No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

To modern science, these assumptions are as much out of date as the equally venerable errors, that the sun goes round the earth every four-and-twenty hours, or that water is an elementary body.
— from Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley by Thomas Henry Huxley

The ancients considered it extremely venomous, even to the slightest touch, but like many other assertions, it is ill-founded, for I have handled many of them and received no hurt.
— from Antigua and the Antiguans, Volume 2 (of 2) A full account of the colony and its inhabitants from the time of the Caribs to the present day by Mrs. Lanaghan

In his prayer he entreated very earnestly that the scales might fall from his eyes, and that these truths which he loved when he was young might be brought to him again.
— from From Death into Life or, Twenty Years of my Ministry by W. (William) Haslam

Farther up the Brandywine Creek, at Chadd's Ford and vicinity, was fought, in September, 1777, the battle of the Brandywine, where the English victory enabled them to subsequently take possession of Philadelphia.
— from America, Volume 1 (of 6) by Joel Cook

Vivid flashes of lightning played over the scene of this midnight carnival; the violent snapping of branches in the adjacent forest proclaimed the nocturnal foray of the elephant and hippopotamus; the loud roar and the startling snort were neither wanting to complete the concert of the wild Háwash, and long ere the morning dawned, the place of the carcass knew it not, every vestige, even to the skull, having found a sepulchre in the maw of “the laughing hyaena.”
— from The Highlands of Ethiopia by Harris, William Cornwallis, Sir

And on the shores of the frozen sea he chases the whalemen from the Eskimo villages even to their ships which lie far out from the coast, locked in the grip of the ice-pack.
— from The Gun-Brand by James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx