“In these days, a nation is born in a day.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Now in Sparta and Crete there are common meals for men, and this, as I was saying, is a divine and natural institution.
— from Laws by Plato

What he has done admitted no increase, it only left room for contraction or regulation.
— from The Iliad by Homer

Any animal which needs to be described, also needs its position to be specified.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

Trans.” for 1691), in his discourse on the most seasonable time for felling timber, written by the advice of Pepys, that after forty-seven years, “all the ancient timber then remaining in her, it was no easy matter to drive a nail into it” (“Quarterly Review,” vol.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

It was so good to open up one’s lungs and take in whole luscious barrels-ful of the blessed God’s untainted, dew-fashioned, woodland-scented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for two days and nights in the moral and physical stenches of that intolerable old buzzard-roost!
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

And tell me, is there anyone who can boast of having driven a nail into the wheel of fortune?
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I could wish that several Learned Men would lay out that Time which they employ in Controversies and Disputes about nothing, in this Method of fighting with their own Shadows.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

By these, apparently, the damned are not intended, or else the present passage would be in contradiction with the following chapters, which detail their progress to, and the manner of, their final doom, while the abyss to which they are consigned answers neither in kind nor in situation to the description of a wild and desolate region adjoining the celestial city; neither can we suppose that the reprobate, in their final abode, would continue to receive the ministrations of their guardian spirits, as do the denizens of the region in question.
— from An Irish Precursor of Dante A Study on the Vision of Heaven and Hell ascribed to the Eighth-century Irish Saint Adamnán, with Translation of the Irish Text by Charles Stuart Boswell

Being accompanied by gypsum in some districts and not in others, would decidedly point to the presumed fact that salt has been the result of some volcanic agency; for were it not so we should find, on the contrary, owing to gradual formation, that gypsum would invariably be present with it, in the same way as we find one stratum of rock either above or below the stratum of another rock.
— from The History of Salt With Observations on the Geographical Distribution, Geological Formation, and Medicinal and Dietetic Properties by Evan Martlett Boddy

Hence St. Hilary says,[4] "When the just man performs all his actions, with a pure and simple view to the divine honor and glory, as the apostle admonishes us,[5] his whole life becomes an uninterrupted prayer; and as he passes his days and nights in the accomplishment of the divine will, it is true to say, that the whole course of a holy life is a constant meditation on the law of God."
— from The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints. January, February, March by Alban Butler

They are usually such as fashion dictates, and not in all cases more extreme than those worn by many Gentiles.
— from The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow by Edward Alfred Steiner

He had regretted that he could not finish it before going out to the peninsula ... had believed that in it he would create something finer and deeper than he had yet done ... and now it would never reach completion.
— from Changing Winds A Novel by St. John G. (St. John Greer) Ervine

I have labored in secret, day and night, in your service, and thus am I repaid."
— from The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter

He scarcely knew what he meant as he wrote this; but, driven by contradiction and impatience, and desirous of learning exactly how she meant to conduct herself on the Princess’s disembarking at Naples, it seemed to him of the last importance that his request should be complied with.
— from Tales and Stories Now First Collected by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

My underclothes were not all that one could wish after two days and nights in the police-station cells.
— from Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences by Lytton, Constance, Lady