Such are the blessings of civil governments, as they are at present organized, that wealth and female softness equally tend to debase mankind, and are produced by the same cause; but allowing women to be rational creatures they should be incited to acquire virtues which they may call their own, for how can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its OWN exertions?
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

The emperor received with politeness these female deputies, whose wealth and dignity were displayed in the magnificence of their dress and ornaments: he admired their inflexible resolution of following their beloved pastor to the most distant regions of the earth; and consented that the two bishops, Liberius and Faelix, should govern in peace their respective congregations.
— 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

As the fiacre turned into the Quai d'Orsay a picket of the 7th Lancers arrived at full speed.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

The time of this melancholy is, when the significators of any geniture are directed according to art, as the hor: moon, hylech, &c. to the hostile beams or terms of &♄ and ♂ especially, or any fixed star of their nature, or if &♄ by his revolution or transitus, shall offend any of those radical promissors in the geniture.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

But he himself dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely to be available for such a position, that he allowed himself to be dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and was in this case brave enough to defy the world—that is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader the Rector's wife, and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the northeast corner of Loamshire.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

On one occasion we find Whitefield at a fair mounting a stage which had been erected for some wrestlers, and there denouncing the pleasures of the world; on another, preaching among the mountebanks at Moorfields; on a third, attracting around his pulpit ten thousand of the spectators at a race course; on a fourth, standing beside the gallows at an execution to speak of death and of eternity.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

The nineteenth century has proved the falsehood of much of his theory of government; but there are still many wise comments and fruitful suggestions to be found in the third book of the Social Contract and in the treatise on the Government of Poland , as well as in his adaptation and criticism of the Polysynodie of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, a scheme of local government for France, born out of its due time.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A very small proportion indeed of that large aggregate was in existence ten years ago;—of the present productive capital of the country, scarcely any part except farm-houses and manufactories and a few ships and machines; and even these would not in most cases have survived so long if fresh labour had not been employed within that period in putting them into repair.
— from Garden Cities of To-Morrow Being the Second Edition of "To-Morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform" by Howard, Ebenezer, Sir

They seem to want for nothing, and they are, I presume, a fair sample of the whole; but satisfy yourself, sir.
— from The Life of a Celebrated Buccaneer A Page of Past History for the Use of the Children of To-day by Richard Clynton

Accidentally Mr. Richards, her father, made the acquaintance of John Nichols, conceiving for him a violent fancy, and finally securing him as a constant companion.
— from 'Lena Rivers by Mary Jane Holmes

And somewhere hovered disaster, like a familiar spirit....
— from The Wind Bloweth by Donn Byrne

Whether it was well or ill made appears to have been a favourite subject of dispute between the Epicureans and Stoics.
— from Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876 by Robert Flint

These westerly streams appeared to me to join that which I had at first sight taken for the Macquarie; and when united fall into it at the point at which it was first discovered, on the 19th inst.
— from Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration, and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America by W. C. (William Charles) Wentworth

I expressed my sympathy, which I told him I was now the more capable of feeling in a father's suffering, as being myself the father of a little girl—and, indeed, the being a parent does give one the freedom of a wider range of sorrow as well as happiness.
— from Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Volume 2 (of 2) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

But I think that the angel chiefly intends all manner of unclean and filthy spirits; and so the church and members of Babylon, their only place of safety: Or if you understand it of the uncleanness of the spirits and minds of men, then the meaning is, that they are called foul spirits, in allusion to those of devils which go by the same name (Mark 9:25).
— from Works of John Bunyan — Complete by John Bunyan

I returned home, and for several days the doctor could not say whether I would live or die.
— from The Lake by George Moore