Let Cicero, the father of eloquence, treat of the contempt of death; let Seneca do the same: the first languishingly drawls it out so you perceive he would make you resolve upon a thing on which he is not resolved himself; he inspires you not with courage, for he himself has none; the other animates and inflames you.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

[He yawns] Ever since the Professor and his wife have come, our daily life seems to have jumped the track.
— from Uncle Vanya: Scenes from Country Life in Four Acts by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

A message came one day last spring summoning me to a Mott Street tenement in which lay a child dying from some unknown disease.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

The greater common Ragwort hath many large and long, dark green leaves lying on the ground, very much rent and torn on the sides in many places: from among which rise up sometimes but one, and sometimes two or three square or crested blackish or brownish stalks, three or four feet high, sometimes branched, bearing divers such-like leaves upon them, at several distances upon the top, where it branches forth into many stalks bearing yellow flowers, consisting of divers leaves, set as a pale or border, with a dark yellow thrum in the middle, which do abide a great while, but at last are turned into down, and with the small blackish grey seed, are carried away with the wind.
— 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

Venus screamed aloud, and let her son fall, but Phoebus Apollo caught him in his arms, and hid him in a cloud of darkness, lest some Danaan should drive a spear into his breast and kill him; and Diomed shouted out as he left her, "Daughter of Jove, leave war and battle alone, can you not be contented with beguiling silly women?
— from The Iliad by Homer

As soon as the sun had set, the King said to the huntsman, "Now come and show me the cottage in the wood;" and when he was at the door, he knocked and called out, "Dear little sister, let me in."
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

‘The young Emperor was stretched on a couch of dyed lion skins, and a gerfalcon perched upon his wrist.
— from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde

Lady Fauconbridge, the Countess of Derwentwater, Lady Seaforth, all appear to have taken a lively part in the interests of the Jacobites.
— from Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume II. by Thomson, A. T., Mrs.

I'm the color of dead leaves, she thought shamefully, of the barren earth.
— from Caribbee by Thomas Hoover

He took the clothes on his arm and the light in his hand, and went down to the lower room, where he found a brush and set to work sturdily, enveloping himself in a cloud of dust, like some ugly Arabian genii who was going to transform himself into a handsome prince.
— from Aurora Floyd, Vol. 2 Fifth Edition by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

The class of day labourers, such as it exists in England, is not at all numerous in Savoy, almost all the population consisting of proprietors.
— from Statement of the Provision for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes in a Considerable Portion of America and Europe Being the preface to the foreign communications contained in the appendix to the Poor-Law Report by Nassau William Senior

A cross of dotted lamps springs into light, the four arms of which are the four great thoroughfares from the City.
— from Old and New London, Volume I A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places by Walter Thornbury

There were Maharajahs, dazzling with diamonds, accompanied by their retinue blazing [ 119 ] with silver and gold embroidered costumes, Ascetic Brahmins and sombre looking Fakirs from the seats of learning of Hyderabad, mysterious emissaries from the sacred city of Delhi, learned Sheiks with flowing patriarchal beards from Arabia and Egypt, Magicians from all over Persia, besides all fashionable folk from military posts throughout the East Indian Empire.
— from An Anglo-American Alliance: A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future by Gregory Casparian