Brutus perceived the attack made on him; as it was honourable in these days for the generals to engage in combat, he eagerly offered himself to the combat.
— from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy

Our business with the Duke being done, [Sir] W. Pen and I towards the Exchequer, and in our way met Sir G. Downing going to chapel, but we stopped, and he would go with us back to the Exchequer and showed us in his office his chests full and ground and shelves full of money, and says that there is L50,000 at this day in his office of people’s money, who may demand it this day, and might have had it away several weeks ago upon the late Act, but do rather choose to have it continue there than to put it into the Banker’s hands, and I must confess it is more than I should have believed had I not seen it, and more than ever I could have expected would have arisen for this new Act in so short a time, and if it do so now already what would it do if the money was collected upon the Act and returned into the Exchequer so timely as it ought to be.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The two old, simple problems ever intertwined, Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

In such cases, evidence itself can hardly escape being influenced by the prestige of authority.'
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Did I say he could eat? I caught him eating the whip once.
— from Lost Face by Jack London

‘You are civil, my dear, he said, ‘and sweet and submissive, and, indeed, everything I could have expected from your character and early habits; but I thought Mrs. Anderson had brought you under.
— from Ombra by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

And now the commodore having dispatched the business with which the officers of the East India Company had entrusted him, he entered on his own affairs, acquainting the viceroy that the proper season was already set in for returning to Europe, and that he wanted only a licence to ship off his provisions and stores, which were all ready; and that as soon as this should be granted him, and he should have gotten his necessaries on board, he intended to leave the river of Canton and to make the best of his way for England.
— from A Voyage Round the World in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV by Anson, George Anson, Baron

But the German swarms, who had meanwhile poured themselves over all northern Gaul, had not come to install the Flavian dynasty; even if Civilis had ever wished this, he now had no longer the power.
— from The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1 by Theodor Mommsen

I stood for nearly half an hour engrossed in the contemplation of his extreme beauty and gigantic proportions; and, if there had been no elephants, I could have exclaimed, like Duke Alexander of Gordon when he killed the famous old stag with seventeen tine, “Now I can die happy.”
— from Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 by Charles Herbert Sylvester

If he wished to describe an automobile turning in at a gate, he made first a long and elaborate description from which there was omitted no detail, which the most observant pair of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with reference to just such a turning.
— from Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis by Richard Harding Davis

In spite of all my endeavours I could hardly ever shake it off sufficiently to be on any terms of cordiality with him; and I viewed with suspicion and distrust his intimacy with my father, and the evident effect his counsels had upon him.
— from Confessions of a Thug by Meadows Taylor

He edited for a time a newspaper called the "British Press," until he quarrelled with the publisher for dismissing contemptuously a political upheaval in France in the following brief "leader": "We perceive that there is a change of ministry in France;—we have heard of no earthquakes in consequence!" He edited a work on medical jurisprudence.
— from Recollections of the War of 1812 by William Dunlop

204 All at once, a word upon the lowest line which explained itself caught his eye; then another and another, until the method of deciphering the whole message burst upon his mind.
— from The Crevice by William J. Burns

Ethel invariably checked his expressions of gratitude, and would not allow him to talk about the incident.
— from The Disputed V.C.: A Tale of the Indian Mutiny by Frederick P. Gibbon