The city of Bari rose to dignity and wealth, as the metropolis of the new theme or province of Lombardy: the title of patrician, and afterwards the singular name of Catapan, 7 was assigned to the supreme governor; and the policy both of the church and state was modelled in exact subordination to the throne 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

This cloud continued to increase in size until it became evident that it could only be raised by a great multitude of moving creatures.
— from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

198 ).—Letters, monograms, coronets and the like, require extreme care in the working, and can only be really well done in a frame.
— from Encyclopedia of Needlework by Thérèse de Dillmont

But against all this it may be urged that it is easier to reward two thousand soldiers, for the former may be remunerated by giving them places, which must perforce be conferred upon men of their calling, while the latter can only be recompensed out of the very property of the master they serve; but this impossibility only strengthens my argument.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

No door stayed them, but a curtain of beaded reeds that split up the lamplight beyond.
— from Kim by Rudyard Kipling

I’m a dreadfully wicked and ungrateful girl, and I deserve to be punished and cast out by respectable people forever.
— from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

The aim is not to curtail occupation but rather to render occupation liberal by supplying it with more appropriate objects.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

In Germany it is a law of the empire, that the princes and states shall not lay tolls or customs on bridges, rivers, or passages, without the consent of the emperor and the diet; though it appears from a quotation in an antecedent paper, that the practice in this, as in many other instances in that confederacy, has not followed the law, and has produced there the mischiefs which have been foreseen here.
— from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton

To which end there should be four different standards appointed according to the amount of property: there should be a first and a second and a third and a fourth class, in which the citizens will be placed, and they will be called by these or similar names: they may continue in the same rank, or pass into another in any individual case, on becoming richer from being poorer, or poorer from being richer.
— from Laws by Plato

A practice approaching to this existed even in the old French monarchy, so far as regarded the pays d'états , each of which, having consented or been required to furnish a fixed sum, was left to assess it upon the inhabitants by its own officers, thus escaping the grinding despotism of the royal intendants and subdélégués; and this privilege is always mentioned as one of the advantages which mainly contributed to render them, as some of them were, the most flourishing provinces of France.
— from Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill

"About an hour before sunset I was watching again; and I saw, on a sudden, a covey of birds rise suddenly about two hundred yards away to the north of the hut—that is, by the way that I should have to go down to the valleys again.
— from Come Rack! Come Rope! by Robert Hugh Benson

But as it generally happens that the disputes of theologians, though far from being so important as they appear to the narrow prejudices and heated passions of the combatants, are not wholly nominal, or capable of being reduced to a common form of words, the hopes of union and settlement vanish upon that closer enquiry which conferences and schemes of agreement produce.
— from Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 2 of 3 by Henry Hallam

There are subtle harmonies that can only be realised clearly after long and sympathetic study: the work on Shakespeare might suffice to prove this.
— from The World of Homer by Andrew Lang

The first part of these instructions he proceeded to carry out by raiding Indian villages and burning their cornfields.
— from Tecumseh: A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People Vol. 17 of Chronicles of Canada by Ethel T. Raymond

And the easiest sort of newspaper work is dramatic criticism or book reviewing.
— from Seeing Things at Night by Heywood Broun

In New Orleans, the departure of a steamer for St. Louis, Cincinnati or Pittsburg, is announced for such an hour "to-day"—positively; Diddler knows it's "all a gag" to get passengers and baggage hurried on, and the steamer keeps going for two to five days before she's gone; so he comes on board, registers one of his commonplace aliases, gets his state-room and board among the crowd of real passengers, up to the hour of the boat's shoving out, then he—slips ashore, and points his boots to another boat.
— from The Humors of Falconbridge A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes by Falconbridge

It seemed to her that intense action could only bring rest.
— from Mabel's Mistake by Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens

Here, therefore, lies one objection to the supposed excellence of Grecian institutions: they are valued, upon Mr. Finlay's scale, by their quality of elastic rebound from violence and wrong; but, in order that this quality might be truly tested, they ought to have been equally and fairly tried: now, by comparison with the Western provinces, that was a condition not capable of being realized for Greece, having the position which she had.
— from The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 2 by Thomas De Quincey