He indignantly contrasted the effeminate Syrians with the brave and honest simplicity of the Gauls, and almost forgave the intemperance, which was the only stain of the Celtic character.
— 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

I had an excellent supper with fourteen or fifteen senators.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, "Well done!"
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

It also appears that a skilful artist executed a faithful delineation of the curiosity, which was engraven on stone, and presented to the Royal Antiquarian Society, and other learned bodies: that heart-burnings and jealousies without number were created by rival controversies which were penned upon the subject; and that Mr. Pickwick himself wrote a pamphlet, containing ninety-six pages of very small print, and twenty-seven different readings of the inscription: that three old gentlemen cut off their eldest sons with a shilling a-piece for presuming to doubt the antiquity of the fragment; and that one enthusiastic individual cut himself off prematurely, in despair at being unable to fathom its meaning: that Mr. Pickwick was elected an honorary member of seventeen native and foreign societies, for making the discovery: that none of the seventeen could make anything of it; but that all the seventeen agreed it was very extraordinary.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

In a cold, wintry season, these fugitives, nursed in the lap of prosperity, departed on foot; his wife was with child; the desertion of their slaves compelled them to carry their baggage on their own shoulders; and their women, whom they placed in the centre, were exhorted to conceal their beauty with dirt, instead of adorning it with paint and jewels Every step was exposed to insult and danger: the threats of the strangers were less painful than the taunts of the plebeians, with whom they were now levelled; nor did the exiles breathe in safety till their mournful pilgrimage was concluded at Selymbria, above forty miles from the capital.
— 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

However, after an excellent supper, we spent two hours in amorous raptures, and then Morpheus claimed us for his own.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The road lay through the middle of an empty space which seemed to me to be a hundred yards wide between the fences.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

He was just entering into life, full of spirits, and with all the liberal dispositions of an eldest son, who feels born only for expense and enjoyment.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Enter SERVANTS with a basket MRS.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

The Elizabethan stage was the ancestor of our music-hall, and to the modern music-hall rather than to the theatre it bears its affinity.
— from English Literature: Modern by G. H. (George Herbert) Mair

"I am entirely satisfied with the reward I received," replied George.
— from George at the Wheel; Or, Life in the Pilot-House by Harry Castlemon

It can be imagined with what eagerness Steve was greeted on his return from the City that evening, how he was hurried through his dinner, and despatched forthwith, in company with the Hermit, to interview “Jim,” otherwise Mr James Matthews.
— from The Daughters of a Genius by Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.

No popular agitation can ever succeed without an appeal to a moral sense, good or bad.
— from A Short History of English Liberalism by W. Lyon (Walter Lyon) Blease

At the time the elective system was introduced into Harvard University, attendance upon chapel was made voluntary.
— from Introducing the American Spirit by Edward Alfred Steiner

However, habit, joined to the peculiar mechanical memory which he possessed, carried this correctness to a degree which, in an extemporaneous speaker, was almost miraculous; he, perhaps, hardly ever uttered a sentence that was not perfectly regular and connected.
— from The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12) by William Hazlitt

This bag she unfastened at the bottom , shook out fully two-thirds of the cocoa and filled up the empty space with the tightly rolled packet containing the documents, replacing the whole in the tin, cocoa side up, of course, and pasting down the paper wrapper over the lid to make it look like new.
— from The Petticoat Commando: Boer Women in Secret Service by Johanna Brandt