Turkey gentlewomen, that are perpetual prisoners, still mewed up according to the custom of the place, have little else beside their household business, or to play with their children to drive away time, but to dally with their cats, which they have in delitiis , as many of our ladies and gentlewomen use monkeys and little dogs.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

The vicar of Marney, who had been presented by himself, was his model of a priest: he left every body alone.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

Some hundred thousands probably have left Europe behind for ever, and are now delving and woodcutting in the forests of the western world.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 402, April, 1849 by Various

He shook his head, and pointed his long ears backward and forward, but not a step would he stir, for entreaties, threats, or blows.
— from Five Mice in a Mouse-trap, by the Man in the Moon. by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

For most of us, possibly, he lives entirely by virtue of de Quincey’s essay upon him.
— from Cambridge and Its Colleges by A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton) Thompson

On looking out of the tent, I saw a long row of pack-ponies heavily laden, escorted by a number of mounted soldiers with matchlocks and spears.
— from In the Forbidden Land An account of a journey in Tibet, capture by the Tibetan authorities, imprisonment, torture and ultimate release by Arnold Henry Savage Landor

It had passed his lips even before he knew, and yet, although he knew it not, it was the natural expression of a soul in torment.
— from The Man Who Rose Again by Joseph Hocking

After Pete had licked everybody between Quebec and Bay Chaleur he started to look for Paul Bunyan.
— from The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan As Told in the Camps of the White Pine Lumbermen for Generations During Which Time the Loggers Have Pioneered the Way Through the North Woods from Maine to California; Collected from Various Sources and Embellished for Publication by William B. Laughead

There, as in a shrine, the martyr Bertric reposed, who, like St. Edmund, had died by the arrows of the heathen Danes, there the once warlike Alfgar, the father of our thane, rested in peace, his lady Ethelgiva by his side { vi }.
— from The Rival Heirs; being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune by A. D. (Augustine David) Crake

'Tis so painful— Dr. Tory .—Pooh, nonsense—ask Ude how he feels, When, for Epicure feasts, he prepares his live eels, By flinging them in, 'twixt the bars of the fire, And letting them wriggle on there till they tire.
— from The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes by Thomas Moore

A small Buprestis who ravages the cherry-trees, Anthaxia nitidula , passes his larval existence between the wood and the bark.
— from The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles by Jean-Henri Fabre

[66] Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleasant: his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it near two hours; his face bloated and distorted with his late paralytic stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes, and placed over the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must himself so soon descend; think how unpleasant a situation!
— from Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters by Horace Walpole