The Shoshones informed us when we first met with them that there was a passage across the mountains in that quarter but represented the difficulties arrising from steep high and rugged mountains and also an extensive and barren plain which was to be passed without game, as infinitely more difficult than the rout by which we came.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

If what is now said does not make this clear, we will explain it still further: if there should be any one, a very excellent player on the flute, but very deficient in family and beauty, though each of them are more valuable endowments than a skill in music, and excel this art in a higher degree than that player excels others, yet the best flutes ought to be given to him; for the superiority [1283a] in beauty and fortune should have a reference to the business in hand; but these have none.
— from Politics: A Treatise on Government by Aristotle

A friend sent him a recipe for greasing his boots.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

Whereas it is nowadays universally recognised that the Open Sea cannot be State property, such part of the sea as makes the coast waters would, according to the opinion of these writers, actually be the State property of the littoral States, although foreign States have a right of innocent passage of their merchantmen through the coast waters.
— from International Law. A Treatise. Volume 1 (of 2) Peace. Second Edition by L. (Lassa) Oppenheim

The Zulu word for ‘man’ is umuntu ; every word in the same or a following sentence having any reference to that word must begin with something to remind you of the beginning of umuntu .
— from Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin by Otto Jespersen

Doctor Richard Layton, who had come under Cromwell’s notice at the time of the trials of More and Fisher, sent him a request for employment on the same mission, and eventually got permission to go to Gloucestershire
— from Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, Vol. 1 of 2 Life, Letters to 1535 by Roger Bigelow Merriman

The world to her being home and family, she had a real, if gently expressed, horror of all that she instinctively felt to be subversive of this ideal.
— from The Works of John Galsworthy An Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy by John Galsworthy

Miss MacLauren was deeply interested, and felt she had a right to be, for these things, newspapers and such, were in her family.
— from Emmy Lou: Her Book and Heart by George Madden Martin

After tearing along for several hours at racing speed, we dropped anchor off Kitai a little before dark, the wind still howling like an enraged beast.
— from Two Years Among the Savages of New Guinea. With Introductory Notes on North Queensland. by W. D. Pitcairn

A few still hover about round the place where the swarm was fixed.
— from The Insect World Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects; Together with a Description of the Habits and Economy of Some of the Most Interesting Species by Louis Figuier

They made signs to the natives for some food, and they went and fetched several herbs and roots, and some milk; but it was evident they did not design to give it away, but to sell it, making signs to know what our men would give them.
— from The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe

Cooper, who never forgot a friend, sent him a reply, beginning: "I am your old shipmate, Ned," and told him when and where he could be found in New York.
— from James Fenimore Cooper American Men of Letters by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury