Up, and walked to Greenwich reading a play, and to the office, where I find Sir J. Minnes gone to the fleete, like a doating foole, to do no good, but proclaim himself an asse; for no service he can do there, nor inform my Lord, who is come in thither to the buoy of the Nore, in anything worth his knowledge.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Other good rules and precepts are enjoined by our physicians, which, if not alone, yet certainly conjoined, may do much; the first of which is obstare principiis , to withstand the beginning, [5634] Quisquis in primo obstitit, Pepulitque amorem tutus ac victor fuit , he that will but resist at first, may easily be a conqueror at the last.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

The one was shewed outward, very meekly and mildly, with great ruth and pity; and that of endless Love.
— from Revelations of Divine Love by of Norwich Julian

The gods Rudra and Pūshan are described as being thus adorned; and the Vasishṭhas, we learn, wore their hair braided on the right side of the head.
— from A History of Sanskrit Literature by Arthur Anthony Macdonell

Two doctors summoned in haste failed to give reassurance, and prescribed absolute rest in the country.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

So she went by herself into her chamber, and got ready a poisoned apple: the outside looked very rosy and tempting, but whoever tasted it was sure to die.
— from Grimms' Fairy Tales by Wilhelm Grimm

Of this contribution, which every one pays, the government receives a part, amounting to some hundreds of thousands of pesos a year.
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

“Alas,” thought the army of tchinovniks, “it is probable that, should he learn of the gross reports at present afloat in our town, he will make such a fuss that we shall never hear the last of them.”
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

Nuova had, indeed, for some time rather vaguely felt this gentle cleaning and wing-spreading operation going on, but at first she had felt so dizzy and faint, and then when she felt better had become so intent on looking up and down the two great walls of wax, with their various cells and the many active bees moving about over them, that she had paid no attention to the gentle rubbing and pulling and stretching.
— from Nuova; or, The New Bee by Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman) Kellogg

They have good roads and posts are established along the coast; and it appears to be a busy and well-regulated settlement.
— from A Voyage to the South Sea Undertaken by command of His Majesty for the purpose of conveying the bread-fruit tree to the West Indies in His Majesty's ship the Bounty commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh; including an account of the mutiny on board the said ship and the subsequent voyage of part of the crew in the ship's boat from Tofoa, one of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch settlement in the East Indies by William Bligh

They had suffered, and made good resolutions, and parted, and now they had met again.
— from Beyond The Rocks: A Love Story by Elinor Glyn

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Philosophy are introduced with their several attendants.
— from The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch by Francesco Petrarca

It was but yesterday that I heard a man of understanding and of good rank, as pleasantly as justly scoffing at the folly of another, who did nothing but torment everybody with the catalogue of his genealogy and alliances, above half of them false (for they are most apt to fall into such ridiculous discourses, whose qualities are most dubious and least sure), and yet, would he have looked into himself, he would have discerned himself to be no less intemperate and wearisome in extolling his wife’s pedigree.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

She took mighty delight in devotion and in hearing the Word of God read and preached, although she herself could not read.
— from Cornish Characters and Strange Events by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould