During this intercourse, a Dane, who came on board the commander's ship, having occasion to express his business in writing, found the pen blunt; and, holding it up, sarcastically said, "If your guns are not better pointed than your pens, you will make little impression on Copenhagen!"
— from The Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson by Robert Southey

This done, Ghino betook himself to the abbot and said to him, 'Sir, Ghino, whose guest you are, sendeth to you, praying you acquaint him whither you are bound and on what occasion.'
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

Be sure that you possess your knowledge, that your knowledge does not possess you.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

Do your lessons well, do not idle or play the fool, and above all things, see that you please your teachers.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

My much-honour'd Patron, believe your poor poet, Your courage, much more than your prudence, you show it:
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

How have you behaved towards the Gods, towards your parents, your brothers, your wife, your children, your teachers, those who reared you, your friends, your intimates, your slaves?
— 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

In settling your quarrels with kings for your tools, You prove yourselves losers and eminent fools.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

ALVING.—the regard you owed to your position, yes; and that I was a runaway wife.
— from Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen

“Come here, Master Dale,” said he in a mild and gentle voice, “your mother tells me that you have behaved in a most shameful manner to your pretty young cousin, who is residing with your mamma.”
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

Next you buckle your greaves on your legs, and your cuisses on your thighs; then come your backplate and your breastplate, and you begin to feel crowded; then you hitch onto the breastplate the half-petticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down in front but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down, and isn’t any real improvement on an inverted coal scuttle, either for looks or for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belt on your sword; then you put your stove-pipe joints onto your arms, your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto your head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to hang over the back of your neck—and there you are, snug as a candle in a candle-mould.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

True enough; but only upon condition that you will not mistake the shrill chorus of a few interested courtiers and speculators for the voice of your time, nor imagine that you precede your generation because you stand alone.
— from Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 by Sara Yorke Stevenson

The young prince yonder, with the condescending smile and his eye-glasses stuck high up on his nose, is secretary to the chief of police, and a very influential man.
— from The Baron's Sons: A Romance of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 by Mór Jókai

And yet I had heard, in Hades down below, that you prided yourselves here on the study of the learned languages; and, indeed, taught little but Greek and Latin at your public schools?”
— from Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays by Charles Kingsley

Yes; mind this, ye pilgrims, ye are exhorted, "I will that men pray everywhere, without doubting" (1 Tim. 2:8).
— from Works of John Bunyan — Complete by John Bunyan

About the salmon you do as your gillie tells you, plant your foot on that rock, or on that sod, and cast there, and the fish comes (when he does come), as the fly swings round two yards below, or rather comes [Pg 83] when he does come, the coming being a long way the exception; but the basket of brown trout has been your own doing—you have cast your little flies yard by yard where your own experience tells you the brown trout will come, and the gay little chap does come.
— from Twenty-Six Years Reminiscences of Scotch Grouse Moors by William Alexander Adams