Some new gods of lesser rank have arisen, such as Kubera, god of wealth; Gaṇeça, god of learning; Kārttikeya, god of war; Çrī or Lakshmī, goddess of beauty and fortune; Durgā or Pārvatī, the terrible spouse of Çiva; besides the serpent deities and several classes of demigods and demons.
— from A History of Sanskrit Literature by Arthur Anthony Macdonell

Homer continued his career of difficulty and distress, until some Chian merchants, struck by the similarity of the verses they heard him recite, acquainted him with the fact that Thestorides was pursuing a profitable livelihood by the recital of the very same poems.
— from The Odyssey by Homer

Malcolmson kept his eyes on the rat, and saw it by the light of the second lamp leap to a moulding of the wainscot and disappear through a hole in one of the great pictures which hung on the wall, obscured and invisible through its coating of dirt and dust.
— from Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker

I emptied all the clothes out of a large, deep chest of drawers, and dragged the empty drawers up the hill; these I lined with blankets, and placed a child in each drawer, covering it well over with the bedding, giving to little Agnes the charge of the baby to hold between her knees, and keep well covered until help should arrive.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

Prospect Of The Ruins Of Rome In The Fifteenth Century.—Part I. Prospect Of The Ruins Of Rome In The Fifteenth Century.— Four Causes Of Decay And Destruction.—Example Of The Coliseum.—Renovation Of The City.—Conclusion Of The Whole Work.
— 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

Without such knowledge, the manifold changes in Buddhism will but form fresh chapters of degradation and decay.
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis

Add to all this, the clattering on deck and down below; the tread of hurried feet; the loud hoarse shouts of seamen; the gurgling in and out of water through the scuppers; with, every now and then, the striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, with the deep, dead, heavy sound of thunder heard within a vault;—and there is the head-wind of that January morning.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens

For it appears to me that men in general take at least as much pains to cure defects in their circumstances, organic defects, and defects of intellect—which cause them no remorse—as they do to cure moral defects; so far as they consider the former to be no less mischievous and no less removable than the latter.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

“Why should I want to go back to all our noise and dirt, our vice and crime, our disease and degeneracy?”
— from Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

NO. 13, A.D. 1852, VENICE Apitius Cælius Delle vivande e condimenti ovvero dell’ arte de la cucina.
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius

In the October following, the tea-burning at Boston was re-enacted in Maryland, with circumstances of deliberation and defiance that show what a flame was abroad.
— from The American Quarterly Review, No. 18, June 1831 (Vol 9) by Various

With what confident hope the Germans dug and fortified and elaborated them years ago!—with what contempt of death and danger our men carried them not six months since!
— from Fields of Victory by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

This place is wretched enough—a villanous chaos of din and drunkenness, nothing but hazard and burgundy, hunting, mathematics, and Newmarket, riot and racing.
— from Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 1 With His Letters and Journals by Thomas Moore

Another young man, catching sight of Ella's pure face, vowed to write home to his old mother and send her the money he had been expending in the city on drinks and dissipation.
— from A Parody Outline of History Wherein May Be Found a Curiously Irreverent Treatment of American Historical Events, Imagining Them as They Would Be Narrated by America's Most Characteristic Contemporary Authors by Donald Ogden Stewart

The aid of such bodies, in investigating cases of destitution and distributing food, would, no doubt, be very valuable; but this service they could render the Government as well without subscriptions as with them.
— from The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) With Notices of Earlier Irish Famines by O'Rourke, John, Canon

The Duke then turned the conversation to indifferent subjects, spoke cheerfully and gaily with Lady Laura and Wilton, and showed that calm sort of equanimity in circumstances of danger and difficulty which is partly a gift of nature, and partly an acquisition wrung from many perils and evils endured.
— from The King's Highway by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

Thus there is formed a cloud of discontent and dark doubt, which, thanks to this Northcliffe propaganda, spreads itself more and more over the German people.
— from And the Kaiser abdicates: The German Revolution November 1918-August 1919 by S. Miles (Stephen Miles) Bouton

In truth, they form a motley crew, and with their "Colleges of Fine Forces," and "Psychic Research Companies," offering diplomas and degrees for a three weeks' course of study or the reading of a book, represent the slums of the occult.
— from Fact and Fable in Psychology by Joseph Jastrow

The chances of death and disaster not even modern science can forestall, though even these it has considerably lessened; but that other death of the heart, which comes of the slow starvation of silence and absence, it may be held to have all but vanquished.
— from Vanishing Roads and Other Essays by Richard Le Gallienne

We got out to the miller, though, as soon as we could; only Dora and Daisy stayed with her, and she talked to them about her lodgers and about her relations in London.
— from The Wouldbegoods by E. (Edith) Nesbit