For as the ascent was not only narrow and rough, but flanked also with precipices, at every movement which tended to throw the line into disorder, large numbers of the beasts of burden were hurled down the precipices with their loads on their backs.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

And we saw little jade gods, to hang around the neck—not everybody’s, but sacred to the necks of natives of rank.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

The external things of life seem to me now of no importance at all.
— from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

"I also leave to the beneficence of my country my adopted daughter, Horatia Nelson Thompson; and I desire she will use in future the name of Nelson only.
— from The Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson by Robert Southey

Thou wilt increase, Lord, Thy gifts more and more in me, that my soul may follow me to Thee, disentangled from the birdlime of concupiscence; that it rebel not against itself, and even in dreams not only not, through images of sense, commit those debasing corruptions, even to pollution of the flesh, but not even to consent unto them.
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

In arms, in arts, and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan; the husbandmen cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were enriched by the pepper trade, the soldiers preceded the nairs or nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected by the gratitude or the fear of the king of Cochin and the Zamorin himself.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

Nap , or NAPPER , a hat.
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

That they should not obey, nor honour the Gods of other Nations, in these words, "Non habebis Deos alienos coram me," that is, "Thou shalt not have for Gods, the Gods that other Nations worship; but onely me:" whereby they were forbidden to obey, or honor, as their King and Governour, any other God, than him that spake unto them then by Moses, and afterwards by the High Priest.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

For first, whereas the Scripture seemes to prooue Witchcraft to be, by diuerse examples, and speciallie by sundrie of the same, which ye haue alleaged, it is thought by some, that these places speakes of Magicians and Necromancers onlie, & not of Witches.
— from Daemonologie. by King of England James I

Among them we wish especially to mention Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general secretary, National Conference of Charities and Correction, with headquarters at Chicago; Miss Julia G. Fox, director of the West Division Kindergarten, Chicago; Miss Eva B. Whitmore, general superintendent, and Miss Estelle Taylor, secretary, Chicago Free Kindergarten Association and Kindergarten Normal Department, Armour Institute of Technology, Chicago; Mr. Michel Heymann, superintendent, Jewish Orphan Asylum, New Orleans, La.; Mrs. Mollie E. Moore Davis, New Orleans; Miss Mary F. Ledyard, supervisor of Kindergartens, Los Angeles, Cal.; Colonel George McC. Derby, United States Engineer Corps, in charge of Lower Mississippi Levee District (now, August, 1898, at Santiago de Cuba), New Orleans; Mr. William S. Harbert, president Forward Movement, and Mrs. Harbert, Lake Geneva, Wis., and Evanston, Ill.; Rev. Dr. George W. Gray, in charge of the Forward Movement schools and charities, Chicago; Mr. Hugh K. Wagner, attorney-at-law, St. Louis, Mo.; Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McCoy, actively interested in the rescue and cure of crippled waifs, Chicago; Mr. Myron M. Marsh, Chicago; the examples of the National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio, and of the N. O. Nelson Manufacturing Company, St. Louis, Mo.; Miss Amalie Hofer, editor of Kindergarten Magazine, official organ of the Kindergarten Department of the National Education Association, Chicago; Mrs. Lucretia Williard Treat, Grand Rapids, Mich.; Colin A. Scott, Ph.D., professor of psychology and child-study, Cook County Normal School, Chicago; teachers of classes at Hull House, Chicago, whose Mæcenas, guardian and manager is Miss Jane Addams; Hon.
— from That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine by Horace Fletcher

Barricades were erected by day and destroyed in the night: a wild-eyed beadle held the fort with a garden roller, and said G.K. "the creatures of my Napoleon [of Notting Hill] have entered into the bodies of the staid burghers of Kensington."
— from Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward

"I don't take nothin' offen nobody," he sullenly confided.
— from The Call of the Cumberlands by Charles Neville Buck

We have any amount of evidence that the number of Negroes engaged became considerable, but exact figures are for several reasons lacking.
— from The Journal of Negro History, Volume 1, January 1916 by Various

The people, confiding in the integrity and abilities of their own minister, and elevated by the repeated sounds of triumph, became enamoured of the war, and granted such liberal subsidies for its support, as no other minister would have presumed to ask, as no other nation believed they could afford.
— from The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II. by T. (Tobias) Smollett

He was about to offer her his arm when Mrs. Merrill, a gently-faced woman, stepped up to them, and laying her hand upon Ruth’s shoulder, said rather hurriedly,— “I am sorry to trouble you, Doctor, but Mrs. Levice—do not be alarmed, Ruth dear—has become somewhat hysterical, and we cannot calm her; will you come this way, please, and no one need know she is in the study.”
— from Other Things Being Equal by Emma Wolf

Even now do we not hear English Imperialists crying out that perhaps Switzerland has got the secret of the democratic mind, or Norway, or New South Wales, or Arizona; might not England take a lesson from some little self-contained and thrifty community on the use of the referendum?
— from The Old Irish World by Alice Stopford Green

"Th. Bentzon is a novelist of no mean gifts, even in the art of apt narration, while her handling of strong passion is at times very fine.
— from In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. II by Paul Heyse

The eagerness of the curé to listen stimulated me to talk on, and I not only narrated all that I was myself a witness of, but various other circumstances which were told to me by the prince himself; in particular an incident he mentioned to me one day of being visited by a stranger who came, introduced by a letter from a very valued friend; his business being to propose to the duke a scheme for the assassination of Bonaparte.
— from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVII, October 1851 by Various