Por la parte que salieron estaban de centinelas dos soldados poco apercibidos, de los cuales el uno no pareció, y el otro fué hallado con el corazon atravesado con una flecha; y traido el cuerpo, le pusieron junto á la lumbrada comun del campo; y cuando volvieron los soldados, que intentaron el alcance de los indios, al desmontar uno de ellos del caballo, le pisó la boca al miserable, y se atribuyó su fatal muerte á haber sido renegador y blasfemo.
— from The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542. Excerpted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1892-1893, Part 1. by George Parker Winship

The Jesuit, Réné Rapin, in his Comparisons of the Great Men of Antiquity (Réflexions sur l'Histoire, p. 211), may, with a violent seizure of ecstacy, fall, like a genuine Frenchman, into a fit of enthusiasm over the description, as "exquisite in delicacy and elegance" ("tout y est décrit dans une délicatesse et dans une élégance exquise" says he), of the lascivious dancing of Messalina and her wanton crew of Terpsichorean revellers when counterfeiting the passions and actions of the phrenzied women-worshippers of Bacchus celebrating a vintage in the youth of the world, when the age was considered to be as good as gold: the gay touches in the lively picture may be introduced with sufficient warmth to enrapture the chaste Jesuit priest, and judiciously enough to contrast boldly with the dreadful, tragic details of the shortly ensuing death of the Empress; but they are not circumstances that would have ever emanated with their emotional particularities from the solemn soul of Tacitus.
— from Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century by John Wilson Ross

Ueber die Unsicherheit der Erkenntniss des erloschenen Lebens, etc.
— from Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented by William Tebb

[206] How thoroughly this mental attitude had become second nature with Heine, may be inferred from a statement which he makes to Friederike Roberts (1825): "Das Ungeheuerste, das Ensetzlichste, das Schaudervollste, wenn es nicht unpoetisch werden soll, kann man auch nur in dem buntscheckigen Gewände des Lächerlichen darstellen, gleichsam versöhnend—darum hat auch Shakespeare das Grässlichste
— from Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry by Wilhelm Alfred Braun

To George Wilson, to all such men—and this is the great lesson of his life—the heavens are forever telling His glory, the firmament is forever showing forth His handiwork; day unto day, every day, is forever uttering speech, and night unto night is showing knowledge concerning Him.
— from Spare Hours by John Brown