This remote, and perhaps imaginary, danger was averted by the submission of the sultan of Egypt: the honors of the prayer and the coin attested at Cairo the supremacy of Timour; and a rare gift of a giraffe , or camelopard, and nine ostriches, represented at Samarcand the tribute of the African world.
— 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

Aiming to reach firm ground beyond this bayou, and to leave as little time for our enemy to reenforce as possible, I determined to make a show of attack along the whole front, but to break across the bayou at the two points named, and gave general orders accordingly.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

And every time that a thought of it assailed him—a tender memory, a trace of a tear—he rose up, cursing with rage, and pounded it down.
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The oldest of them are the rock and pillar inscriptions, dating from the middle of the third century B.C., of the great Buddhist king Açoka , [ 15 ] who ruled over Northern India from 259 to 222 B.C., and during whose reign was held the third Buddhist council, at which the canon of the Buddhist scriptures was probably fixed.
— from A History of Sanskrit Literature by Arthur Anthony Macdonell

That is very true, he replied; but still I should like to know, Socrates, how our city will be able to go to war, especially against an enemy who is rich and powerful, if deprived of the sinews of war.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

“That’s rude again, putting it down to my nerves.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I sat down quietly at the table, took out the revolver and put it down before [230] me.
— from Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And the Russians are on their way, too, though Russians are people I do not know much about and consequently will not tie to.
— from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

"They are at their cards," she said, when she returned, "and Pieto is drunk; they will not disturb us," and then Teresa told her story.
— from The Princess Galva: A Romance by David Whitelaw

‘ My dear Sir ,—Before answering your letter I might have spent a long time in consideration of its subject; but as from the first moment of its reception and perusal I determined on what course to pursue, it seemed to me that delay was wholly unnecessary.
— from Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle by Clement King Shorter

However, his words inspired me with resolution and powers I did not think myself possessed of before.
— from Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre — Complete by Marguerite, Queen, consort of Henry IV, King of France

After passing through the porch of the pedlars, you come to the courtyard in front of the noble old towers of the Church of the Sepulchre, with pointed arches and Gothic traceries, rude, but rich and picturesque in design.
— from Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo by William Makepeace Thackeray

The same, reduced, and printed in dark green on white, for a prospectus, republished in
— from Aubrey Beardsley by Robert Baldwin Ross

And in point of strict fact, Barthorpe was both stunned by the news he had just received and plunged into deep speculation by a certain feature of it.
— from The Herapath Property by J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

Indians had related marvellous tales of what the place contained: rivers foaming, rushing, and plunging into dark mysterious depths; monsters living in the mountains, their roars shaking the earth, and belching fire and rocks from their terrible mouths.
— from The Long Patrol: A Tale of the Mounted Police by H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

You are the Princess Sunimaa, and she’s always getting into trouble because it’s cold where she comes from, and her heart is all ice, and the others don’t like her except for Bonsteg the beggar, who is really a prince in disguise, only she doesn’t know it yet.
— from The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt