Ah, when the savage monsters came And dragged away the helpless dame, The lady of the long soft eye Called like a lamb with piteous cry.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

The standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of practical expediency is always based—and not for one occasional, not for one exceptional instance, but chronically.
— from The Genealogy of Morals The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Cassio and Desdemona are to be killed; and, in addition, the time is hastened; it is to be 'to-night,' not 'within three days.'
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

But his sacred ambassadors enjoyed and abused an unbounded license in the midst of Constantinople: they urged, with importunate clamors, the increase of tribute, or the restitution of captives and deserters: and the majesty of the empire was almost equally degraded by a base compliance, or by the false and fearful excuses with which they eluded such insolent demands.
— 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

Others said they granted that heat in the climate might propagate infection—as sultry, hot weather fills the air with vermin and nourishes innumerable numbers and kinds of venomous creatures which breed in our food, in the plants, and even in our bodies, by the very stench of which infection may be propagated; also that heat in the air, or heat of weather, as we ordinarily call it, makes bodies relax and faint, exhausts the spirits, opens the pores, and makes us more apt to receive infection, or any evil influence, be it from noxious pestilential vapours or any other thing in the air; but that the heat of fire, and especially of coal fires kept in our houses, or near us, had a quite different operation; the heat being not of the same kind, but quick and fierce, tending not to nourish but to consume and dissipate all those noxious fumes which the other kind of heat rather exhaled and stagnated than separated and burnt up.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

To the office, where a meeting upon extraordinary business, at noon to the ‘Change about more, and then home with Creed and dined, and then with him to the Committee of Tangier, where I got two or three things done I had a mind to of convenience to me.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The struggle began to seem endless, when the commander of the Messenians came to Cleon and Demosthenes, and told them that they were losing their labour: but if they would give him some archers and light troops to go round on the enemy's rear by a way he would undertake to find, he thought he could force the approach.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

The Genoese, who transported Amurath into Europe, must be accused as his preceptors; and it was probably by their hands that his cannon was cast and directed at the siege of Constantinople.
— 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

30 At the beginning of the fourth century a dispute as to the exact relationship of God the Father to God the Son in the doctrine of the Trinity broke out between Arius, a presbyter of the Church in Egypt, and the Bishop of Alexandria, the latter declaring that Arius had denied the divinity of Christ.
— from Europe in the Middle Ages by Ierne L. (Ierne Lifford) Plunket

Perhaps it may sometime be different; I do not believe it will till the conditions are different, and that is a long way off.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg William Dean Howells Literature Essays by William Dean Howells

Have you reflected upon the deeds which have raised me in authority, and made my name known to every one who has ever heard of the Chippewas, and dreaded as the bolt of death by all the enemies of my nation?
— from Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 by James Athearn Jones

He did not seem to "make it" socially there, for he wrote to the girls that Kansas City was cold and distant and that everything was ruled by money.
— from In Our Town by William Allen White

As the Agharias would not bend their heads they were as a natural consequence all decapitated as they passed through the door.
— from The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1 by R. V. (Robert Vane) Russell

Could I have fallen asleep on my heap of mortuary clothing and dreamed all that happiness of theirs?
— from Our Square and the People in It by Samuel Hopkins Adams

She was as cheerful and domestic as the tea kettle that sung by her kitchen fire, and slipped along among Uncle Lot's angles and peculiarities as if there never was any thing the matter in the world; and the same mantle of sunshine seemed to have fallen on Miss Grace, her only daughter.
— from The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Then there was commotion and dismay, and the instant sending for doctors, and John Hinton and Jasper Harman both felt almost needless alarm.
— from How It All Came Round by L. T. Meade