" An elderly emir present, fired with the desire to possess a young and lovely wife and to rule over a great kingdom, offered to try the magic arts with which he was acquainted.
— from The Arabian Nights Entertainments by Andrew Lang

He died, and one day we were all surprised, not to say delighted, to hear from his executor, a Mr. Nixon, a rich merchant in London, that my uncle had left my mother four hundred pounds a year as long as she did not marry again, but at her death the said annuity was to be divided between my two sisters, independent of any coverture.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

The Two Prisoners A year after Louis XVIII.’s restoration, a visit was made by the inspector-general of prisons.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

Et tanquam in specula positus , ( [42] as he said) in some high place above you all, like Stoicus Sapiens, omnia saecula, praeterita presentiaque videns, uno velut intuitu , I hear and see what is done abroad, how others [43] run, ride, turmoil, and macerate themselves in court and country, far from those wrangling lawsuits, aulia vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo : I laugh at all, [44] only secure, lest my suit go amiss, my ships perish, corn and cattle miscarry, trade decay, I have no wife nor children good or bad to provide for.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

"Never mind; you've got the tarlatan for the big party, and you always look like an angel in white," said Amy, brooding over the little store of finery in which her soul delighted.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

Oh, dear!" "Never mind, you've got the tarlaton for the big party, and you always look like an angel in white," said Amy, brooding over the little store of finery in which her soul delighted.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Thence by water to the Duke of Albemarle’s: all the way fires on each side of the Thames, and strange to see in broad daylight two or three burials upon the Bankeside, one at the very heels of another: doubtless all of the plague; and yet at least forty or fifty people going along with every one of them.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The substance of the wall seemed as permeable and yielding as light.
— from White Fang by Jack London

So it is best to start with a formal agreement; namely, that you are to pay them two hundred and fifty pounds a year, as long as you and they find it pleasant to live together.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

he said:— "It is all very beautiful, of course,—the way the town piles itself up against the hillside, the pink and yellow and lilac blondeur of the houses, the olive gardens, the radiant sky overhead,—it is all very picturesque and beautiful.
— from The Lady Paramount by Henry Harland

My powers, as yours, are limited {181} to our provinces of Guienne and Aquitaine.
— from Old Court Life in Spain, vol. 2/2 by Frances Minto Dickinson Elliot

Presently, a bustling little man in a wide-awake entered with a huge pile of pink and yellow advertisement leaflets, it recommended some horloges , which had but recently swum "into the ken" of the inhabitants who live on the outskirts of Rue des Ours.
— from Autumn Impressions of the Gironde by I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne) Sieveking

He was the brightness of God's glory, and the express image of His person, and yet a lowly, humble, gracious, social man; one who was to be seen, from day to day, about the streets; going from house to house; kind and affable to all; easily approached by the very poorest; taking up little children in His arms, in the most tender, gentle, winning way; drying the widow's tears; soothing the stricken and sorrowing heart; feeding the hungry, healing the sick; cleansing the poor leper; meeting every form of human need and misery; at the bidding of all who stood in need of succor and sympathy.
— from The Lord's Coming. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. II by Charles Henry Mackintosh

She informed her also of another secret, namely, that one Mr. Bretton had allowed her ten pounds a year; and, lastly, she requested that Mrs. Bargrave would write to her brother, and tell him how to distribute her mourning rings, and mentioned there was a purse of gold in her cabinet.
— from A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal The Next Day after Her Death, to one Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, the 8th of September, 1705; which Apparition Recommends the Perusal of Drelincourt's Book of Consolations against the Fears of Death by Daniel Defoe

He had a salary to live upon, and he must live somewhere; and he was actually paid three thousand pounds for travelling charges for three months, which was at the rate of twelve thousand pounds a year: a large and abundant sum.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

"You," he tells Merck, "are always Socrates-Addison; and Goethe is for the most part a young, arrogant lord, with horribly scraping cock's heels, and, if I come among you some day, I shall be the Irish Dean with his whip."
— from The Youth of Goethe by Peter Hume Brown

"The child will enjoy it, I never knew any one so easily pleased; and you and Lawrence and Bernard can rag one another to your heart's content.
— from Nightfall by Anthony Pryde