In my opinion this consideration alone would be sufficient to deter them from putting out from Corcyra; and what with deliberating and reconnoitring our numbers and whereabouts, they would let the season go on until winter was upon them, or, confounded by so unexpected a circumstance, would break up the expedition, especially as their most experienced general has, as I hear, taken the command against his will, and would grasp at the first excuse offered by any serious demonstration of ours.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Lucien, who as Spanish Ambassador had vainly spent the previous year in arranging the divorce and remarriage of Napoleon to a daughter of the King of Spain, suggests adultery at Plombières, or a "warming-pan conspiracy," as the last alternatives.
— from Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796-1812 For the First Time Collected and Translated, with Notes Social, Historical, and Chronological, from Contemporary Sources by Emperor of the French Napoleon I

And here it may perhaps divert the curious reader to give some account of my domestic, [33] and my manner of living in this country, during a residence of nine months and thirteen days.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World by Jonathan Swift

The liberal character and tolerant spirit of the political and religious institutions of the kingdom of Alexandria, with its vast and attractive library of two hundred thousand volumes, established principally by Ptolemy Phila-delphus, with other attractive features already pointed out, furnished great facilities, as well as increased temptations to religious propagandists to absorb new theories, and make new creeds out of the vast medley of religious doctrines and speculative dogmas preached and propagated in that royal city by the disciples and representatives of nearly every religious system then in existence, brought together by the attractions above specified.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

Thus their views of the death and resurrection of nature would be coloured by their views of the death and resurrection of man, by their personal sorrows and hopes and fears.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

And here it may, perhaps, divert the curious reader, to give some account of my domestics, and my manner of living in this country, during a residence of nine months, and thirteen days.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

she said, turning to the blackboard and writing down a row of numbers, one through ten.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

In the highest division and range of niches, place at the extreme ends vessels fashioned so as to give the note of the diatonic hyperbolaeon; next, the diatonic diezeugmenon, a fourth below; third, the diatonic synhemmenon; fourth, the diatonic meson, a fourth below; fifth, the diatonic hypaton, a fourth below; sixth, the [145] proslambanomenos, a fourth below; in the middle, the note mese, for this is both the octave to proslambanomenos, and the concord of the fifth to the diatonic hypaton.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio

The doctrines of Plato are necessarily different at different times of his life, as new distinctions are realized, or new stages of thought attained by him.
— from Meno by Plato

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS; OR, ANECDOTES, DETAILS, AND RECOLLECTIONS OF NAVAL AND MILITARY LIFE,
— from Soldiers and Sailors or, Anecdotes, Details, and Recollections of Naval and Military Life, as Related to His Nephews, by an Old Officer. by Old Humphrey

No matter whether men can comprehend all its depths and relations or not, if it destroys sin wherever it takes effect by faith, and makes happiness grow out of right living and right loving, from the constitution of things—from the character of God—from the nature of man—that doctrine is the truth of God .
— from Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation: A Book for the Times by James B. (James Barr) Walker

An opera, if it has any merit, may be the means of carrying the fame of Italian genius to the farthest limits of the earth, but it is a chance if the comedy which pleases at Venice will be appreciated in the least degree at Rome or Naples, such are the variations in manners and customs, especially amongst the lower orders, between one Italian province and another.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 85, January, 1875 by Various

There is, too, an entire absence of mouldings, yet, notwithstanding this, the general effect is one of combined delicacy and richness of no common kind, so much does carefully-arranged and contrasted colour do for architecture.
— from Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of Tours in the North of Italy by George Edmund Street

They gather up and put together the smallest fragments which belong to any specimen broken in splitting the rock; they use a lens to discover the fugitive traces of the minutest embryo, and they know very well how to distinguish all rare or new forms in the district to which they are attached.
— from A July Holiday in Saxony, Bohemia, and Silesia by Walter White

We're upholding the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small, by opposing Russian aggression and supporting Ukraine's democracy and reassuring our NATO allies.
— from State of the Union Addresses of Barack Obama, 2009-2016 by Barack Obama

Whether I do a row of stitches, or drive a row of nails, or write a row of words, I am a little older when I fasten the last stitch, or drive the last nail, or write the last word, than I was when I began.
— from Faces in the Fire, and Other Fancies by Frank Boreham

Each side was built up separately by driving a row of nails along the top of the centre board, and another along the bottom to carry the twine over in binding on the layers of excelsior.
— from Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting A Complete Handbook for the Amateur Taxidermist, Collector, Osteologist, Museum-Builder, Sportsman, and Traveller by W. J. (William Jacob) Holland

Why, I don't know whether the train did any robbing or not!"
— from Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man by Sinclair Lewis

The auld doctor's nae kirk-filler, but he gi'es us fu' measure, pressed down an' rinnin' over, nae bit pickin's like the haverin' asseestant; it's my opeenion he's no sound, wi' his parleyvoos and his clishmaclavers!...
— from A Year in Europe by Walter W. (Walter William) Moore