You agree with me, Cleinias, that the heresy consists in supposing earth, air, fire, and water to be the first of all things.
— from Laws by Plato

Knotting on the threads on to a stuff edge and formation of a flat double knot (fig. 516 ).—Push your crochet needle through the edge of the stuff from the right to the wrong side and catch hold of the loop, formed by the folding in half of the thread that is to be knotted on; pull it out to the right side, put the ends through, and tighten the loop, detail a .
— from Encyclopedia of Needlework by Thérèse de Dillmont

The oldest documents in the Japanese language, excepting a few fragments of the seventh century, do not antedate the year 712, and even in these the Chinese characters are in many instances used phonetically, because the meaning of the words thus transliterated had {38} already been forgotten.
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis

Thus even Aristotle felt that good judgment and the dramatic habit of things altogether excluded the simple physics of Democritus.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

But of the objects, which I proposed to myself, it was not the least important to effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the long continued controversy concerning the true nature of poetic diction; and at the same time to define with the utmost impartiality the real poetic character of the poet, by whose writings this controversy was first kindled, and has been since fuelled and fanned.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Montaigne's Essays are full of it, the carvings of the church of Brou are full of it.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

This being expeditiously accomplished, he pitched his camp for that night by the river-side, and on the morrow, when he was told that the Roman fleet was anchored off the mouths of the river, he detached five hundred Numidian horsemen to reconnoitre the enemy and find out their position, their numbers, and what they were going to do; and at the same time selected suitable men to manage the passage of the elephants.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

And that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Now we came to a river, waded through it, then clambered over some palisades, passed again through a second river up to our necks, clambered up some rising ground, leaped over fallen trees, and arrived about one A.M. at a little wood, where we sank down from exhaustion and fever.
— from Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling by Bertha von Suttner

Hardly beyond the stated number she was beside him again, ranging her steed for the victim log to dance a gyration on its branches across the lane and enter a field among the fallen compeers.
— from Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Complete by George Meredith

He opened his eyes and feeling about him with his hands, he sensed the coarse hairs of a large pig which, resenting the presence of a neighbor, began to grunt.
— from The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution by Mariano Azuela

The larvæ of the Eumenes are fed with those of a species of Crambus .
— from Insect Architecture by James Rennie

We were called up at a moment’s notice from another part of the line, where our division was in reserve, to a position in front of a line of our trenches lost to the enemy a few hours previously in their attempted advance on Calais.
— from My German Prisons Being the Experiences of an Officer During Two and a Half Years as a Prisoner of War by Horace Gray Gilliland

In Acadia they erected a fort at Chinecto, to confine the British subjects of Nova Scotia within the peninsula.
— from An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, Volume 2 by Alexander Hewatt

ithout any glass for his windows, and with the earth alone for his floor.
— from David Crockett: His Life and Adventures by John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

Ignorant that he himself bears the load of guilt, he charges the Thebans to be vigilant and unremitting in their efforts,-- "And for the man who did the guilty deed, Whether alone he lurks, or leagued with more, I pray that he may waste his life away, For vile deeds vilely dying; and for me, If in my house, I knowing it, he dwells, May every curse I spake on my head fall."
— from Mosaics of Grecian History by Robert Pierpont Wilson

Every chink has to be closed up to make it effective, and for four mortal hours this evening we have all been cutting brown paper into strips and standing on ladders and chairs pasting up the very badly-fitting doors and windows of this abode so that none of the precious and deadly gas shall escape.
— from The Wide World Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 127, October to March, 1909 by Various

And he rang the bell, and then made her sit down and eat, almost feeding her with his own hand.
— from Two Years Ago, Volume II. by Charles Kingsley