Among us, the Kings of England have made themselves heads of the Church, and the Czars have done the same: but this title has made them less its masters than its ministers; they have gained not so much the right to change it, as the power to maintain it: they are not its legislators, but only its princes.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I left her with my wife, and away myself to Westminster Hall by appointment and there found out Burroughs, and I took her by coach as far as the Lord Treasurer’s and called at the cake house by Hales’s, and there in the coach eat and drank and then carried her home....
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

And when the third day came after the child had been laid forth, the herdsman went to the city, leaving one of his under-herdsmen to watch there, and when he came to the house of Harpagos he said that he was ready to display the dead body of the child; and Harpagos sent the most trusted of his spearmen, and through them he saw and buried the herdsman's child.
— from The History of Herodotus — Volume 1 by Herodotus

how is it possible for a man to maintain a constant lie in his appearance abroad and in company, and to content himself with shewing disagreeable truth only at home?
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Then he became the idol of the citizens and they called him ‘the Great.’
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 2 by Emperor of Rome Julian

We quietly and deliberately destroyed Atlanta, and all the railroads which the enemy had used to carry on war against us, occupied his State capital, and then captured his commercial capital, which had been so strongly fortified from the sea as to defy approach from that quarter.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

The mind of Sophia was not at all easy under the supposition of being known at this house; for she still applied to herself many things which the landlord had addressed to Jenny Cameron; she therefore ordered her maid to pump out of him by what means he had become acquainted with her person, and who had offered him the reward for betraying her; she likewise ordered the horses to be in readiness by four in the morning, at which hour Mrs Fitzpatrick promised to bear her company; and then, composing herself as well as she could, she desired that lady to continue her story.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Music; a respectable performance (without variations) on stringed and wind instruments, sedately expressive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Pedro the Cruel was killed in 1369, and as Henry II his half-brother, the regicide, assumed his place, claimants arose to contest his dubious title to the throne, and among them John of Gaunt, the English Duke of Lancaster, Pedro’s son-in-law.
— from Spain by Frederick A. (Frederick Albion) Ober

Solomon not only imposed on the tribes the maintenance of his standing troops, the cavalry and the chariots, he also demanded that they should support the court by contributions in kind.
— from The History of Antiquity, Vol. 2 (of 6) by Max Duncker

In the Caroline archipelago the cats have very long legs, and are of a reddish-yellow colour.
— from The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication by Charles Darwin

The barn doors were closed and the children heard a horse inside give a loud neigh.
— from Sunny Boy and His Playmates by Ramy Allison White

The pupils had the western love for oratory, and several of them crowded about to congratulate him on his speech.
— from A Spoil of Office: A Story of the Modern West by Hamlin Garland

He did so, and found a messenger from Captain Bargood to land the cargo at the Eastern Cliff, as the coastguard had received information that a run was going to take place at Sizewell Gap, and they had therefore drawn away their men, that their force at that point might be strong enough.
— from The History of Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl by Richard Cobbold

The chambermaid and the cook hover lightly about.
— from Petty Troubles of Married Life, First Part by Honoré de Balzac

It was at this moment that the carriage, approaching the crowd, had lessened its speed.
— from Mysteries of Paris — Volume 03 by Eugène Sue