Approach each subject with an open mind and—once sure that you have thought it out thoroughly and honestly—have the courage to abide by the decision of your own thought.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

They were arrested, one by one, by officers of the law; they were handcuffed and chained together and by the officers of the law loaded in a wagon and deliberately driven into an ambush where a mob of lynchers awaited them.
— from The Red Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States by Ida B. Wells-Barnett

At length he got up again and went on, but not for long; indeed, half an hour could scarcely have elapsed, when he came to a bridge which was very long, but with a parapet on both sides to prevent any one falling into the river.
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“The Malay pawang , or medicine-man, is probably the inheritor of various remnants and traditions of the religion which preceded Muhammadanism, and in the olden time this class of persons derived a very fair revenue from the exercise of their profession, in propitiating and scaring those spirits who have to do with mines and miners; even now, although the Malay pawang may squeeze a hundred or perhaps two hundred dollars out of the Chinese towkay 226 who comes to mine for tin in Malaya, the money is not perhaps badly invested, for the Chinaman is no prospector, whereas a good Malay pawang has a wonderful ‘nose’ for tin, and it may be assumed that the Chinese towkay and, before his time, the Malay miner, would not pay a tax to the pawang unless they had some ground for believing that, by employing him and working under his advice, there would be more chance of success than if they worked only on their own responsibility.
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

Both these finished cheats came to a bad end.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

At noon comes Mrs. Turner and Dyke, and Mrs. Dickenson, and then comes The. and Betty Turner, the latter of which is a very pretty girl; and then Creed and his wife, whom I sent for, by my coach.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

On landing at the city we found lodgings had been taken for us at a Buddhist temple close to a burnt Satsuma yashiki called Takamatsu, and no sooner had we seated ourselves than a messenger arrived, in the person of Koba Dennai's secretary, to ask us to stop two or three days in Ozaka so that Willis might see some men who were ill of fever, and that boats to convey us up the river were not obtainable.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

[ 320 ] 174 Regarding the reckonings Eden says: “ In ſo much that it was neceſſarie to helpe the needle with the lode ſtone (commonly cauled the adamant) before they could ſaile therwith, bycauſe it moued not as it doothe when it is in theſe owre partes.”
— from The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century by Antonio Pigafetta

I staid also at Mr. Ackworth’s desire at dinner with him and his wife, and there was a simple fellow, a gentleman I believe of the Court, their kinsmen, that threatened me I could have little discourse or begin, acquaintance with Ackworth’s wife, and so after dinner away, with all haste home, and there found Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten at the office, and by Sir W. Batten’s testimony and Sir G. Carteret’s concurrence was forced to consent to a business of Captain Cocke’s timber, as bad as anything we have lately disputed about, and all through Mr. Coventry’s not being with us.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

"What profit those idle tears, child, that are but a luxury and a sinful indulgence?" "Susan, but once!"
— from Judith Shakespeare: Her love affairs and other adventures by William Black

While they were talking two courtiers entered, with the king's orders to the young prince, to come to a banquet at the king's palace, and bring his wife with him, as his brothers were doing by theirs.
— from Polish Fairy Tales by A. J. (Antoni Józef) Gliński

Everything looked prosperous and peaceful, and, withal, wore that indescribable air of half solitude which characterizes the Australian bush.
— from The Squatter's Dream: A Story of Australian Life by Rolf Boldrewood

Then suddenly through the darkness shone a gleam, one of those that always come when the hour is blackest: the hope of the coup that haunts the ruined gambler; the dream of reprieve to the criminal on his way to the scaffold—false, always false, mere Will-o'-the-wisps, but clung to and believed in always.
— from Hector Graeme by Evelyn Brentwood

Were it liable to be seized by the discursive and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the Roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have been so barren where the Athenian was so prolific.
— from Essays Æsthetical by George Henry Calvert

In token of what has befallen, My helmet and corslet take, And bear them forth to the King's high hall.—
— from Stories and Ballads of the Far Past Translated from the Norse (Icelandic and Faroese) with Introductions and Notes by Nora K. (Nora Kershaw) Chadwick

Some attribute the honour of laying the first stone to Tubal; some to the Greeks; some, again, to the Roman consuls Telmon and Brutus; while others, supporting their opinion on the etymology of the word Toledo, which is derived from Toledoth , meaning, in Hebrew, generations, [114] assert that the Jews who came to Spain with Nebuchadnezzar, were the original founders, because the twelve tribes all helped to build and people it.
— from Wanderings in Spain by Théophile Gautier

The head jerked upward, twisted, and lay still on the edge of the barricade, as the sack of corn thudded and burst on the cliff foot within two feet of the saddles.
— from Bloom of Cactus by Robert Ames Bennet

The upright also carries, two arms, by rack and pinion adjustment, the one supporting the object stage, the other regulating the length of the camera.
— from Microscopes and Accessory Apparatus: Catalogue No. 40 by Ernst Leitz