It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen.
— 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

“But you will confess that there are laws against false names?”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

And if any strange messenger come there to a lord, men make him to eat but once a day, and that full little.
— from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Mandeville, John, Sir

And partridges when they are pursued with their young let them fly on, and, contriving their safety, themselves fly so near the sportsmen as to be almost caught, and then wheel round, and again fly back and make the sportsmen hope to catch them, till at last, having thus provided for the safety of their young, they lead the sportsmen on a long way.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

Not to go after —Morgan, in his work quoted above, asserts that the Iroquois never made any effort to recover those of their people who have been captured by the enemy, choosing to consider them thenceforth as lost to their tribe and kindred.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

It was chiefly during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the Arthurian Legend as a thing of literature began to take definite shape.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

Meanwhile her favorite niece—because Frank's favorite and petted sister—Fanny was drawn by casually looking into the books which her aunt was studying so closely to take a lively interest in the same subject.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870 by Various

So that it came to this at last, that one day she spake to him and said that she might no longer bear it, but must seek another house and leave his.
— from The Water of the Wondrous Isles by William Morris

It is not to be denied or concealed that these abominable libels have been greedily swallowed all over the country and a strong impression produced.
— from The Greville Memoirs, Part 3 (of 3), Volume 1 (of 2) A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1852 to 1860 by Charles Greville

We have come to this at last, that we are not capable of sustained action, that our vitality shows itself only in sudden leaps and bounds, and consequently the most gifted among us always end in some kind of madness.
— from Without Dogma: A Novel of Modern Poland by Henryk Sienkiewicz

He gains several great victories, and, after his death, Sweden, under his statesmen and generals, continues to take a leading part in the war.
— from The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo by Creasy, Edward Shepherd, Sir

When the farmers fled from the vicinity of Deerfield, they left a quantity of unthreshed grain, and so a company of eighty picked men—the flower of Essex County—under the command of Captain Lathrop of Ipswich, was sent from Hadley to complete the threshing and load the grain on wagons.
— from Famous Indian Chiefs Their Battles, Treaties, Sieges, and Struggles with the Whites for the Possession of America by Charles H. L. (Charles Haven Ladd) Johnston

She felt that she had injured none, she knew that never would she desire aught but the well-being of all around her, and therefore she feared nothing that man could do, for she was well convinced that there are limits set to the unprovoked wrong.
— from The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 by Various

The Perseignes are a great Burgundian family with many castles, and counts think themselves a little higher in the social scale than do barons, but St. Aliquis is also a powerful fief, and its alliance will be useful to Perseigne when he has his expected war with the Vidame of Dijon.
— from Life on a Mediaeval Barony A Picture of a Typical Feudal Community in the Thirteenth Century by William Stearns Davis

They cannot "catch the tune" any longer, though they may have been fine musicians before this portion of their cortex was destroyed.
— from Psychology: A Study Of Mental Life by Robert Sessions Woodworth

Siccio, taking him in his arms, soothed him until he fell asleep, when he glided cautiously out of the house into the street, and hired a conveyance to carry them to a lodging he had previously engaged at some distance from the city.
— from Rule of the Monk; Or, Rome in the Nineteenth Century by Giuseppe Garibaldi