Having fixed upon a plan to be followed, Castruccio cautiously fortified the tower of the Onesti, filling it with supplies and munitions of war, in order that it might stand a siege for a few days in case of need.
— from The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

And what do I care, what do I care about you, and whether you go to ruin there or not? Do you understand?
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The allotments of Providence, when coupled with trouble and anxiety, often conceal from finite vision the wisdom and goodness in which they are sent; and, frequently, what seemed a harsh and invidious dispensation, is converted by after experience into a happy and beneficial arrangement.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

There is no difficulty in conceiving the intention of the Roman princes to improve their revenue by some restraints upon commerce; but as Nisibis was situated within their own dominions, and as they were masters both of the imports and exports, it should seem that such restraints were the objects of an internal law, rather than of a foreign treaty.
— 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

A Welsh song sung on New Year’s Day, in Glamorganshire, by boys in chorus, somewhat after the Christmas carol fashion, is this: Blwyddyn newydd dda i chwi,
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

During this dialogue I clothed myself in my bed apparel, girded on my hanger, stuck my pistols, loaded, in my belt, disposed of all my valuable moveables about my person, and came upon deck with a resolution of taking the first opportunity to get on shore, which, when the day broke, appeared at the distance of three miles ahead.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

There was another copy of this book in the National Library at Paris, and the two books differed in certain details relating to the subterranean passage; for instance, each of them contained drawings and annotations, not printed, but written in ink and more or less effaced.
— from The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice Leblanc

[84] Thore Helgeson died in Clinton in 1871.
— from A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States From the Earliest Beginning down to the Year 1848 by George T. (George Tobias) Flom

"What do I care?
— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

The different industrial corporations of Ghent were no longer at one amongst themselves; the weavers had quarrelled with the fullers.
— from A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 2 by François Guizot

If, however, the light makes an angle with the mirror, its direction is changed, and it leaves the mirror along a new path.
— from General Science by Bertha May Clark

" The enclosure was a scrap of paper, so brown with age that it looked as though it had been dipped in coffee, on which was written, in astonishingly black ink, this brief but clear direction: Sheer uppe ye planke midwai atween ye oake and ye hiccorie saplyngs 7 fathom Est of Pequinky crik on ye baye.
— from Our Pirate Hoard 1891 by Thomas A. (Thomas Allibone) Janvier

The fringe of torrential deposits, distributed in cones over which the waters spread, is due to the rapidity of the disintegration of the rocks in a desert climate.
— from The Argentine Republic: Its Development and Progress by Pierre Denis

In 1814, its net results are already admirable and do it credit—reparation of the ruins accumulated by the Revolution, 4148 the continuation and completion of former projects, new and striking enterprises, dikes against the sea and the rivers, basins, moles, and jetties in the harbors, quays, and bridges, locks and canals, public edifices, 27,200 kilometers of national roads and 18,600 kilometers of departmental roads, 4149 without counting the district roads just laid out; all this done regularly, exactly, and economically, Charles Nicolas, "Les Budgets de la France depuis le commencement du XIXe siècle."
— from The Modern Regime, Volume 1 by Hippolyte Taine

Such secondary ideas can be observed very distinctly in cases where they join the chief idea after some time has elapsed.
— from An Introduction to Psychology Translated from the Second German Edition by Wilhelm Max Wundt

The lintel of the door is composed of two semicircular arches, with a Latin inscription on the pendant.
— from Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain by Annette M. B. Meakin

Yet, to say nothing of America, France now gets along without a king; the Queen of England and Empress of India has about as much to do with governing her realms as the wooden figurehead of a ship has in determining its course, and the other crowned heads of Europe sit, metaphorically speaking, upon barrels of nitro-glycerine.
— from Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth by Henry George

The greatest dunderhead in Christendom might simply, by going a star-gazing, pass himself off as an adept in the occult sciences, and claim the right of being a benefactor of mankind in embryo."
— from Willis the Pilot : A Sequel to the Swiss Family Robinson Or, Adventures of an Emigrant Family Wrecked on an Unknown Coast of the Pacific Ocean by Adrien Paul

After which, with what dignity I could summon, I returned to the tree where Grace Sheraton was still perched aloft.
— from The Way of a Man by Emerson Hough