But the essential causes were no doubt the imperfect nature of publication before the invention of the press; the traditional character which clogged geography as well as all other branches of knowledge in the Middle Ages; and the entire absence of scientific principle in what passed for geography, so that there was no organ competent to the assimilation of a large mass of new knowledge.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

He designed this Wig originally for King William , having disposed of the two Books of Kings in the two Forks of the Foretop; but that glorious Monarch dying before the Wig was finished, there is a Space left in it for the Face of any one that has a mind to purchase it.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

"Let me wipe it first," replies the broken old king; "it smells of mortality."
— from The World I Live In by Helen Keller

But our king in his wisdom spurned him and the gifts he proffered, and took from him life and goods at once; nor was his foe profited by the useless wealth which he had greedily heaped up through long years.
— from The Danish History, Books I-IX by Grammaticus Saxo

And so I accept God and am glad to, and what's more, I accept His wisdom, His purpose—which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the underlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony in which they say we shall one day be blended.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

advocate, defend, plead one's cause; stand up for, stick up for, speak up for; contend for, speak for; bear out, keep in countenance, support; plead &c, 617; say in defense; plead ignorance; confess and avoid, propugn[obs3], put in a good word for.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

I am also afraid that thou wilt abhor my ill fortune, and judge me also myself worthy of all sorts of calamity for begetting such children; while yet I ought rather to be pitied, who have been so affectionate a father to such wretched sons; for when I had settled the kingdom on my former sons, even when they were young, and when, besides the charges of their education at Rome, I had made them the friends of Caesar, and made them envied by other kings, I found them plotting against me.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

That lad who has just gone out could put you to shame in half-a-dozen branches of knowledge in half an hour, but you can throw him aside like an inferior.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Twenty-seven persons have held the office of Vice-President; the dates of their respective elections are as follows: John Adams of Massachusetts, in 1788, re-elected in 1792; Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, in 1796; Aaron Burr of New York, in 1800; George Clinton of New York, in 1804, re-elected in 1808; Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, in 1812; Daniel D. Tompkins of New York, in 1816, re-elected in 1820; John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, in 1824, re-elected in 1828; Martin Van Buren of New York, in 1832; Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, in 1836; John Tyler of Virginia, in 1840; George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania, in 1844; Millard Fillmore of New York, in 1848; William R. King of Alabama, in 1852; John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, in 1856; Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, in 1860; Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, in 1864; Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, in 1868; Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, in 1872; William A. Wheeler of New York, in 1876; Chester A. Arthur of New York, in 1880; Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana, in 1884; Levi P. Morton of New York, in 1888; Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, in 1892; Garrett A. Hobart of New Jersey, in 1896; Theodore Roosevelt of New York, in 1900; Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana, in 1904; James S. Sherman of New York, in 1908.
— from Something of Men I Have Known With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective by Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing) Stevenson

We're a long way from home, Joey and me, and a bit o' kindness is a bit of all right to us."
— from The Judgment House by Gilbert Parker

If you will solace my heart-pain with but one kiss, I will set you free, and deliver to you your armor, and the best horse in the castle stables."
— from Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 14 (of 15), King Arthur (2) by Malory, Thomas, Sir

“Well, I should have little suspected,” remarked Haviland, “that the people of this section, who have shown themselves commendably conservative, for the most part, had any intention of yielding to the mob-laws of Ethan Allen, Warner, and others, who place the laws of New York at defiance on the other side of the mountains; and much less that they would heed the resolves of that self-constituted body of knaves, ignoramuses, and rebels, calling themselves the Continental Congress.”
— from The Rangers; or, The Tory's Daughter A Tale Illustrative of the Revolutionary History of Vermont and the Northern Campaign of 1777 by Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce) Thompson

Most religious men believe (or “know,” if they be mystical) that not only they themselves, but the whole universe of beings to whom the God is present, are secure in his parental hands.
— from The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James

The Catholic Church with one consent has also ever held and does hold that there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct both in principle and in object: in principle, because our knowledge in the one is by natural reason, and in the other by divine faith; in object, because, besides those things to which natural reason can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries hidden in God, which, unless divinely revealed, cannot be known.
— from The Pope, the Kings and the People A History of the Movement to Make the Pope Governor of the World by a Universal Reconstruction of Society from the Issue of the Syllabus to the Close of the Vatican Council by William Arthur

107-11; fever, 177; army at, 185; preparations for the advance northwards, v. 32; life in, 38; on the eve of the great advance, 87 Bloomplaats, battle of, i. 12 Boer brutality outside Kimberley, iii. 43; at Spion Kop, 115 Boers, origin and early history of, i. 1; their character, 15 Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial, i. 51
— from South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 6 (of 8) From the Occupation of Pretoria to Mr. Kruger's Departure from South Africa, with a Summarised Account of the Guerilla War to March 1901 by Louis Creswicke

This branch of knowledge is essentially necessary to constitute the being of faith, and the comforts of a Christian.
— from Sermons by the late Rev. Richard de Courcy by Richard De Courcy

The Battle of Kossovo in Servian poetry 313 VIII.
— from The Heroic Age by H. Munro (Hector Munro) Chadwick