Quit life then, in the same kindly spirit as though you had done it, and with goodwill even to those who withstand you. 48. Remember that the governing part becomes invincible when, collected into itself, it is satisfied in refusing to do what it would not, even when its resistance is unreasonable.
— from The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus A new rendering based on the Foulis translation of 1742 by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

Go straight down the way you came up; and if any one says anything to you, as they probably will, being but men, you can chaff back a bit, of course, but remember you’re a widow woman, quite alone in the world, with a character to lose.’
— from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Peppino made a sign, and the youth hastily removed the fowl.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

"Be kind to your friends that they may continue so, and to your enemies that they may become so."
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

The seed and the roots much more, help to open obstructions of the liver, spleen, and gall, and thereby help the painful and windy swellings of the spleen, and the yellow jaundice; as also the gout and cramps.
— 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

You have only to add, "love to Pauline, and thanking you again for asking me," sign it "Very sincerely," and there you are!
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

In ye heat of ye talk it befel yt one did breake wind, yielding an exceding mightie and distresfull stink, whereat all did laugh full sore, and then— Ye
— from 1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors by Mark Twain

Seeing how fond Pavlicheff was of you,—it was thanks to him you went to school, and also had the advantage of special teachers—his relations and servants grew to believe that you were his son, and that your father had been betrayed by his wife.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I have also often wished to write you on the subject, and tell you what I think is your market-value—to speak in business phrase—as a writer; so that in case you are [273] not receiving a just compensation, as things go, you might know it, and act accordingly.
— from Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time by Fanny Fern

You would say as there you stand That all was beauty in the land.
— from The Three Hills, and Other Poems by Charles Baudelaire

He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest, rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery, transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates, molécules organiques , potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated "life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulæ, with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen or twenty years.
— from Life: Its True Genesis by Horatius Flaccus

Peter tossed her a look of indignation, and afterwards waylaid her in the corridor: “See here,” hotly, “I don’t know who you are, but I made an ass of myself so that you should enjoy your sweetbreads, and then you rag me about it!”
— from Twos and Threes by G. B. (Gladys Bronwyn) Stern

When you enter the kingdom and find, by the very skirts of its admirable roads, a raised footpath for the passengers and travellers from town to town, you become suddenly aware that you are in a land where close attention to the humbler classes is within the duties of a government.
— from Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

"You have spoken according to your business," replied Mr. Clifton, impatiently.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

They will tell you the various means that they are about to apply to stop the war in Europe, and you may select any that you like for your use in Haiti.
— from Further Foolishness by Stephen Leacock

Slowly it moved in its huge strength along, and its burning eyes glittered through the gloomy shade: its jaws, falling apart, showed the grinders with which it snapped asunder the young oaks of the forest; and the vast tusks, which, curved downward to the midst of its massive limbs, glistened white and ghastly, curdling the blood of one destined hereafter to be the dreaded ruler of the men of that distant age.
— from The Fallen Star, or, the History of a False Religion by E.L. Bulwer; And, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil by Lord Brougham by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron