Their business is to see that no one steps upon the threshold in entering, and if this does happen, they strip the offender of his clothes, and he must pay a forfeit to have them back again; or in lieu of taking his clothes, they give him a certain number of blows.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

And now I know not what virtue is, and you seem to be in the same case, although you did once perhaps know before you touched me.
— from Meno by Plato

He will prefer the love of a girl or a youth to his aged parents, and may even be induced to strike them.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

" Indignation was at its height; every political shade was blended in the same sentiment of contempt and anger, and M. de Rességuier was no less energetic than Eugène Sue.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

Our armies were composed of men who were able to read, men who knew what they were fighting for, and could not be induced to serve as soldiers, except in an emergency when the safety of the nation was involved, and so necessarily must have been more than equal to men who fought merely because they were brave and because they were thoroughly drilled and inured to hardships.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

The next morning the Holy Communion was celebrated in the Episcopal Jews' Chapel by the new Bishop, who preached his last sermon before his departure from England, in the evening, from the appropriate, and, as subsequent circumstances proved, pathetic words, "And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there," &c. (Acts xx.
— from Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ by Aaron Bernstein

For just as the fragments of the so-called Death are stuck in the fields to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the figure burned in the spring bonfires are sometimes laid on the fields in the belief that they will keep vermin from the crop.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

The "good old" time is past, it sang itself out in Mozart—how happy are WE that his ROCOCO still speaks to us, that his "good company," his tender enthusiasm, his childish delight in the Chinese and its flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his longing for the elegant, the amorous, the tripping, the tearful, and his belief in the South, can still appeal to SOMETHING LEFT in us!
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

A younger son, you know, must be inured to self-denial and dependence.”
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

In front of the door three merry fellows, a tinker, a peddler, and a beggar, were seated on a bench in the sun quaffing stout ale.
— from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

In our case it is the north polar distance or declination of any object in the heavens that we record; and if we take the precaution to do so with this instrument at the time given by the clock, when the object passes the meridian, we have the actual apparent place of that body in the sky; and in this way all the positions of the stars and other bodies, and their various changes, and the courses of the planets, have been determined.
— from Stargazing: Past and Present by Lockyer, Norman, Sir

Such beds and clothes as were left in the ship, and not taken by Hudson and the rest into the shallop, were brought into England, because they left them behind in the ship.
— from Henry Hudson: A Brief Statement of His Aims and His Achievements by Thomas A. (Thomas Allibone) Janvier

Every employee has to be in the service, in the military service.
— from Warren Commission (05 of 26): Hearings Vol. V (of 15) by United States. Warren Commission

I should have preferred to take the bonds, and leave the box in the safe.
— from Driven from Home; Or, Carl Crawford's Experience by Alger, Horatio, Jr.

But that a belief, however useful it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with the truth, may be seen from the fact that we must believe in time, space, and motion, without feeling ourselves compelled to regard them as absolute realities.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The following related by the late Hon. Grantley Berkeley, strongly illustrative of the sagacity and thinking powers of dogs, may be interesting to some of my readers: "I had a dog called 'Wolf,' at
— from All About Dogs: A Book for Doggy People by Charles Henry Lane

Hugo, Mr. Browning, Lord Tennyson, caught the breeze in their sails, and were borne adown the Tigris of romance.
— from Adventures Among Books by Andrew Lang

It is an equally false observation of experience; because, if the spectator were really deceived, if the actor became, in the mind of the audience, truly identical with the character he represents, then, when that character was odious, the audience would revolt.
— from Literary and Social Essays by George William Curtis

Take a knuckle of veal, stew it till half done, then cut off the greatest part of the meat, and continue to stew down the bone in the stock, the meat must be cut into small pieces and fried with six onions thinly sliced, and a table spoonful of curry powder, a desert spoonful of cayenne pepper and salt, add the stock and let the whole gently simmer for nearly an hour, flavouring it with a little Harvey's sauce and lemon pickle.
— from The Jewish Manual Practical Information in Jewish and Modern Cookery with a Collection of Valuable Recipes & Hints Relating to the Toilette by Montefiore, Judith Cohen, Lady

Raleigh only joined with his brothers in the scheme, following their lead, but he neither conceived nor began the carrying into execution—as he has been too often credited with doing—of this fruitful project, the colonization of the American shores of the Atlantic.
— from Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 1. The Exploration of the World by Jules Verne