Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreement or convention, though they have never given promises to each other.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

He may find the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks with dogs and spears, but he is in no mind to be driven from the fold till he has had a try for it; he will either spring on a sheep and carry it off, or be hit by a spear from some strong hand—even so was Sarpedon fain to attack the wall and break down its battlements.
— from The Iliad by Homer

I, amazed, Turned sharply round, like him who has delayed, Fain to behold the thing he ought to flee, Then, losing nerve, grows suddenly afraid, Nor lingers longer what there is to see; For a black devil I beheld advance Over the cliff behind us rapidly.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Meanwhile Pythodorus had taken the command of Laches' ships, and towards the end of winter sailed against the Locrian fort, which Laches had formerly taken, and returned after being defeated in battle by the Locrians.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

It is, for instance, an astonishing fact that a delicate branching coralline, studded with polypi, and attached to a submarine rock, should produce, first by budding and then by transverse division, a host of huge floating jelly-fishes; and that these should produce eggs, from which are hatched swimming animalcules, which attach themselves to rocks and become developed into branching corallines; and so on in an endless cycle.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

Therefore the Friendship of the wicked comes to be depraved; for, being unstable, they share in what is bad and become depraved in being made like to one another: but the Friendship of the good is good, growing with their intercourse; they improve also, as it seems, by repeated acts, and by mutual correction, for they receive impress from one another in the points which give them pleasure; whence says the poet, “Thou from the good, good things shalt surely learn.”
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

He had, on the other hand, only to keep his antiquated honour, and be delivered inch by inch into the power of this great enemy of mankind, whose very intellect was a torture-chamber.
— from The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

They were places over which a boy dreams in books of travel.
— from Cheerful—By Request by Edna Ferber

Each of these groups can again be divided into bush and pole beans.
— from The Vegetable Garden: What, When, and How to Plant by Anonymous

For in New York are situated so many banks and bankers dealing in bills of exchange that a close market is always assured.
— from Elements of Foreign Exchange: A Foreign Exchange Primer by Franklin Escher

While most of the exhibits [316] bear a brief description in both French and English, some are labeled in French only and a few not at all.
— from The Old World and Its Ways Describing a Tour Around the World and Journeys Through Europe by William Jennings Bryan

This is actually being done in Bokhara at the present day.
— from Sketches of Central Asia (1868) Additional chapters on my travels, adventures, and on the ethnology of Central Asia by Ármin Vámbéry

Cracker had been gone a month—had been caught, once, in a dis [30] tant glance, with a pack of timber wolves, from whom he had fled to hiding, like a boy detected in bad company.
— from Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador by Norman Duncan

On our departure, they ranged themselves on the rails of the fence, and, being dressed in blue, looked not unlike a flock of pigeons.
— from Passages from the American Notebooks, Volume 1 by Nathaniel Hawthorne

They accepted very warmly; and Mrs. Hutton, having now appeared and been duly introduced, Bailey Kettledrum set off with her round the curve of the grass–plot, as if he had known her for fifty years, and had not seen her for twenty–five.
— from Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Vol. 1 (of 3) by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore

I am bitterly disappointed in being left this time; do, therefore, to a certain degree, console me by promising that I shall sail with you next voyage, if Heaven permit your return.”
— from The Phantom Ship by Frederick Marryat