Some towards honour and quick fire-consummation; most towards dishonour; not a few towards massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: all towards Eternity!—So many heterogeneities cast together into the fermenting-vat; there, with incalculable action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments, to work out healing for a sick moribund System of Society!
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

I have given him my faith, and sworn my allegiance to him; how, then, can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a traitor? APOL.
— from The Pilgrim's Progress from this world to that which is to come Delivered under the similitude of a dream, by John Bunyan by John Bunyan

In reply to these statements, the following arguments are often adduced by those who are not unskilful in discussions, and who, in this question, have all the greater weight of authority, because, when we inquire, Who is a good man?—understanding by that term a frank and single-minded man—we have little need of captious casuists, quibblers, and slanderers.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

On the bat's back I do fly After summer, merrily: Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.”
— from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

Public and private distress recruited the armies of the state; but in the field, and still more in the presence of the enemy, their numbers were always defective.
— 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

The Royal Society asks for a short monograph setting forth the basis of Ethics entirely by itself; which means to say, independent of its connection with the general system, i.e. , the actual metaphysics of any philosophy.
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer

(For a soul may choose a lion's, equally with a man's, mode of being.)
— from The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer

23 During twenty days, every step of his fainting and sickly march was besieged by the innumerable hordes of Turkmans, 24 whose numbers and fury seemed after each defeat to multiply and inflame.
— 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

It is said that while these two sculptors were staying in Bologna the Po issued in furious flood from its bed and laid waste the whole country round for many miles, doing incredible damage to the territory of Mantua and Ferrara and slaying more than ten thousand persons; and that they, being called on for this reason as ingenious and able men, found a way to put this terrible river back into its course, confining it with dykes and other most useful barriers; which was greatly to their credit and profit, because, besides acquiring fame thereby, they were recompensed by the Lords of Mantua and by the D'Este family with most honourable rewards.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

“She saw that his resolution was fixed, and she made no opposition to it.
— from Cruel As The Grave by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

For a single moment that thought had its way, but only for a moment.
— from Lotus Buds by Amy Carmichael

French on the extreme left of the British front, which was extended from flank to flank about sixteen miles, soon came in contact with the Boers, occupying strong defensive positions, and he became sharply engaged.
— from Ian Hamilton's March by Winston Churchill

He sat up and beckoned, and they hastened to him, not a little astonished to find a strange man clad only in torn singlet and drawers lying there in the depths of the bush.
— from The Missing Link by Edward Dyson

It distinguishes the artist from the artisan; a free spirit from a slave; a thinking, feeling man from a soulless machine.
— from The Gate of Appreciation: Studies in the Relation of Art to Life by Carleton Eldredge Noyes

After walking for about six miles—I preferred that mode of getting along to the joltings of the dray—we all felt disposed to rest ourselves.
— from A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53 by Clacy, Charles, Mrs.