It had a circumference of about six miles, and contained numerous sarcophagi dating from Roman times.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Moreover, vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature; and he who will not suffer himself to proceed so far, falls, peradventure, into the vice of obstinacy, to avoid that of superstition.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

SOME SAD CASES YET May 31 .—James H. Williams, aged 21, 3d Virginia cavalry.-About as mark'd a case of a strong man brought low by a complication of diseases, (laryngitis, fever, debility and diarrhoea,) as I have ever seen—has superb physique, remains swarthy yet, and flushed and red with fever-is altogether flighty—flesh of his great breast and arms tremulous, and pulse pounding away with treble quickness—lies a good deal of the time in a partial sleep, but with low muttering and groans—a sleep in which there is no rest.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

But this perhaps will not appear a cure of anger so much as a putting away and avoiding such faults as men commit in anger.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

If my theory is correct, the Roman king and queen personated Jupiter and his divine consort, and in the character of these divinities went through the annual ceremony of a sacred marriage for the purpose of causing the crops to grow and men and cattle to be fruitful and multiply.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

The true succession of the caliphs was a controversy of a still more delicate nature; and the frankness of a doctor, too honest for his situation, provoked the emperor to exclaim, "Ye are as false as those of Damascus:
— 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

[Enter Merriman with a card on a salver.] Merriman .
— from The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People by Oscar Wilde

He estimated that the channel could be made an average [Pg 887] depth of twenty-five feet below low-water mark; that the work could be completed in six years, at a cost of about six million dollars.
— from The Underground World: A mirror of life below the surface by Thomas Wallace Knox

Like so many conquerors, Genghis Khan seems to have had a conception of a special mission to destroy imposed on him by some invisible Power; and he and his followers were looked on, for a time, as irresistible.
— from Bohemia, from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620 With a short summary of later events by C. Edmund (Charles Edmund) Maurice

The second requirement that Chopin made of a new pupil was perfect independence of the fingers; he, therefore, insisted on the practising of exercises, and more especially the major and minor scales from piano up to fortissimo , and with the staccato as well as the legato touch, also with a change of accent, sometimes marking the second, sometimes the third or fourth note.
— from Frederic Chopin: His Life, Letters, and Works, v. 2 (of 2) by Maurycy Karasowski

I have, therefore, been a witness of the vicissitudes through which the institution has passed in a quarter-century, and a chronicler of all significant musical things which were done within its walls.
— from Chapters of Opera Being historical and critical observations and records concerning the lyric drama in New York from its earliest days down to the present time by Henry Edward Krehbiel

I N the year 1669, in one of the long bark-houses at Caughnawaga on a summer morning before the dawn, Tekakwitha is turning uneasily in her sleep.
— from The Life and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks by Ellen H. (Ellen Hardin) Walworth

The Emperor, in answer, assured the electoral envoys that he had taken the affair to heart, and had resolved to despatch his own brother, the Archduke Charles, on a special mission to Spain.
— from The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 15: 1568, part II by John Lothrop Motley

Any critic, therefore, who regards Sir Roger de Coverley as the abstract conception of a single mind is certain to misconceive the character.
— from Addison by William John Courthope

As soon as ever a French Jew became a great capitalist, he bought a title of Baron, married his daughter to a Count of ancient stock, made a pretence of showing himself more royalist than the king, and ended by becoming the worst of renegades, a fierce anti-semite, who not only denied, but helped to slaughter, his kith and kin.
— from Truth [Vérité] by Émile Zola