Well, I had promised Madame de Villefort the loan of my carriage to drive tomorrow to the Bois; but when my coachman goes to fetch the grays from the stables they are gone—positively gone.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

See, Pampá, most divinely sweet, The swan's and mallard's loved retreat, Shows her glad waters bright and clear, Where lotuses their heads uprear From the pure wave, and charm the view With mingled tints of red
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

At least the poor man does not care to let his friends see his case; and so will not provoke a fire to break out, that he sees (and so do his friends too) the meek lady has much ado to smother; and which, very possibly, burns with a most comfortable ardour, after we are gone.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

I got up early one morning, and walked to the end of the canale regio, intending to engage a gondola to take me as far as Mestra, where I could take post horses, reach Treviso in less than two hours, pledge my diamond ring, and return to Venice the same evening.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Fifty thousand people marched down Market Street after a week of this monitoring.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

“Lookee, sir,” answered the squire; “to be very plain, my daughter is bespoke already; but if she was not, I would not marry her to a lord upon any account; I hate all lords; they are a parcel of courtiers and Hanoverians, and I will have nothing to do with them.”
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

You are good to look at, my adored one, you are great in intellect, my Victor, and yet I dare proffer my devotion, for it is as genuine as your beauty and as deep as your genius.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

But turn thine eyes to the other side, and thou shalt see in front and in the van of this other army the ever victorious and never vanquished Timonel of Carcajona, prince of New Biscay, who comes in armour with arms quartered azure, vert, white, and yellow, and bears on his shield a cat or on a field tawny with a motto which says Miau, which is the beginning of the name of his lady, who according to report is the peerless Miaulina, daughter of the duke Alfeniquen of the Algarve; the other, who burdens and presses the loins of that powerful charger and bears arms white as snow and a shield blank and without any device, is a novice knight, a Frenchman by birth, Pierres Papin by name, lord of the baronies of Utrique; that other, who with iron-shod heels strikes the flanks of that nimble parti-coloured zebra, and for arms bears azure vair, is the mighty duke of Nerbia, Espartafilardo del Bosque, who bears for device on his shield an asparagus plant with a motto in Castilian that says, Rastrea mi suerte.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

[Laughs through her tears] We’ll have a talk later on, but good-bye for the present, my dear; I’ll go somewhere.
— from Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"I don't want to pry, my dear.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

“Los oficiales del Sueldo en Oran, D. Pedro Marin de Armendariz,
— from Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Spanish Language in the British Museum. Vol. 4 by Pascual de Gayangos

I thought of paying my debt to the Bellegardes that way.
— from The American by Henry James

My own health has been so bad of late and has shown such unmistakable signs of breaking up that I fear I must give up all hope of ever carrying out, personally, my desires.
— from The Princess Galva: A Romance by David Whitelaw

“Not pay my debts—and that is the pressing difficulty.
— from Tales and Novels — Volume 07 Patronage [part 1] by Maria Edgeworth

"For my sake, quit Paris, my dear son.
— from Old Court Life in France, vol. 2/2 by Frances Minto Dickinson Elliot

The two women were silent for a time, and then the elder went on: "That's what your mother wished you to know—that for every princess there is just one real prince, and for every prince there is just one real princess, my dear, and when you have found him, and know he is true, nothing—not money, not friends, not father nor mother—when he is honest, not even pride—should stand between you.
— from A Certain Rich Man by William Allen White