On the other hand, finding none in the fields, and hearing that it was hoarded up and secured in towns, forts, and castles, and watched with more care than ever were the golden pippins of the Hesperides, he turned engineer, and found ways to beat, storm, and demolish forts and castles with machines and warlike thunderbolts, battering-rams, ballists, and catapults, whose shapes were shown to us, not over-well understood by our engineers, architects, and other disciples of Vitruvius; as Master Philibert de l’Orme, King Megistus’s principal architect, has owned to us.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

here the river is bordered on both sides with timber &c becoms much narrower more Crooked and the Current more rapid and Crouded with Snags or Sawyers than it is above, and continus So all day.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

He found a letter from Col. Sellers urging him to go to Washington and confer with Senator Dilworthy.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner

To do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxyms of reformation and arrangement, which she called “clarin’ up times,” when she would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and closet wrong side outward, on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion seven-fold more confounded.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Another pretty thing was my Lady Ashly’s speaking of the bad qualities of glass-coaches; among others, the flying open of the doors upon any great shake: but another was, that my Lady Peterborough being in her glass-coach, with the glass up, and seeing a lady pass by in a coach whom she would salute, the glass was so clear, that she thought it had been open, and so ran her head through the glass, and cut all her forehead!
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

In most cases an intelligible ground for such action can be discovered, and if the psychologically prior conditions are conceived with sufficient narrowness to keep us from assuming unconditional guilt, we are at least called upon to be careful.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross

She could have sat down and cried with sheer disappointment.
— from Anne of Avonlea by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

The first and most natural root of a great city is the labor and populousness of the adjacent country, which supplies the materials of subsistence, of manufactures, and of foreign trade.
— 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

There are two instances recorded; the first one by a gang of Thugs under a chief who soils a great name borne by a better man—Kipling’s deathless “Gungadin”: “After murdering 4 sepoys, going on toward Indore, met 4 strolling players, and persuaded them to come with us, on the pretense that we would see their performance at the next stage.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

With his small army, he even pressed forward toward Page 74 [Pg 74] the city of Sparta, and camped within sight of its dwellings.
— from The Story of the Greeks by H. A. (Hélène Adeline) Guerber

It did now and then happen that a cause was so infamous as to put even the hacknied brow of a barrister to the blush: but it must be a vile one indeed!
— from The Adventures of Hugh Trevor by Thomas Holcroft

Still, with all possible reduction of the quantity of such work to be done, and with all the mechanical genius brought to bear upon it, we may freely concede that, for a long time to come, there must be some work quite dangerous, altogether disagreeable and repellent, and a great difference in the degree of attractiveness of some occupations as compared with some others.
— from Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles by John Spargo

At last in 552 he was able to resume the struggle and entrusted the conduct of the war to Narses, whose ability as a commander was superior to that of Belisarius himself.
— from A History of Rome to 565 A. D. by Arthur E. R. (Arthur Edward Romilly) Boak

A conversation between this person and Tupia soon brought hack the rest, except an old man and a child, who still kept aloof, but stood peeping at us from the woods.
— from A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13 by Robert Kerr

All favoring Mr. Campbell as chairman will signify it by saying Aye."
— from The Cleverdale Mystery; or, The Machine and Its Wheels: A Story of American Life by W. A. Wilkins

From this vest, or surcoat, was developed a coat, with skirts, such as had become, ere the year 1700, the universal wear of English and American men.
— from Two Centuries of Costume in America, Volume 1 (1620-1820) by Alice Morse Earle

They started up at the commander's voice and the Austrian column was speedily repulsed.
— from Military Career of Napoleon the Great An Account of the Remarkable Campaigns of the "Man of Destiny"; Authentic Anecdotes of the Battlefield as Told by the Famous Marshals and Generals of the First Empire by Montgomery B. Gibbs

A strong characteristic of English folk at the time of the settlement of the American colonies was superstition.
— from Child Life in Colonial Days by Alice Morse Earle