Her manners were open, easy, and decided, like one who had no distrust of herself, and no doubts of what to do; without any approach to coarseness, however, or any want of good humour.
— from Persuasion by Jane Austen

But Harald would not have the Swedes unprepared in their arrangements for war, and sent men to Ring to carry his public declaration of hostilities, and notify the rupture of the mediating peace.
— from The Danish History, Books I-IX by Grammaticus Saxo

[2010] manucodiatae, those Indian birds of paradise, as we commonly call them, those I mean that live with the air and dew of heaven, and need no other food; for being as they are, their [2011] rhetoric only serves them to curse their bad fortunes, and many of them for want of means are driven to hard shifts; from grasshoppers they turn humble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the muses, mules, to satisfy their hunger-starved paunches, and get a meal's meat.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Did she even know where her accomplice carried this innocent little being, condemned to eternal misery, to the shame of an illegitimate birth; to more than that—to death, since he was abandoned and the nurse, no longer receiving the monthly pension, might, as they often do, let him die of hunger and neglect!
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

"You will be glad too," said the page, "when you see the bundle there is in this portmanteau, for it is a suit of the finest cloth, that the governor only wore one day out hunting and now sends, all for Senora Sanchica."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him by Plato were really held either by him or by any other Sophist is uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality might easily grow up—they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers in Thucydides; but we are concerned at present with Plato's description of him, and not with the historical reality.
— from The Republic by Plato

Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him by Plato were really held either by him or by any other Sophist is uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality might easily grow up—they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers in Thucydides; but we are concerned at present with Plato’s description of him, and not with the historical reality.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

“For,” saith he, “whoever has everything that relates to a happy life so entirely dependent on himself as not to be connected with the good or bad fortune of another, and not to be affected by, or made in any degree uncertain by, what befalls another; and whoever is such a one has acquired the best rule of living; he is that moderate, that brave, that wise man, who submits to the gain and loss of everything, and especially of his children, and obeys that old precept; for he will never be too joyful or too sad, because he depends entirely upon himself.”
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Our favorite poet has expressed your feelings very beautifully: ‘Oh, days of heaven, and nights of equal praise, Serene and peaceful as those heavenly days When souls drawn upward, in communion sweet Enjoy the stillness of some close retreat; Discourse, as if released and safe at home, Of dangers past and wonders yet to come; And spread the sacred treasures of the breast Upon the lap of covenanted rest.’ ” — Cowper's “ Conversation ”.
— from Louis' School Days: A Story for Boys by E. J. (Edith J.) May

[Pg 87] One far day God will let they two meet again; that too Jack knows; but oh, for one hour of the dear old here and now!
— from Ruby: A Story of the Australian Bush by Molly E. Jamieson

We do not dress as the book says that people dressed in those far-away years and far-away lands; we do not eat as they did; our houses are not like theirs; we do not measure time as they did; we do not speak their language; our seasons do not answer to the seasons that marked their year.
— from Bible Atlas: A Manual of Biblical Geography and History by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut

Ought not each gentleman to say, though I may have no doubts or hesitancy, are not a large portion of our citizens of opinion that it would violate the constitution?
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 2 (of 16) by United States. Congress

him all day and dreamed of him all night, oh, most cursed, y'know!
— from The Amateur Gentleman by Jeffery Farnol

The direction of his aspirations, not the degree to which these are fulfilled, determines his character, and his right to be reckoned a good man.
— from Expositions of Holy Scripture Second Kings Chapters VIII to End and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Esther, Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes by Alexander Maclaren

Prairie wolves lurked in the groves and swales, but as foot by foot and rod by rod, the steady steel rolled the grass and the hazel brush under, all of these wild things died or hurried away, never to return.
— from A Son of the Middle Border by Hamlin Garland

More than nine hundred degrees of heat are necessary.
— from First Lessons in Natural Philosophy for Beginners by Joseph C. (Joseph Comly) Martindale