He then made the signals agreed upon to those that lay in ambush, and so excited them to fight; so they ran suddenly into the city, the inhabitants being upon the walls, nay, others of them being in perplexity, and coming to see those that were without the gates.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

'What would be the good of blowing in pepper?' asked Charley Hexam.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Close before the Paper, at the Confine of the Colours below, I placed a Candle to illuminate the Paper strongly: For the Experiment was tried in the Night.
— from Opticks Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton

I was born in Petersburg, a chilly, lazy place, in a family which never knew what work or worry meant.
— from Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Here he stopped for a minute, to look at the strange, irregular clusters of lights piled one above the other, and twinkling afar off so high, that they looked like stars, gleaming from the castle walls on the one side and the Calton Hill on the other, as if they illuminated veritable castles in the air; while the old picturesque town slept heavily on, in gloom and darkness below: its palace and chapel of Holyrood, guarded day and night, as a friend of my uncle’s used to say, by old Arthur’s Seat, towering, surly and dark, like some gruff genius, over the ancient city he has watched so long.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

In a letter to Southey, in August, 1808, he says: "At Brighton, I preached a crusade to two auditors: i. e. , a crusade against the French in Spain: Inclination," he continues, "was not wanting, and in a few minutes everything was fixed."
— from Toronto of Old Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario by Henry Scadding

WAGING WAR [Ts`ao Kung has the note: "He who wishes to fight must first count the cost," which prepares us for the discovery that the subject of the chapter is not what we might expect from the title, but is primarily a consideration of ways and means.]
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

BOOK I. page Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the gods, 1 BOOK II.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

It was raised by Iezdbouzid, priest and chorepiscopus of Chumdan, that is, of the capital of the Chinese empire, and the son of a priest who came from Balkh in Tokharistan.
— 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

I know there is among us a strong feeling that the lower classes are better without politics, as there is also that they are better without crinoline and artificial flowers; but if politics and crinoline and artificial flowers are good at all, they are good for all who can honestly come by them and honestly use them.
— from North America — Volume 1 by Anthony Trollope

But he could not get over the river, and went in very bad temper to spend that night at the little inn, determined to get a boat, if possible, and catch Harry in the morning.
— from Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Unknown

She was so beautiful in person and character, so pure, so trusting, that had it not have been for our daily intimacy, I could have loved her even to the effacing of Lulie’s image.
— from Sea-gift: A Novel by Edwin W. (Edwin Wiley) Fuller

As to the first, I have already given instances of unquestionably instinctive actions performed by birds as soon as they quit the eggshell, and it would be but waste of time to argue against the view that the human infant is guided by intelligent purpose and conscious foresight in his very first acts of sucking, swallowing, and defecation.
— from Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885 by Various

Later, when the Prophet Joseph and other leading brethren were under examination before Judge Austin A. King at Richmond, Ray county, special inquiry was made as to the belief of the witnesses in the declaration of the Prophet Daniel: "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever."
— from History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 3 by Smith, Joseph, Jr.

I asked to shrink to a skeleton, for seemingly my misery came with my expanded form; but I prayed and cursed in vain.
— from Etidorhpa; or, The End of Earth. The Strange History of a Mysterious Being and the Account of a Remarkable Journey by John Uri Lloyd

Then four other men entered the square in the same manner, carrying branches of the new cassine, some of which the priest threw into the fire, the rest being immediately parched and cooked for ceremonial use.
— from A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, vol. 1 With a Linguistic, Historic and Ethnographic Introduction by Albert S. (Albert Samuel) Gatschet

This, you understand, Beloved, is private and confidential.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works by Oliver Wendell Holmes

A third great Durchmusterung has for some time been in preparation at Cordoba in Argentina.
— from Lectures on Stellar Statistics by C. V. L. (Carl Vilhelm Ludwig) Charlier

Foreign armies, called in by the various contending factions, ravaged its-fair territory, butchered its peasantry, and changed its fertile plains to a wilderness.
— from History of the United Netherlands, 1587d by John Lothrop Motley