitude; and these are grouped round the most lovely impersonation of innocence, chastity, and heavenly love.
— from Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, Vol. 2 (of 3) With Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected by Mrs. (Anna) Jameson

It seems to be (as far as one can make it out) this sensation which more than anything else jades and tires what some very metaphorical men of letters are pleased to call their Pegasus.
— from Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 by George Saintsbury

We spent an entire afternoon and evening over our letters and papers and, through them, began to get in touch with the world again.
— from Camps and Trails in China A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China by Roy Chapman Andrews

The same average number of persons forget every year to direct the letters dropped into the post-offices of London and Paris.
— from Nineteenth Century Questions by James Freeman Clarke

Here I lies and I sees none but vaither, and her grumbles becos I can't work, and when vaither bain't here I sees nobody, and it be wisht, I reckon, till you comes; and then I be that full o' gladness and joy I remember no more the time o' loneness and pain and trouble.
— from John Herring: A West of England Romance. Volume 1 (of 3) by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

Moreover, the vein of sadness and the subordination of natural modes of life which mark his teaching as they mark only in a greater degree those of the Buddha, easily led to the celibacy and mortification of the flesh which so long condemned the most aspiring from a moral point of view, the most gentle and conscientious, to a life of loneliness, and peopled the world with the progeny of the less moral.
— from A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution by Cora May Williams

Besides the salmons therefore, which are not to be taken from the middest of September to the middest of Nouember, and are verie plentifull in our greatest riuers, as their yoong store are not to be touched from mid Aprill vnto Midsummer, we haue the trout, barbell, graile, powt, cheuin, pike, goodgeon, smelt, perch, menan, shrimpes, creuises, lampreies, and such like, whose preseruation is prouided for by verie sharpe lawes, not onelie in our riuers, but also in plashes or lakes and ponds, which otherwise would bring small profit to the owners, and doo much harme by continuall maintenance of idle persons, who would spend their whole times vpon their bankes, not coueting to labour with their hands, nor follow anie good trade.
— from Chronicles (1 of 6): The Description of Britaine by William Harrison

On this day the Qāẓī and the Chief Justice represented to me that ʿAbdu-l-Wahhāb, the son of Ḥakīm ʿAlī, claimed Rs. 80,000 from the Sayyids of Lahore, and produced a bond with the seal of Qāẓī Nūru-llah.
— from The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri: or, Memoirs of Jahangir (Volume 2 of 2) by Emperor of Hindustan Jahangir

" I thanked the Lord in my heart for this intelligence, hoping that the illustrious stranger had returned to his own land and people, and that I should thenceforth be rid of his controlling and appalling presence.
— from The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg