I accepted it eagerly, and it was the means of extricating me from my present useless life and stranded hopes.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

Silenes of old were little boxes, like those we now may see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on the outside with wanton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts, and other such-like counterfeited pictures at discretion, to excite people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious caskets were carefully preserved and kept many rich jewels and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergris, amomon, musk, civet, with several kinds of precious stones, and other things of great price.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

pero usted llegará antes si se pone 5 a ello.
— from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós

For as the physician, if it be expedient, infuses saffron or spikenard, aye, or uses some soothing fomentation or feeds his patient up liberally, and sometimes orders castor, "Or poley, 388 that so strong and foully smells," or pounds hellebore and compels him to drink it,—neither in the one case making unpleasantness, nor in the other pleasantness, his end and aim, but in both studying only the interest of his patient,—so the friend sometimes by praise and kindness, extolling him and gladdening his heart, leads him to what is noble, as Agamemnon, "Teucer, dear head, thou son of Telamon, Go on thus shooting, captain of thy men;" 389 or Diomede, "How could I e'er forget divine Odysseus?"
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

Having well dried them, put them up in brown paper, sewing the paper up like a sack, and press them not too hard together, and keep them in a dry place near the fire.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

Hands grabbed my shoulders and feet and I was picked up like a sack of potatoes.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Aquí está el mío: mirad, Here’s mine, I’ve duly por una línea apartados set out on separate lines traigo los nombres sentados all the names, and the times, para mayor claridad. for clarity, and fully.
— from Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla

"But those same monuments present us likewise a system more methodical and more complicated—that of the worship of all the stars; adored sometimes in their proper forms, sometimes under figurative emblems and symbols; and this worship was the effect of the knowledge men had acquired in physics, and was derived immediately from the first causes of the social state; that is, from the necessities and arts of the first degree, which are among the elements of society.
— from The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature by C.-F. (Constantin-François) Volney

It would hardly be necessary to tell any reader (only it is as pleasant to repeat these stories, as it is to hear beautiful old airs) that Alpheus was a river-god of Greece, who fell in love with the wood-nymph Arethuse; and that the latter, praying for help to Diana, was converted into a stream, and pursued under land and sea by the other enamoured water, as far as the island of Sicily, where the streams became united.
— from A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla by Leigh Hunt

The Imp is terribly quick about picking up languages, and she has teased Louis into teaching her quite a little French, which he declared to us she picked up with lightning speed.
— from Three Sides of Paradise Green by Augusta Huiell Seaman

On his right hand there were wide corn-fields, with here and there an open tract of turnip or mangold; on his left only the wild moorland pastures, undulating like a sea of verdure.
— from A Strange World: A Novel. Volume 1 (of 3) by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

On this particular morning Wid Gardner turned down the practically untrod lane along Sim's wire fence.
— from The Sagebrusher: A Story of the West by Emerson Hough

Whilst tarrying in Central Europe, they subsist principally upon lemmings, and should these prove scarce, attack squirrels, marmots, and other small quadrupeds: they pursue Wild Pigeons, Ducks, and Ptarmigans with great ardour, and are so daring in contesting the latter delicacies with the hunters that, according to Blakeston, they have been known to snatch the coveted prize out of the sportsman's bag, whilst it hung suspended at his back.
— from Cassell's Book of Birds, Volume 2 (of 4) by Alfred Edmund Brehm

With an old water-proof cloak of mine on her shoulders, with a broad-flapped Spanish hat of Owen’s on her head, with a wild imp of a Welsh boy following her as guide and groom on a bare-backed pony, and with one of the largest and ugliest cur-dogs in England (which she had picked up, lost and starved by the wayside) barking at her heels, she scoured the country in all directions, and came back to dinner, as she herself expressed it, “with the manners of an Amazon, the complexion of a dairy-maid, and the appetite of a wolf.”
— from The Queen of Hearts by Wilkie Collins