Nothing is, indeed, so dangerous as to unsettle the faith of the lower classes, who have neither time nor opportunity of fairly considering subjects of religious controversy.
— from The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society by Florence Hartley

The views of natural causation embraced by the savage magician no doubt appear to us manifestly false and absurd; yet in their day they were legitimate hypotheses, though they have not stood the test of experience.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

“We will start at day-break after them, of course, and we shall dine at the usual stage; but after dinner, trust me, we will take a different road, and at midnight we shall be in France safe and sound.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Its direction, south or south-southwest, carried them into the calms that hung round the north end of Dominica; and the uncertainty of the wind made it possible that by its hauling to the southward the enemy could pass through their line and gain the wind, and with it the possibility of forcing the decisive battle which the French policy had shunned; and this was in fact what happened.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

There must have been great excitement in the villages of England when the troopers were scouring the country in all directions, and the unfortunate king was known to be wandering about disguised as a servant.
— from English Villages by P. H. (Peter Hampson) Ditchfield

And as soon as Dmitri Ionitch Startsev was appointed the district doctor, and took up his abode at Dyalizh, six miles from S——, he, too, was told that as a cultivated man it was essential for him to make the acquaintance of the Turkins.
— from The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

‘They were not hot,’ said Tiffey, putting on his glasses; ‘no hotter, I understand, than they would have been, going down at the usual pace.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The wounded king was oppressed in the general disorder, and trampled under the feet of his own cavalry; and this important death served to explain the ambiguous prophecy of the haruspices.
— 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

The whole country sent up a cry of distress at this unheard-of tyranny.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

[Clark, September 23, 1804] 23rd of September Sunday 1804 Set out under a gentle breeze from the S. E, (1) passed a Small Island Situated in a bend to the L. S. Called Goat Island, a Short distance above the upper point a Creek of 12 yards wide corns in on the S. S. we observed a great Smoke to the S W.—I walked on Shore & observed Buffalow in great Herds at a Distance (2) passed two Small willow Islands with large Sand bars makeing out from them, passed (3) Elk Island about 21/2 miles long & 3/4 mile wide Situated near the L. S. covered with Cotton wood the read Current Called by the French Gres de Butiff & grapes &c. &c. the river is nearly Streight for a great distance wide and Shoal.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

THE HIGHER WE ASCEND THE SCALE OF RANK, for whether the discernment and the understanding do or do not increase with these ranks still the Commanders, in their several stations as they rise, are pressed upon more and more severely by objective things, by relations and claims from without, so that they become the more perplexed the lower the degree of their individual intelligence.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

Then, in a second it seemed, there was a hideous crash that outvoiced the yells and shouts of despair as the unterseeboot was rent in twain.
— from The Submarine Hunters: A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman

Consequently the needle deviated and threw us out of our course.
— from Rounding up the Raider: A Naval Story of the Great War by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman

Children of the Great Chief to fall to rending each other like quarrelsome dogs, and that under the eyes of white men; just now, too, when it behoved them to stand well in the eyes of the white man.
— from Harley Greenoak's Charge by Bertram Mitford

I observed that the three other men had liberty to go also where they pleased; but they sat down all three upon the ground very pensive, and looked like men in despair.
— from Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 3 by Charles Herbert Sylvester

Subsequently, almost immediately, he may become rational again and retain consciousness of the deed and thoroughly understands its outrageous nature.
— from A Plea for the Criminal Being a reply to Dr. Chapple's work: 'The Fertility of the Unfit', and an Attempt to explain the leading principles of Criminological and Reformatory Science by James Leslie Allan Kayll

It is easy to overwork the dictionary and to use it fruitlessly, in so great a measure, in fact, that the pupil will never want to see a dictionary again.
— from Craftsmanship in Teaching by William C. (William Chandler) Bagley

The toll was costly among the Confederate defenders, who fought back, using artillery shells as hand grenades and rolling them down among the Union troops in the ditch.
— from Vicksburg National Military Park, Mississippi by William C. Everhart

The whole world lay, according to Marcion, under the dispensation of the Demiurge, and therefore under a mixed government of good and evil.
— from The Lost and Hostile Gospels An Essay on the Toledoth Jeschu, and the Petrine and Pauline Gospels of the First Three Centuries of Which Fragments Remain by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould