Thus by threatening the officer the Court of Sessions exacts compliance from the town.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

The labor and cost of such extensive conquests exhausted their treasury: they abandoned their maxims of government, adopted a feudal system, and contented themselves with the homage of their nobles, 9 for the possessions which these private vassals undertook to reduce and maintain.
— 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

Copper of a very fine description is likewise abundant, and supplies the currency; and the chief of Salumbar even coins by sufferance from the mines on his own estate.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

So I continued to drift further and further away from religious influences, until at Amsterdam I found myself at a boarding house in the company of some earnest Christian young men.
— from Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ by Aaron Bernstein

The philosopher, therefore, who seeks to know which ideal ought to have supreme weight and which one ought to be subordinated, must trace the ought itself to the de facto constitution of some existing consciousness, behind which, as one of the data of the universe, he as a purely ethical philosopher is unable to go.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James

He then grew serious, and desired to ask me freely, “whether I were not troubled in my mind by the consciousness of some enormous crime, for which I was punished, at the command of some prince, by exposing me in that chest; as great criminals, in other countries, have been forced to sea in a leaky vessel, without provisions: for although he should be sorry to have taken so ill a man into his ship, yet he would engage his word to set me safe ashore, in the first port where we arrived.”
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

I am charged to treat you with all the respect which is due to the illustrious nation to which you belong, and which a cavalier of such exalted category as yourself is entitled to expect.
— from The Bible in Spain Or, the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman, in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula by George Borrow

The pedicels consist of single elongated cells, with colourless, extremely delicate walls, marked with the finest intersecting spiral lines.
— from Insectivorous Plants by Charles Darwin

H2 anchor CHAPTER IX THE CATASTROPHE One Saturday evening, Courtecuisse, Bonnebault, Godain, Tonsard, his daughters, wife, and Pere Fourchon, also Vaudoyer and several mechanics were supping at the tavern.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

But not to dwell upon these, let us, for the fuller elucidation of this truth in relation to the inorganic world, consider what would be the consequences of some extensive cosmical catastrophe—say the subsidence of Central America.
— from Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3 Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions. by Herbert Spencer

"The streets are kept clear of snow," explained Charley, "and we don't have so much snow anyhow.
— from Left on the Labrador: A Tale of Adventure Down North by Dillon Wallace

The climax of such empty claims to conquests which had never been made was reached at Kom Ombo, where Ptolemy Lathyrus, a prince who, instead of gaining fresh territory, lost what he had inherited, is credited with the subjugation of numerous nations and races, many of whom, like the Hittites, had long before vanished from the page of history.
— from Patriarchal Palestine by A. H. (Archibald Henry) Sayce

The sharp consciousness of stern economic conditions was thus thrust upon us in the midst of the season of good will.
— from Twenty Years at Hull House; with Autobiographical Notes by Jane Addams

Perhaps the most striking illustration of this is to be found in the case of some Echinoderms, concerning which Mr. Darwin tells us, that “the animal in the second stage of development is formed almost like a bud within the animal of the first stage, the latter being then cast off like an old vestment, yet sometimes maintaining for a short period an independent vitality” (“Plants and Animals under Domestication,” vol.
— from Life and Habit by Samuel Butler