I through the ample Air in Triumph high Shall lead Hell Captive maugre Hell, and show The powers of darkness bound.
— from The Poetical Works of John Milton by John Milton

He sets you an infamous task, he causes you to strangle, in this nineteenth century, and in Paris itself, Liberty, Progress, and Civilization.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

"Knights-errant knew and ought to know everything, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "for there were knights-errant in former times as well qualified to deliver a sermon or discourse in the middle of an encampment, as if they had graduated in the University of Paris; whereby we may see that the lance has never blunted the pen, nor the pen the lance."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

They do know there is a God, a day of judgment to come, and yet for all that, as Hugo saith, ita comedunt ac dormiunt, ac si diem judicii evasissent; ita ludunt ac rident, ac si in coelis cum Deo regnarent : they are as merry for all the sorrow, as if they had escaped all dangers, and were in heaven already:
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

I learned that Yulia Mihailovna waited till the last minute for Pyotr Stepanovitch, without whom she could not stir a step, though she never admitted it to herself.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here I met with Sir G. Downing, who tells me of Sir W. Pen’s offering to lend L500; and I tell him of my L300, which he would have me to lend upon the credit of the latter part of the Act; saying, that by that means my 10 per cent.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

I consulted the world map; and in latitude 32° 40' north and longitude 167° 50' west, I found an islet that had been discovered in 1801 by Captain Crespo, which old Spanish charts called Rocca de la Plata, in other words, "Silver Rock."
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

That again would not matter; but what is annoying is that he would be sure to find followers—such is the nature of man.
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And he offered him his shoulder as another stay and support, so that his head almost touched that of Mordaunt; and these two mortal enemies were in as close an embrace as if they had been brothers.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

[ The well-known saying of Augustus, recorded by Suetonius, that he found a city of bricks, but left it of marble, has another version given it by Dio, who applies it to his consolidation of the government, to the following effect: “That Rome, which I found built of mud, I shall leave you firm as a rock.”—Dio.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

A coalition with the Irish party, the leaders of which agreed, if the Home Rule bill were advanced, to stand by the budget.
— from My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst

But every hour I prayed that he might give me leave, and I think his heart was yielding."
— from The Ne'er-Do-Well by Rex Beach

And being now ready to sink with fear, suddenly there was, as if there had rushed in at the window, the noise of wind upon me, but very pleasant, and as if I heard a voice speaking, Didst ever refuse to be justified by the blood of Christ?
— from Works of John Bunyan — Volume 01 by John Bunyan

All the night afterwards, he would be semi-conscious of an intangible bliss diffused through the fitful lapses of an old man’s slumber, and would awake, at early dawn, with a faint thrilling of the heart-strings, as if there had been music just now wandering over them.”
— from The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Frank Preston Stearns

Several weeks passed thus, Henry and Julia seeing each other every day; but long vacation would arrive; and on the evening preceding his departure from ——, the lovelorn student, twisting round the stem of a spicy carnation, a leaf which he had torn from his pocket book, thus conveyed, with his farewell to Julia, an intimation that he designed upon his return to college next term, to effect an introduction to her family.
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 13, No. 372, May 30, 1829 by Various

"I am quite capable—her natural guardian too; and I trust he has not associated any one else with me.
— from The Two Elsies A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket by Martha Finley

If they had only known that the train was to stop there the quarter of an hour, and if they had only known some preacher there and had had him to the station, the ceremony could have been consummated then and there.
— from Excuse Me! by Rupert Hughes

And afterwards Ivan told him to his face—I heard him—that it would come by the sword, but not the sword of war.
— from Rose MacLeod by Alice Brown

They told me that they were my uncle and my aunt—that 51 they were rich, and intended to have me to live with them altogether thenceforth, and be recognised as their heir—that Mr. Rainford had gone upon a long, long voyage to settle in a far-off land, whence perhaps he should never return—and that they would supply the place of the parents whom I had lost in my infancy and of the generous friend who had thus quitted his native shores for ever!
— from The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 by George W. M. (George William MacArthur) Reynolds

I was irritated by her ridicule, and I told her I intended to marry Leah if I could.
— from Leah Mordecai: A Novel by Belle K. (Belle Kendrick) Abbott