God requires of us patience, magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and here I am refusing to be patient and want to remodel my life to suit myself.
— from The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"But what does he want us for, when he's always wanted to get rid of us?" persisted the boy, stooping down to caress a very queer-looking dog, whose body seemed to have been stretched out, and whose legs looked as if they had been worn down by much running.
— from Harper's Young People, August 2, 1881 An Illustrated Weekly by Various

Throat and forepart of breast brilliant metallic green; rest of under parts cinnamon-rufous; all the tail-feathers purplish-rufous,—the central glossed with green above, near the edges, the others obscurely edged with blackish along ends.
— from A History of North American Birds; Land Birds; Vol. 2 of 3 by Robert Ridgway

This was called marooning, and was somewhat less heartless than the old methods of getting rid of undesirable prisoners by drowning or beheading them.
— from Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts by Frank Richard Stockton

—Ridgway (1902) describes the juvenal plumage of the golden-cheeked warbler as follows: “Pileum, hindneck, back, scapulars, rump, and upper tail-coverts plain grayish brown or brownish gray; sides of head, chin, throat, chest, and sides pale brownish gray; rest of under part white, the breast very indistinctly streaked with pale gray; wings and tail essentially as in adults, but middle coverts with a mesial wedge-shaped mark of dusky.”
— from Life Histories of North American Wood Warblers, Part One and Part Two by Arthur Cleveland Bent

she cried, with that fearlessness of social consequences for which she was noted: she believed there were ways of getting rid of undesirable people without treating them rudely.
— from A Modern Instance by William Dean Howells

Head, rather dark gray; nape, yellowish green; back, pale brownish green; wings, black, interspersed with large areas of white; tail, black, with broad, white tip; chin and throat, gray; rest of under-parts pale yellowish or greenish brown; legs, pink; bill, whitish, or pale horn-color.
— from Bird-Lore, March-April 1916 by Various

And as it was thought best to get rid of unsafe property, Portiphar, who had lurked in concealment for some weeks, was sold by his master to a New Orleans trader, and the neighborhood breathed freely again.
— from The Haunted Homestead: A Novel by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

No crest; a white plume from behind eye; above blackish; throat grayer, rest of under parts white.
— from Color Key to North American Birds with bibliographical appendix by Frank M. (Frank Michler) Chapman

The male has the head greyish; rest of upper parts pale brown streaked with black.
— from Birds of Britain by J. Lewis (John Lewis) Bonhote

The male has the head bluish grey; rest of upper parts brownish buff, barred with black; wing coverts white; quills blackish.
— from Birds of Britain by J. Lewis (John Lewis) Bonhote