The deities of a thousand groves and a thousand streams possessed, in peace, their local and respective influence; nor could the Romans who deprecated the wrath of the Tiber, deride the Egyptian who presented his offering to the beneficent genius of the Nile.
— 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

For instance; the expression of a resolution is not commonly supposed to be obligatory; and we cannot readily conceive how the making use of a certain form of words should be able to cause any material difference.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

LOUVET, his 'Chevalier de Faublas,' his 'Sentinelles,' and Robespierre, in National Convention, Girondin accuses Robespierre, arrested, retreats to Bourdeaux, escape of, recalled.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

Why they treated our claims to their respect with marked insult and rudeness, I never could satisfactorily determine, in any way that could reflect honour on the species, or even plead an excuse for its brutality, until I found that this insolence was more generally practised by the low, uneducated emigrants from Britain, who better understood your claims to their civility, than by the natives themselves.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

the trees and bushes were cut away for a hundred yards or more in front, serving as an abatis or entanglement; the parapets varied from four to six feet high, the dirt taken from a ditch outside and from a covered way inside, and this parapet was surmounted by a "head-log," composed of the trunk of a tree from twelve to twenty inches at the butt, lying along the interior crest of the parapet and resting in notches cut in other trunks which extended back, forming an inclined plane, in case the head-log should be knocked inward by a cannon-shot.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been re-fashioned anew for our pleasure in the darkness, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colors, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The facility with which the old Lycian wolf-girdle, so to say, was caught up and worn in so many countries where race-wars were chronic for many ages, renders it nearly certain that this superstition (Lycanthropy), however it may have originated, was continued through the custom of ascribing demonic characteristics to hostile and fierce races.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

This is a tolerably fair statement of the difficulty which on these grounds arises in respect of the Equitable; but, in fact, all these may be reconciled and really involve no contradiction: for the Equitable is Just, being also better than one form of Just, but is not better than the Just as though it were different from it in kind: Just and Equitable then are identical, and, both being good, the Equitable is the better of the two.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

From Basel, as the Middle Rhine, it pursues a northerly course to Mainz, turns sharply to the W. as far as Bingen, and again resumes its northward course.
— from The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by P. Austin Nuttall

The literary personality of Macaulay, though a great one in all respects, is neither complex nor unequally present, and it is therefore desirable to discuss all its manifestations together.
— from A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895) by George Saintsbury

Suppose we 195 had discovered two buried cities at the foot of Vesuvius, immediately superimposed upon each other, with a great mass of tuff and lava intervening, just as Portici and Resina, if now covered with ashes, would overlie Herculaneum.
— from Principles of Geology or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of Geology by Lyell, Charles, Sir

Them radical and righteous ideas never come to a man when he is cold sober.
— from The Old Soak, and Hail And Farewell by Don Marquis

The Freethinker, or Socialist, who calls his theory of life a religion is not causing the religionist to think more highly of him, he is making his opponent think more highly of his own opinions.
— from A Grammar of Freethought by Chapman Cohen

At ten miles South-East by East from the narrow entrance to the basin the river again resumes its narrow channel, and runs up so perfectly straight for fourteen miles in a South-East by East course, that the hills, which rise precipitously on either bank, were lost in distance, and the river assumed the most exact appearance of being a strait; it was from one to one mile and a quarter wide, and generally of from four to eight fathoms deep on a bottom of yellow sand: the river then took a slight bend, and continued to run up for twelve or thirteen miles further, with a few slight curves, and gradually to decrease in width until terminated by a bar of rocks; which, when the tide rose high enough to fall over, was very dangerous to pass: here a considerable gully joins the main stream, and, being fresh water, was supposed to have the same source as Roe's River.
— from Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 — Volume 2 by Philip Parker King

The Scandinavians had their period of foreign conquest and settlement, but their settlements abroad remained in no connection with the countries whence they came.
— from Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading by George Park Fisher

There is not, however, any subject on which nations are so apt to err, and, indeed, the error is natural enough, if the ambition of a rival is not checked by judgement and attention to circumstances.
— from An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. Designed To Shew How The Prosperity Of The British Empire May Be Prolonged by William Playfair

Partly to divert her thoughts from subjects dangerous to her peace, and partly from the natural bent of her inclinations, she sought assiduously to cultivate the powers of her mind, while her affections found ample scope for their exercise in the love of her infant son, and in considerate care for her many dependants, by all of whom she was loved and reverenced in no common degree.
— from The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 by Various

"Those are very natural qualities in an old soldier, Monsieur le Vicomte, and are well adapted to go with courage; however, as rashness is not courage, I confess my regret that Monsieur Richon couldn't come with us; for twenty thousand livres is a risky burden, especially in such stormy times as these."
— from The War of Women, Volume 1 by Alexandre Dumas