However, “where there is much smoke there must be a little fire,” and based upon the superimposed testimony of the writers of the period, there appears little doubt but that Messalina was a nymphomaniac, that she prostituted herself in the public stews, naked, and with gilded nipples, and that she did actually marry her chief adulterer, Silius, while Claudius was absent at Ostia, and that the wedding was consummated in the presence of a concourse of witnesses.
— from 1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors by Mark Twain

He toils that another may reap the fruit; he is industrious that another may live in idleness; he eats unbolted meal that another may eat the bread of fine flour; he labors in chains at home, under a burning sun and biting lash, that another may ride in ease and splendor abroad; he lives in ignorance that another may be educated; he is abused that another may be exalted; he rests his toil-worn limbs on the cold, damp ground that another may repose on the softest pillow; he is clad in coarse and tattered raiment that another may be arrayed in purple and fine linen; he is sheltered only by the wretched hovel that a master may dwell in a magnificent mansion; and to this condition he is bound down as by an arm of iron.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature!—ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more!
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

] another is harassed by a rich and powerful neighbor, he protects him and speaks on his behalf; young people are fond of one another, he helps forward their marriage; a good woman has lost her beloved child, he goes to see her, he speaks words of comfort and sits a while with her; he does not despise the poor, he is in no hurry to avoid the unfortunate; he often takes his dinner with some peasant he is helping, and he will even accept a meal from those who have no need of his help; though he is the benefactor of some and the friend of all, he is none the less their equal.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If he meant that he had rendered himself altogether insensible to æsthetic values, and that he had proceeded to organise conduct or thought in complete indifference to the beautiful, he would be simply proclaiming his inhumanity and incompetence.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Fortunately he was near the top, and Francesca came down the pergola to pilot him indoors, and having shown him where he could wash she put him in the empty drawing-room to cool himself by the crackling wood fire.
— from The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

These shows were acted in honor of that Cæsar 4 who first of all changed the popular government, and transferred it to himself; galleries being fixed before the palace, where the Romans that were patricians became spectators, together with their children and their wives, and Cæsar himself was to be also a spectator; and they reckoned, among those many ten thousands who would there be crowded into a narrow compass, they should have a favorable opportunity to make their attempt upon him as he came in, because his guards that should protect him, if any of them should have a mind to do it, would not here be able to give him any assistance.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

Signor Pasqualigo had installed his son as deputy in the ambiguous agency at Jaffa, which he described as a vice-consulate, and himself principally resided at Jerusalem, of which he was the prime gossip, or second only to his rival, Barizy of the Tower.
— from Tancred; Or, The New Crusade by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

“No, my darling,” he said, putting her into a capacious wooden armchair and busily unbuttoning her boots, “you shall do nothing that you don’t wish to do.
— from An Unsocial Socialist by Bernard Shaw

[pg 47] ing toward Havana, with the Mayflower a mile or more in advance of the flag-ship New York , the merchant steamship Pedro hove in sight.
— from The Boys of '98 by James Otis

He was returning under the arcades, towards the Rue St. Florentin, when Sidonia passed him in an opposite direction, on horseback, and at a rapid rate.
— from Coningsby; Or, The New Generation by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

He would dig her out for he still had time, and if she struggled put her in a bag.
— from Lady into Fox by David Garnett

He knew that his foster-father's patience was exhausted, and that he could expect nothing more from him, and he soon proved himself incapable of self-support.
— from American Men of Mind by Burton Egbert Stevenson