Day, night, hour, ride, time, work, play, Alone, in company, still my care hath been To have her match’d, and having now provided A gentleman of noble parentage, Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly allied, Stuff’d, as they say, with honourable parts, Proportion’d as one’s thought would wish a man, And then to have a wretched puling fool, A whining mammet, in her fortune’s tender, To answer, ‘I’ll not wed, I cannot love, I am too young, I pray you pardon me.’
— from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

“I will put you in prison!” said his master.
— from Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The abbé still imagined that I should succeed at last, and advised me to remain another year in Paris, where I had made so good a beginning.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

Be pleased then To pay that duty which you truly owe To him that owes it, namely, this young prince; And then our arms, like to a muzzled bear, Save in aspect, hath all offence seal'd up; Our cannons' malice vainly shall be spent Against th' invulnerable clouds of heaven; And with a blessed and unvex'd retire, With unhack'd swords and helmets all unbruis'd, We will bear home that lusty blood again Which here we came to spout against your town, And leave your children, wives, and you, in peace.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

If you discharge your present duty with firm and zealous, yet kindly, observance of the laws of reason; if you regard no by-gains, but keep pure within you your immortal part, as if obliged to restore it at once to him who gave it; if you hold to this with no further desires or aversions, and be content with the natural discharge of your present task, and with the heroic sincerity of all you say or utter, you will live well.
— 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

My organs were indeed harsh, but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

From the moment in which I first beheld you, I perceived sensations in my bosom till then unknown to me; I found a delight in your society which no one's else could afford; and when I witnessed the extent of your genius and information, I rejoiced as does a Father in the perfections of his Son.
— from The Monk: A Romance by M. G. (Matthew Gregory) Lewis

The Duke of York, I perceive, is earnest in it, and will have good effects of it; telling W. Coventry that it was a letter that might have come from the Commissioners of Accounts, but it was better it should come first from him.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

I should not have told you: I promised Durban that I would not.
— from The Black Patch by Fergus Hume

Endeavour to please and persuade: she may yield to the person who reasons with her, not to his arguments"—opinions, however, which apply to men as often as not, and only to the young, impressible, passionate, and imperfectly educated of either sex.
— from Ideala by Sarah Grand

They ship them from New York in lots, poor things; they dies here in droves, poor things; and we buries them yonder in piles, poor things.
— from Justice in the By-Ways, a Tale of Life by F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams

"Whitbread, putting all false professions of friendship and feeling out of the question, you have no right to keep me here!—for it is in truth your act—if you had not forcibly withheld from me the twelve thousand pounds , in consequence of a threatening letter from a miserable swindler, whose claim YOU in particular knew to be a lie , I should at least have been out of the reach of this state of miserable insult—for that, and that only, lost me my seat in Parliament.
— from Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan — Volume 02 by Thomas Moore

I brought them for you in place of the Aurea Legenda , and the Neapolitan Horace and—" She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes, as if she could shut out sound with sight.
— from The Divine Fire by May Sinclair

John, who was standing within hearing, called out: "I am here, Titus, and I bear witness; yet, I pray you, strive to the end to keep the oath which you swore to me."
— from For the Temple: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

“Lé-lang-ûh, the God of the Flute sent me the vision of this when I was a youth in prayer,” he said gently.
— from The Flute of the Gods by Marah Ellis Ryan

But, Law bless you, I promise you, he punished my champagne, and had a party ere every night—reglar tip-top swells, down from the clubs and the West End—Capting Ragg, the Honorable Deuceace, who lives in the Temple, and some fellers as knows a good glass of wine, I warrant you.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Where I could cheat a man I failed not to do it, yea I prided myself upon it, so that none came off scot-free from his dealings with me.
— from The Adventurous Simplicissimus being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim by Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen

Wherefore I seye you in passynge be the Lond of Cathaye toward the high Ynde, and towards Bacharye, men passen be a Kyngdom that men clepen Caldilhe: that is a fair Contree.
— from The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: A Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant. To Which Is Added a Sketch of the History of Cotton and the Cotton Trade by Henry Lee