Under these discouraging circumstances, a prudent magistrate might observe with pleasure the progress of a religion which diffused among the people a pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics, adapted to every duty and every condition of life; recommended as the will and reason of the supreme Deity, and enforced by the sanction of eternal rewards or punishments.
— 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

Thus one person has often the custody of the prisoner's body, while another sees the sentence against him executed, as the eleven did at Athens: for which reason it is prudent to separate these offices, and to give great attention thereunto as equally necessary with anything we have already mentioned; for it will certainly happen that men of character will decline accepting this office, and worthless persons cannot properly be entrusted with it, as having themselves rather an occasion for a guard than being qualified to guard others.
— from Politics: A Treatise on Government by Aristotle

So that of Good there be three kinds; Good in the Promise, that is Pulchrum; Good in Effect, as the end desired, which is called Jucundum, Delightfull; and Good as the Means, which is called Utile, Profitable; and as many of evill: For evill, in Promise, is that they call Turpe; evill in Effect, and End, is Molestum, Unpleasant, Troublesome; and evill in the Means, Inutile, Unprofitable, Hurtfull.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Why, this, indeed: The earth about that spring is porous more Than elsewhere the telluric ground, and be Many the seeds of fire hard by the water; On this account, when night with dew-fraught shades Hath whelmed the earth, anon the earth deep down Grows chill, contracts; and thuswise squeezes out Into the spring what seeds she holds of fire (As one might squeeze with fist), which render hot The touch and steam of the fluid.
— from On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus

Yet still we seem justified, even at the earlier date, in speaking of these general ideas as Gnostic, guarding ourselves at the same time against misunderstanding with the twofold caution, that we here employ the term to express the simplest and most elementary conceptions of this tendency of thought, and that we do not postulate its use as a distinct designation of any sect or sects at this early date.
— from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A revised text with introductions, notes and dissertations by J. B. (Joseph Barber) Lightfoot

Before eating anything they each drank a wineglassful of bitter liqueur, with an air as though they had drunk it by accident for the first time in their lives and both were overcome with confusion and burst out laughing.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The apostle assures his adopted sons, the king, the clergy, and the nobles of France, that, dead in the flesh, he is still alive in the spirit; that they now hear, and must obey, the voice of the founder and guardian of the Roman church; that the Virgin, the angels, the saints, and the martyrs, and all the host of heaven, unanimously urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that riches, victory, and paradise, will crown their pious enterprise, and that eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect, if they suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people, to fall into the hands of the perfidious Lombards.
— 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

We were tippling away and extolling all these elegant devices, when a slave brought in a silver skeleton, so contrived that the joints and movable vertebra could be turned in any direction.
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

They think that Russia and Germany are in England, and that England does not amount to much.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as--if I may be allowed the expression--so long as you have an object.
— from Persuasion by Jane Austen

It is equally undeniable that, in the second period of the world, to which I now pass, each of those nations that attained to universal empire at that epoch, displayed a high intellectual or moral energy.
— from The Philosophy of History, Vol. 1 of 2 by Friedrich von Schlegel

Courage, of course, was valued above everything; Caesar practised with unrivalled mastery the art of stimulating martial emulation and the esprit de corps, so that the pre-eminence accorded to particular soldiers and divisions appeared even to those who were postponed as the necessary hierarchy of valour.
— from The History of Rome, Book V The Establishment of the Military Monarchy by Theodor Mommsen

His eager hope overcame even the terrors of the grave; for the Divine power was as infinite as human expectation, and the Egyptian, duly ensepulchred in the Lybian Catacombs, was supposed to be already on his way to the Fortunate Abodes under the guidance of Hermes, there to obtain a perfect association and reunion with his God.
— from Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry by Albert Pike

"What is the spirit of our German mysticism, the spirit of Eckhart and Tauler, except: Drunkenness of the soul in a waking condition?
— from What Germany Thinks Or, The War as Germans see it by Thomas F. A. Smith

The English at once fired the Chinese town, and even attacked the English driver of a coach for conveying Chinamen on his vehicle.
— from Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7 by Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir

has read them; and has found time, even amid the engrossing demands of the London County Council, the Turf, and the Foreign Office, not only for study,
— from Collections and Recollections by George William Erskine Russell

The Laird never quite got around to defining the reservation but in a vague way he felt that they should exist and that eventually Donald would come to a realization of the fact and help him define them.
— from Kindred of the Dust by Peter B. (Peter Bernard) Kyne

Such an under-teacher is called an usher, and by what I can learn, is commonly a tormented being, exactly answering the exquisite description given of him in the “Vicar of Wakefield.”
— from Travels in England in 1782 by Karl Philipp Moritz

The Essenes had their "Exoteric" and their "Esoteric" doctrines.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

They represented the numbers of the enemy, and the extreme difficulty of penetrating so rough a country; and affirmed that, if the troops remained quiet, the hostile tribes, who were already collecting their prisoners, would soon arrive to make their submission.
— from The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada by Francis Parkman