The Roman ambassadors presented these patricians with the keys of the shrine of St. Peter, as a pledge and symbol of sovereignty; with a holy banner which it was their right and duty to unfurl in the defence of the church and city.
— 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

She then tried to seize the sword with her hands; but d’Artagnan kept it free from her grasp, and presenting the point, sometimes at her eyes, sometimes at her breast, compelled her to glide behind the bedstead, while he aimed at making his retreat by the door which led to Kitty’s apartment.
— from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

And what our Savior says about the common Jewish divorces, which may lay much greater claim to such a permission than polygamy, seems to me true in this case also; that Moses, "for the hardness of their hearts," suffered them to have several wives at the same time, but that "from the beginning it was not so," Matthew 19:8; Mark 10:5.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

Then he commands that all, whoever were of [Pg 192] the military age, should attend under arms, in the Campus Martius, before sun-set, with dressed provisions for five days and twelve palisades, and he commanded that whose age was too far advanced for military service, should dress their victuals for the soldiers in their vicinity, whilst the latter were preparing arms, and procuring the palisade.
— from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy

THEN Sir Gareth rode unto the barbican of the castle, and prayed the porter fair to let him into the castle.
— from Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Malory, Thomas, Sir

When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

Across one end of the compartment ran a netting for the accommodation of hand-baggage; at the other end was a door which would shut, upon compulsion, but wouldn’t stay shut; it opened into a narrow little closet which had a wash-bowl in one end of it, and a place to put a towel, in case you had one with you—and you would be sure to have towels, because you buy them with the bedding, knowing that the railway doesn’t furnish them.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

You have got out insurances on our lives and want to murder us all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?”
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Love Now guving death in the grander you will sous the glory I say keep to gether dont brak the Chane Renoue brotherle Love Never fade Like my box in my garding be one grat familey give way to one A Nother thous changes is the tide hie warter & Loue warte hie tids & Loue tids for my part I have Liked all the kings all three all our broken marchants cant have beaths of proffett gone and till the ground goue to work is all that has bin to Coleage goue with slipers and promis to pay and Never pay only with A Lye
— from A Pickle for the Knowing Ones by Timothy Dexter

To shun poverty and distress, and to ally himself as close as possible to power and riches.
— from The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great by Henry Fielding

Sure I knew you didn't forget me;” and he stooped over and patted the poor beast upon the head.
— from The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago by Charles James Lever

They are paid to play this game.
— from The Illustrious Prince by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

For the prayer of a righteous man availeth much, a prayer that perseveres and does not cease" (that is, which does not cease asking ever more and more, although what it asks is not immediately granted, as some timid men do).
— from A Treatise on Good Works by Martin Luther

They two had sat at home at peace, the Principino between them, the complications of life kept down, the bores sifted out, the large ease of the home preserved, because of the way the others held the field and braved the weather.
— from The Golden Bowl — Volume 2 by Henry James

He therefore considered, how by the manifold lawes which had beene made by Britaines, Englishmen and Danes within this land, occasion was ministred to manie, which measured all things by respect of their owne priuate gaine and profit, to peruert iustice, and to vse wrongfull dealing in stead of right, clouding the same vnder some branch of the lawe naughtilie misconstrued.
— from Holinshed Chronicles: England, Scotland, and Ireland. Volume 1, Complete by William Harrison

That which they considered as already [Pg 205] absolutely past, the prophet, by a single word, brings again into the present, and the immediate future.
— from Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, Vol. 1 by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

So complete was this pre-occupation, that it was many days before the old lady perceived that her Agnes, in the midst of all this joyful preparation, looked neither well nor happy; nay, even when at last the sad eye and pale cheek of her darling attracted her attention, she persuaded herself for many days more that love-making was too sentimental a process to permit those engaged in it to be gay.
— from The Widow Barnaby. Vol. 3 (of 3) by Frances Milton Trollope

LAWRENCE, 14TH JULY 1910. POSTSCRIPT.—Since the above was written the Lord Chamberlain has made an attempt to evade his responsibility and perhaps to postpone his doom by appointing an advisory committee, unknown to the law, on which he will presumably throw any odium that may attach to refusals of licences in the future.
— from The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet by Bernard Shaw

Putting the Fifth Michigan in on the right of the Sixth, he brought back Pennington's battery, and stationed the First Vermont mounted to protect the left flank, holding the First Michigan mounted in reserve to support the battery and to reinforce any weak point, and proceeded to put up one of the gamiest fights against odds, seen in the war.
— from Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War by James Harvey Kidd