When I was telling him about the hellebore he was lavish in his compliments on my presence of mind, for, as he said, such an unusual colour would have made people think there had been some kind of a combat—a supposition which would not have tended towards my success.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Now this was the engagement in which I received the prize of valour: for I was wounded and he would not leave me, but he rescued me and my arms; and he ought to have received the prize of valour which the generals wanted to confer on me partly on account of my rank, and I told them so, (this, again, Socrates will not impeach or deny), but he was more eager than the generals that I and not he should have the prize.
— from Symposium by Plato

These were the results of my interview with Mrs. Catherick—these were the various considerations, all steadily converging to one point, which decided the course of my proceedings on the next day.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

" "What do you suppose, then?" "I suppose that, after visiting the curious coasts of Arabia and Egypt, the Nautilus will go down the Indian Ocean again, perhaps cross the Channel of Mozambique, perhaps off the Mascarenhas, so as to gain the Cape of Good Hope." "
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

"In the days of chivalry, or more properly of romance, all the men were brave, and all the women were chaste;" and notwithstanding the latter of these virtues is acquired and preserved with much more difficulty than the former, it is ascribed, almost without exception, to the wives of the ancient Germans.
— 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 " Christian Ideal " put on the stage with Jewish astuteness—these are the fundamental psychological forces of its "nature":— Revolt against the ruling spiritual powers; The attempt to make those virtues which facilitate the happiness of the lowly, a standard of all values—in fact, to call God that which is no more than the self-preservative instinct of that class of man possessed of least vitality; Obedience and absolute abstention from war and resistance, justified by this ideal;
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

It is the cunning of most possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as possible, that their less favoured neighbours, seeing little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to question the right.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the complaint that Irene and Jolyon those rebels against property—claim spiritual property in their son Jon.
— from The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. The Man Of Property by John Galsworthy

Nor does the almost universally volcanic composition of such islands favour the admission that they are the wrecks of sunken continents; if they had originally existed as continental mountain ranges, some at least of the islands would have been formed, like other mountain summits, of granite, metamorphic schists, old fossiliferous and other rocks, instead of consisting of mere piles of volcanic matter.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

Sacks of flour, sides of pork and bacon, cases of preserved meat and conserved milk, hundreds of cans of milk, piles of blankets, piles of clothing are here also, all to be given away.
— from A Woman's Experiences in the Great War by Louise Mack

They feared popular reaction to forceful regulations, and, in truth, they were already being subjected to congressional criticism over minor provisions of the Gesell Committee's report.
— from Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 by Morris J. MacGregor

And it is always the signal for him to raise his shield of orthodoxy; for it has long been my habit to creep around the corner of my private opinion and tease him with what he is pleased to term “the most blasphemous speculations.”
— from The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance by Paul Elmer More

C o mplíre, plísc o , plít o , as C o mpíre.
— from Queen Anna's New World of Words; or, Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues by John Florio

Your affectionate son, Sesostris {294} LETTER XVIII. City of Memphis, Palace of the Hierarch.
— from The Pillar of Fire; or, Israel in Bondage by J. H. (Joseph Holt) Ingraham

Several observations very forcibly struck me in the course of my passage, one of which I must be allowed to mention.
— from Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 by lieutenant-colonel (Ninian) Pinkney

The appointments of the typical home are completed with a cupboard niche dug into the rear wall, a coat of mud plaster on floor and walls, and a covering of soot all over the ceiling—this last an inescapable penalty of cave living.
— from Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico by Kittridge A. Wing

[1] Of course 'departmental' gods may possess many attributes, some of these entirely foreign to their character-in-chief, and drafted upon it by the circumstances of myth, politics, or amalgamation with other forms.
— from An Introduction to Mythology by Lewis Spence

The remaining couple were an old man and a youth, upon whose shoulder the veteran leaned, and with a whimsical turn of head and eye, indicative of some playful cast of mind, poured out his remarks upon the objects in sight, and chuckled to himself, like one who has learnt the necessity to appreciate his own humour if he is disposed to indulge it.
— from Vittoria — Volume 1 by George Meredith

But we eventually resumed our lively and sociable habits when I began seriously to carry out my project of giving concerts in Vienna.
— from My Life — Volume 2 by Richard Wagner