At eleven o’clock, our eyes fell upon the walls and columns of Baalbec, a noble ruin whose history is a sealed book.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

“When the Utopians engage in battle, the priests who accompany them to the war, apparelled in their sacred vestments, kneel down during the action (in a place not far from the field), and, lifting up their hands to heaven, pray, first for peace, and then for victory to their own side, and particularly that it may be gained without the effusion of much blood on either side; and when the victory turns to their side, they run in among their own men to restrain their fury; and if any of their enemies see them or call to them, they are preserved by that means; and such as can come so near them as to touch their garments have not only their lives, but their fortunes secured to them; it is upon this account that all the nations round about consider them so much, and treat them with such reverence, that they have been often no less able to preserve their own people from the fury of their enemies than to save their enemies from their rage; for it has sometimes fallen out, that when their armies have been in disorder and forced to fly, so that their enemies were running upon the slaughter and spoil, the priests by interposing have separated them from one another, and stopped the effusion of more blood; so that, by their mediation, a peace has been concluded on very reasonable terms; nor is there any nation about them so fierce, cruel, or barbarous, as not to look upon their persons as sacred and inviolable.
— from Utopia by More, Thomas, Saint

One is patent at once to every observer, namely, that by the continual discharge of many streams into basins which are of definite circumference and content, the water necessarily is continually increasing in bulk, and, had there been no outlet, would inevitably have encroached more and more, and occupied an ever enlarging area in the depression: but as outlets do exist, the surplus water is carried off by a natural process, and runs perpetually through the channels that are there to receive it.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

They broke off fragments from Noah’s tomb; from the exquisite sculptures of the temples of Baalbec; from the houses of Judas and Ananias, in Damascus; from the tomb of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter in Jonesborough; from the worn Greek and Roman inscriptions set in the hoary walls of the Castle of Banias; and now they have been hacking and chipping these old arches here that Jesus looked upon in the flesh.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

He might not be disposed to allow the richest heiress in his duchy to be carried off by a noble, though not a wealthy foreigner.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

A few of these were killed fighting; the rest escaped, some by land, others to the two ships on the station, and took refuge in Lecythus, a fort garrisoned by their own men in the corner of the town running out into the sea and cut off by a narrow isthmus; where they were joined by the Toronaeans of their party.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

"Whether such an effect (Temple beautifully adds) might grow from the air, or the fruits of that climate, or by approaching nearer the sun, which is the fountain of light and heat, when their natural heat was so far decayed: or whether the piecing out of an old man's life were worth the pains; I cannot tell: perhaps the play is not worth the candle.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation.
— from The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels

Are there not other things which have their own name, and yet are called odd, because, although not the same as oddness, they are never without oddness?—that is what I mean to ask—whether numbers such as the number three are not of the class of odd.
— from Phaedo by Plato

We must have both; or rather, bred out of them, as out of mother and father, a third set, the perennial result and combination of both, and neither jeopardized.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Petitions having been presented by the cities of Bristol and New-Sarum, alleging, that since the laws prohibiting the making of low wines and spirits from grain, meal, and flour, had been in force, the commonalty appeared more sober, healthy, and industrious: representing the ill consequences which they apprehended would attend the repeal of these laws, and therefore praying their continuance.
— from The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II. by T. (Tobias) Smollett

‘After going six or seven hundred yards further, we reached the iron bridge over the Goomtee, where we were stopped and called over by a native officer who was seated in an upper-storied house, and seemed to be in command of a cavalry picket, whose horses were near the place saddled.
— from The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan, 1856-7-8 by George Dodd

The islands, however, off the northern extremity, and near the S.W. end of Palawan , are fringed by very distant coral-reefs; thus the reefs in the case of Balabac are no less than five miles from the land; but the sea, in the whole of this district, is so shallow, that the reefs might be expected to extend very far from the land.
— from Coral Reefs; Volcanic Islands; South American Geology — Complete by Charles Darwin

At first he devoted himself to studying the subject, and ere long there was not a method of raising a sunken vessel, of building a difficult breakwater, of repairing a complicated damage to a pier, or a well, or anything else subaqueous, with which he was not thoroughly acquainted, and in regard to which he had not suggested or carried out bold and novel plans and improvements, both in regard to the machinery employed and the modes of action pursued.
— from Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

Here is a common one: Black as night, it is not night; It cuts its wings, it is no bird; Damaged the house, it is no mouse; It ate the barley and is no donkey.
— from The Historical Child Paidology; The Science of the Child by Oscar Chrisman

Divisions of the escudo are of silver, with values of 50, 20, and 10 centavos; subsidiary coins consist of bronze and nickel pieces.
— from Readings in Money and Banking Selected and Adapted by Chester Arthur Phillips

We have art and education and family life and monogamy and religion; and these come in as correctives, so that trade, although not conceived of benevolence and not bearing the stamp of humanity in its character, is comparatively harmless under the restraints laid upon it.
— from Is civilization a disease? by Stanton Coit

Besides the ancient province of Pergamus, the maritime countries of Bithynia, and nearly all Paphlagonia and Pontus, are formed into a Roman province, under the name of Bithynia; while on the southern coast Cilicia and Pamphylia form another, under the name of Cilicia; Phoenicia and Syria compose a third, under the name of Syria.
— from The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo by Creasy, Edward Shepherd, Sir

She carried a big sail when she had a crew on board, and now the heavy chain would make good ballast.
— from Wyndham's Pal by Harold Bindloss