And again in the play of 'Nemesis' "Come, hospitable Zeus, with lofty head." Telekleides, too, speaks of him as sitting "Bowed down With a dreadful frown, Because matters of state have gone wrong, Until at last, From his head so vast, His ideas burst forth in a throng."
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

Next comes Nibs, the gay and debonair, followed by Slightly, who cuts whistles out of the trees and dances ecstatically to his own tunes.
— from Peter and Wendy by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

I am sure her spirit will not have grudged it, and that she blesses you from above, as I do from below, joining her prayers to mine, that God may grant all grace and divine consolation to those we love.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

But no man is forced on this way of ending his life; and if they cannot be persuaded to it, this does not induce them to fail in their attendance and care of them: but as they believe that a voluntary death, when it is chosen upon such an authority, is very honourable, so if any man takes away his own life without the approbation of the priests and the senate, they give him none of the honours of a decent funeral, but throw his body into a ditch.
— from Utopia by More, Thomas, Saint

After he had taken a cup of coffee, Don Francisco bade us a good night.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The motives of his conversion, as they may variously be deduced from benevolence, from policy, from conviction, or from remorse, and the progress of the revolution, which, under his powerful influence and that of his sons, rendered Christianity the reigning religion of the Roman empire, will form a very interesting and important chapter in the present volume of this history.
— 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

For five minutes I considered myself utterly disgraced forever, but as I reached Stepan Trofimovitch’s house I suddenly burst out laughing; the meeting struck me as so amusing that I immediately resolved to entertain Stepan Trofimovitch with an account of it, and even to act the whole scene to him.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

With rapid speed the giants two From the calm hermit dwelling flew, Borne in that wondrous chariot, meet For some great God's celestial seat.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

Those very sensations, which enter by the eye or ear, are with them the true objects, nor can they readily conceive that this pen or paper, which is immediately perceivd, represents another, which is different from, but resembling it.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

The water bubbled along in a very tortuous course, marking its way everywhere by a line of brighter, more tender emerald; and doubtless fed by hidden springs, for it grew wider in process of time, spreading out into a large pool whereon water-lilies reposed.
— from Ralph Denham's Adventures in Burma: A Tale of the Burmese Jungle by G. (George) Norway

The heat of the summer while we remained at Butler Place was something quite indescribable, and hardly varied at all for several weeks, either night or day, from between 90 and 100 degrees.
— from Records of Later Life by Fanny Kemble

If, my Lords, a stranger had at this time gone into the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowlah—that prince who with a savage heart had still great lines of character, and who, with all his ferocity in war, had, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the wealth which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil—if, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation of fields unclothed and brown; of vegetation burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated and in ruins; of temples unroofed and perishing; of reservoirs broken down and dry, this stranger should ask, "what has thus laid waste this beautiful and opulent land; what monstrous madness has ravaged with wide-spread war; what desolating foreign foe; what civil discords; what disputed succession; what religious zeal; what fabled monster has stalked abroad, and, with malice and mortal enmity to man, withered by the grasp of death every growth of nature and humanity, all means of delight, and each original, simple principle of bare existence?"
— from The American Union Speaker by John D. (John Dudley) Philbrick

The Lokal-Anzeiger and the Tag of Berlin (September 10) published facsimiles of cartridges, and of pouches of cartridges alleged to be dum-dum , found by German troops at Longwy.
— from German Barbarism: A Neutral's Indictment by Léon Maccas

The common food of the inhabitants is as follows:—for breakfast, a kind of kidney beans, called feijoens , boiled, and afterwards mixed with the flour of Indian corn; for dinner, feijoens boiled with a little fat pork and some cabbage leaves, and a sort of pudding, made by pouring the water from the pork on a plate of the farinha , which is eaten with the hand, and much relished; for supper, some poor vegetables, also boiled up with fat pork.
— from Travels in the interior of Brazil with notices on its climate, agriculture, commerce, population, mines, manners, and customs: and a particular account of the gold and diamond districts. by John Mawe

Then Thorndyke and Dr. Norbury rose from their chairs and went toward the mummy, which they lifted tenderly while Polton drew from beneath it what presently turned out to be a huge black paper envelope.
— from The Eye of Osiris by R. Austin (Richard Austin) Freeman

Elizabeth rewarded his exertions in rendering the stay of the Frenchmen agreeable by knighting his brother, Carew Ralegh, on her departure from Basing House.
— from Sir Walter Ralegh: A Biography by W. (William) Stebbing

Then the landlord, seizing David from behind by 'the scuft of the neck,' ran him out to the door in a twinkling.
— from The History of David Grieve by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.