"Under the free Anglo-Saxon government, no king could ever make a law, but could only declare what the law was."
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

Y como ahora andan diciendo que vuelve a haber facción, porque todo está torcido y revuelto, 20 tememos que Caballuco se nos vaya también a ella, poniendo fin de esta manera a las hazañas de su padre y abuelo, que por gloria nuestra nacieron en esta ciudad.
— from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós

In private life every man, at least every family, was the judge and avenger of his own cause.
— 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

This is indeed a most excellent medicine, and, like Ward's pill, flies at once to the particular part of the body on which you desire to operate, whether it be the tongue, the hand, or any other member, where it scarce ever fails of immediately producing the desired effect.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

And in the same way every action of an insane, intoxicated, or highly excited man appears less free and more inevitable to one who knows the mental condition of him who committed the action, and seems more free and less inevitable to one who does not know it.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

On the day when their eyes met at last, and said to each other those first, obscure, and ineffable things which the glance lisps, Cosette did not immediately understand.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

December 26 131 127-35 Epithalamion 135 135-8 Epithalamion made at Lincolnes
— from The Poems of John Donne, Volume 1 (of 2) Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts by John Donne

Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house.’
— from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Bede, the Venerable, Saint

An old woman, after eying me a long time, said to me: 'You seem to be the right kind of a girl.
— from The Pilgrim's Shell; Or, Fergan the Quarryman: A Tale from the Feudal Times by Eugène Sue

We wonder the more because they are endeavouring, in ecclesiastical matters at least, to usurp an extraordinary authority, against which his Majesty, with very weighty reasons, has so many times declared his opinion founded upon God's Word and upon all laws and principles of justice."
— from PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

As it chanced, they had not very far to go, the Hasca residence being situated less than a mile from the palace, in an even more aristocratic looking avenue than the one in which the accident had occurred.
— from In Search of El Dorado by Harry Collingwood

To almost every man, at least once in his life, comes a time of trial—what we call a crisis.
— from Town and Country Sermons by Charles Kingsley

Historians endowed with excellent memories, and lazy to boot, have indulged this whim, with the result that their quotations and references are mostly inexact.
— from Introduction to the Study of History by Charles Seignobos

I am not going to say that the prophecy you made just to encourage me a little is going to be fulfilled.
— from Cleo The Magnificent; Or, The Muse of the Real: A Novel by Louis Zangwill

The early mornings and late afternoons are the fittest times for finding them, when they are on the run, and feeding in the edges of wheat and rye stubbles, or buckwheat patches bordering on woodlands.
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 5, November 1850 by Various