What hinders you from slaying your children and wives with your own hands, and burning this most excellent native city of yours?
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

Ȝift , sb. gift, PP; ȝyft , S2; yefte , S; yifte , C3; ȝiftes , pl. , PP; ȝeftes , S; yeftes , S; ȝiftus , S2; yiftes , C3.—Icel.
— from A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 by A. L. (Anthony Lawson) Mayhew

Peering over the side you could just see them (as before you heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and turning over on their backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a human head.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

If indeed I were to ask you to betray the Volscians and save your country, this would be a hard request for you to grant; for though it is base to destroy one's own fellow citizens, it is equally wrong to betray those who have trusted you.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

I invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon; Dorothea said you couldn't have anybody in the house, you know, and she asked me to write.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Tamburí tuvo que cumplir su condena; pasó quince días en la cárcel; pagó dos mil cequíes de multa para el tesoro del Sultán y ciento cincuenta por las reparaciones que hubo que hacer en el tejado.
— from A First Spanish Reader by Erwin W. (Erwin William) Roessler

la del señor magistral—dijo la otra;—la del señor magistral que las dice en un suspiro, y creo que no me ha sido de provecho, porque estaba muy preocupada, sin poder apartar el entendimiento 20 de estas cosas terribles que nos pasan.
— from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós

For I was ordered to shoot your daughter and I shot your cow, in order to show blood on my arrow.”
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

“Put it down, sir,” he said; “there’s a wheen less precious lives in this hold than a curate’s, and for the turn you did us in coming up to alarm us of the rear attack, if for nothing else, I would be sorry to see you come to any skaith.
— from John Splendid: The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn by Neil Munro

'Why should you show your colours?'
— from A Red Wallflower by Susan Warner

"Sir Herbert Kitchener should in person command the White Nile flotilla as far as Fashoda, and may take with him a small body of British troops, should you concur with him in thinking such a course desirable.
— from Khartoum Campaign, 1898; or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan by Bennet Burleigh

Don't you suppose you could rent one?"
— from Home Fires in France by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

They say you cannot prepare such speeches and give proper attention to your business."
— from My Memories of Eighty Years by Chauncey M. (Chauncey Mitchell) Depew

All the food we have is what I kept back from the children's supper so you could eat."
— from White Queen of the Cannibals: the Story of Mary Slessor of Calabar by A. J. Bueltmann

"Then, sir, you can state the case to me and rely upon my maintaining your secret."
— from Two Wonderful Detectives; Or, Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill by Old Sleuth

This man was Étienne Arago, brother of the great astronomer, and, for sixteen years, celebrated as one of the boldest members of the Republican party, as well as one of the bravest men in Paris.
— from Edmond Dantès by Edmund Flagg

'I knewvery soonthat you cared,' she said, with the pretty soft fall of eyes and voice.
— from The Gold of Chickaree by Susan Warner