The existence of this distinct tragic period, of a time when the dramatist seems to have been occupied almost exclusively with deep and painful problems, has naturally helped to suggest the idea that the 'man' also, in these years of middle age, from thirty-seven to forty-four, was heavily burdened in spirit; that Shakespeare turned to tragedy not merely for change, or because he felt it to be the greatest form of drama and felt himself equal to it, but also because the world had come to look dark and terrible to him; and even that the railings of Thersites and the maledictions of Timon express his own contempt and hatred for mankind.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

Livy would at a glance distinguish the bold strokes of the forgotten poet from the dull and feeble narrative by which they were surrounded, would retouch them with a delicate and powerful pencil, and would make them immortal.
— from Lays of Ancient Rome by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron

Dionysius, the tyrant, offered Plato a robe of the Persian fashion, long, damasked, and perfumed; Plato refused it, saying, “That being born a man, he would not willingly dress himself in women’s clothes;” but Aristippus accepted it with this answer, “That no accoutrement could corrupt a chaste courage.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

"Do you dread a particular person?" "Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

" He said: compassion touch'd the hero's heart He stood, suspended with the lifted dart: As pity pleaded for his vanquish'd prize, [pg 111] Stern Agamemnon swift to vengeance flies, And, furious, thus: "Oh impotent of mind!
— from The Iliad by Homer

During a profound peace of eleven years, little more than ten millions of debt was paid; during a war of seven years, more than one hundred millions was contracted.}
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Delegations and petitions poured into the Legislature against it, yet the bill passed and the Jim Crow Car of Kentucky is a legalized institution.
— from Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Naturally enough, during a premeditated pause of this kind the mind of the speaker is concentrated on the thought to which he is about to give expression.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by J. Berg (Joseph Berg) Esenwein

But neither is his late partner, whom he denounces, a prepossessing person.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

The grand American doctrine that men may speak [pg 12] what they think, and may print what they speak—that all public measures shall have free public discussion—cannot be shaken; and any party must be intensely American that can afford to destroy the very foundation of American principle that public questions shall be publicly discussed, and public procedure be publicly agreed upon.
— from Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society Great Speech, Delivered in New York City by Henry Ward Beecher

(265, 256.), and by Wyttenbach on Plutarch, De Audiendis Poetis , p. 17.
— from Notes and Queries, Number 22, March 30, 1850 by Various

Relying on His divine and paternal protection, I offer this New Edition to my brethren, with the prayerful hope that the Good Master will bless it for His glory, and the good of His elect, wherever it may go.
— from Fifty Years in the Church of Rome by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

Contiguous tribes gain, here and there, a greater or less knowledge of this language; these again extend the knowledge, diminished and probably perverted, to their neighbors, until almost all the Indian tribes of the United States east of the Sierras have some little smattering of it.
— from Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-1880, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 263-552 by Garrick Mallery

n'y a pas de conceptions politiques qui soient séparées par des abîmes plus profonds que la démocratie et le socialisme' (Le Bon).
— from Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

If the loyal people united were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided and partially paralyzed by a political war among themselves?
— from The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln — Volume 7: 1863-1865 by Abraham Lincoln

But neither Ruth nor Alice cared much for Laura Dixon and Pearl Pennington, two former vaudeville actresses who thought they were conferring a favor on the cameras to pose for moving pictures.
— from The Moving Picture Girls at Sea or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real by Laura Lee Hope

And wa'n't dat a perty place to put a Christian 'oman into?
— from Self-Raised; Or, From the Depths by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth