I pledge you the honor of a gentleman, and of a Frenchman, that we intend you no injury.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe

Do not then suppose that we shall all in a moment allow you to erect your stage in the agora, or introduce the fair voices of your actors, speaking above our own, and permit you to harangue our women and children, and the common people, about our institutions, in language other than our own, and very often the opposite of our own.
— from Laws by Plato

Nor is this my only grief; the daughter of Tantalus has added abusive language to her shocking deeds, and has dared to postpone you to her own children, and (what I wish may fall upon herself), she has called me childless; and the profane wretch has discovered a tongue like her father’s.”
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid

I burnt for the more active life of the world—for the more exciting toils of a literary career—for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat under my curate’s surplice.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

As you would hereafter prosper—follow me; I pledge you the honour of a knight, that no evil shall befall you;—if you are contented to dare futurity—remain in your chamber, and I will depart as I came.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

"Tuesday was a much finer day than any we had experienced for nearly a week, but still there was a considerable sea running, and our dangers were far from passed; yet the hopes of our ultimate success ran high.
— from The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph by Henry M. (Henry Martyn) Field

He had taken her to a tower of grey rocks, whence she could look forth as from a window on fold after fold of hills: blue and purple they were, green and grey, colours so intermixed and blended that the eye could hardly part them, and as she gazed out on these serene and solid waves of earth and the deep troughs dividing them, or looked straight below her at the narrow valley streaked with the cotton threads that were streams, up at the sky and the bird that hung there, and down to the ferns in the crannies of the rocks, he knew she loved the hills with a passion younger than his own, but as strong.
— from Yonder by E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

With all a madman’s pertinacity, you took hold of this idea, and eagerly listened to all that I said.
— from A Blundering Boy: A Humorous Story by Bruce Weston Munro

I cannot treat as insignificant any opinions bearing on life, and interests dearer than life, proclaimed yearly to hundreds of young men, who will carry them to their legitimate results in practice.
— from The Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes: An Index of the Project Gutenberg Editions by Oliver Wendell Holmes