Her very name (let it be what it will) is a most pretty, pleasing name; I believe now there is some secret power and virtue in names, every action, sight, habit, gesture; he admires, whether she play, sing, or dance, in what tires soever she goeth, how excellent it was, how well it became her, never the like seen or heard.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

In some places a village is not moved for a year or two, depending upon whether there is a death there, and a fire once started burns steadily on that spot all of the time.
— from Up the Mazaruni for Diamonds by William La Varre

The arabesque in art is the same phenomenon as vegetation in Nature.
— from William Shakespeare by Victor Hugo