It is true that her nature sometimes rebelled against these dictates of reason, and that she grew yearly more capricious and impatient; but having a respectful and well-disciplined husband under her thumb at all times, she found it possible, as a rule, to empty any little accumulations of spleen upon his head, and therefore the harmony of the family was kept duly balanced, and things went as smoothly as family matters can.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I cannot here describe the endless controversy and intrigue between the Allies themselves, which at last after some months culminated in the presentation to Germany of the Reparation Chapter in its final form.
— from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes

He left me with child, and I bore a girl which he took away from me years ago, no doubt to punish me for having so far forgotten myself as to love a mortal after him.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Each of those countries, perhaps, taken singly, could afford it but a small part, either of its subsistence or of its employment; but all of them taken together, could afford it both a great subsistence and a great employment.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

hese my mysteries, and ye golden Stars, who, with the Moon, succeed the fires of the day, and thou, three-faced Hecate, 22 who comest conscious of my design, and ye charms and arts of the enchanters, and thou, too, Earth, that dost furnish the enchanters with powerful herbs; ye breezes, too, and winds, mountains, rivers, and lakes, and all ye Deities of the groves, and all ye Gods of night, attend here; through whose aid, whenever I will, the rivers run back from their astonished banks to their sources, and by my charms I calm the troubled sea, and rouse it when calm; I disperse the clouds, and I bring clouds upon the Earth ; I both allay the winds, and I raise them; and I break the jaws of 232 VII.
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid

I was repelled alike by her passion and the circumstances attending it; but to my astonishment I had to confess that the infatuation, so repulsive to me, held this strange woman in so powerful a grasp that I could not refuse her a certain amount of pity, nay, even real sympathy.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

But as all these six sides are incompatible, and the dye cannot turn up above one at once, this principle directs us not to consider all of them at once as lying uppermost; which we look upon as impossible: Neither does it direct us with its entire force to any particular side; for in that case this side would be considered as certain and inevitable; but it directs us to the whole six sides after such a manner as to divide its force equally among them.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

[c6] bring an offer down to a certain level, offer odds as great as a certain amount in betting.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

The spirit of Alaric would have rejected such terms, the permission of a retreat, and the offer of a pension, with contempt and indignation; but he exercised a limited and precarious authority over the independent chieftains who had raised him, for their service, above the rank of his equals; they were still less disposed to follow an unsuccessful general, and many of them were tempted to consult their interest by a private negotiation with the minister of Honorius.
— 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

The conveyance belonging to this service contained an iron bed with its accessories, a dressing-case with linen, coats, etc.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon by Various

And inasmuch as the continent of America is comparatively a new country, and the other countries of the world are old countries, there is more room here, comparatively speaking, than there is elsewhere; and if they can better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing in my heart to forbid them coming, and I bid them all God speed.
— from The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln A Narrative And Descriptive Biography With Pen-Pictures And Personal Recollections By Those Who Knew Him by Francis F. (Francis Fisher) Browne

Consider also, I beg, that every man has a certain small stock of selfishness, and that I may be allowed to have mine when I think that if M. Dandolo took a wife the influence of that wife would of course have some weight, and that the more she gained in influence over him the more I should lose.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 07: Venice by Giacomo Casanova

Throughout the story there are an air of gloom and a strange turning to thoughts of death that seem to portend a catastrophe; and I believe the following passages are intentional notes of warning: 1 ... a cold spot and a dangerous one.... stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.
— from Short Story Writing A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story by Charles Raymond Barrett

Then they caught an Izhuva boy, and confined him.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 7 of 7 by Edgar Thurston

Paper prepared with this solution answered very satisfactorily, kept well after excitation, and was very clear and intense; but this was purely accidental: and if you can tell me how to insure like success this summer, without a series of experiments, for which I have but little time just now, the information will be very acceptable to me, and probably to many others.
— from Notes and Queries, Number 229, March 18, 1854 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various

This seems to point to such a convergence, of two distinct ethnical lines of migration from opposite centres, as is borne out by much other evidence.
— from The Lost Atlantis and Other Ethnographic Studies by Wilson, Daniel, Sir

The blue sea is visible in its deep chasm, and is backed by the dark precipice of Kerak, “scarred with a hundred wintry watercourses.”
— from Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure by C. R. (Claude Reignier) Conder