I shall here make a profession of faith which may shock some, offend others, and be dissented from by all.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

The business can all be done quietly.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. (Harriet Ann) Jacobs

The royal palaces that were near Jordan at Betharamptha were also burnt down by some other of the seditious that came out of Perea.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

So W end 1633 , A18 , B , D , H49 , N , O'F , TC , W: ends 1635-69 , S96 rest; Ed: rest, 1633-69 11 The]
— from The Poems of John Donne, Volume 1 (of 2) Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts by John Donne

And yet some have done very well in going out in person to parley, on the word of the assailant: witness Henry de Vaux, a cavalier of Champagne, who being besieged by the English in the Castle of Commercy, and Bartholomew de Brunes, who commanded at the Leaguer, having so sapped the greatest part of the castle without, that nothing remained but setting fire to the props to bury the besieged under the ruins, he requested the said Henry to come out to speak with him for his own good, which he did with three more in company; and, his ruin being made apparent to him, he conceived himself singularly obliged to his enemy, to whose discretion he and his garrison surrendered themselves; and fire being presently applied to the mine, the props no sooner began to fail, but the castle was immediately blown up from its foundations, no one stone being left upon another.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

When a bad deed has been done, it affords satisfaction not only to the sufferer, who for the most part feels the desire of revenge, but also to the perfectly indifferent spectator, to see that he who caused another pain suffers himself a like measure of pain; and this quite independently of the end which we have shown the state has in view in punishment, and which is the foundation of penal law.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

In the Hills he is regarded by some as a beneficent deity, who does not, as a rule, force his worship on anyone by possessing them or injuring their crops.
— from The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 1 (of 2) by William Crooke

Wind light from north-east and every appearance of a beautiful day; the country beginning to have quite a green appearance, and the valleys being covered with lilies in full bloom, birds singing and chirping all around as if in spring.
— from McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia by John McKinlay

Its nationality was the artificial product of European politics; a buffer divided in itself, which would be neither French, nor German, nor definitely Belgian.
— from My Year of the War Including an Account of Experiences with the Troops in France and the Record of a Visit to the Grand Fleet Which is Here Given for the First Time in its Complete Form by Frederick Palmer

119 p. 119 enormous quadrupeds only seen to perfection in our native isle, led about by dapper grooms, their manes ribanded and their tails curiously clubbed and balled.
— from Lavengro: The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest by George Borrow

Thursday night and Friday morning are bargain days in the “Pig-market.”
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

Their mode of destroying elephants, in order to procure their ivory or their flesh, is most extraordinary and ingenious; small parties of two and three lie in wait, when they perceive any elephants ascend a hill, and as they descend again, (which they usually do at a slow pace, plucking the branches as they move along,) while the hind legs are lifted up, the Semang, cautiously approaching behind, drives a sharp-pointed bambic or piece of weebong, which has been previously well hardened in the fire, and touched with poison, into the sole of the elephant’s foot, with all his force, which effectually lames the animal and most commonly causes him to fall, when the whole party rush upon him with spears and sharp-pointed sticks, and soon despatch him.
— from Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat In the U. S. Sloop-of-war Peacock, David Geisinger, Commander, During the Years 1832-3-4 by Edmund Roberts

Others were represented as being desirous to remove, and the Commissioner recommended an appropriation for the purpose, but as Congress failed to act the matter was dropped.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

In Travancore they put the whole fruit in the ground, and, when the young shoots grow up, the stems are tied together with straw, and by degrees they form one stem, bearing fruit in six or seven years.
— from Travels in Peru and India While Superintending the Collection of Chinchona Plants and Seeds in South America, and Their Introduction into India. by Markham, Clements R. (Clements Robert), Sir

"And he all but died of fever; that kills the correspondents just as much as the soldiers.
— from Sophy of Kravonia: A Novel by Anthony Hope

The shattering of Dorothea’s idol brings a blank despair; and although she marries Ladislaw, and is presumably happy with him, nevertheless she felt “that there was always something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and known better.”
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873 A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science by Various