blesser , porter un coup qui fait plaie, fracture ou contusion; faire du mal.
— from French Conversation and Composition by Harry Vincent Wann

222 “flexuoso draconum meatu;” Poinsinet remarks, “Les Grecs ... appellaient dragons les bracelets, les hausse-cols, les chainettes, et généralement tout ce qui avait une figure armillaire;” i. 79, 80. 223
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

“To sign the name of a filibuster dead more than ten years!” “A filibuster!” “It’s a seditious joke!” “There being ladies present—” Padre Irene looked around for the joker and saw Padre Salvi, who was seated at the right of the Countess, turn as white as his napkin, while he stared at the mysterious words with bulging eyes.
— from The Reign of Greed by José Rizal

When Sextius tells us, “he had rather be fettered with affliction than pleasure”: when Epicurus takes upon him to play with his gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all torments, and despising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets and calls out for others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him; “Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem:” [“And instead of timid beasts, wishes the foaming boar or tawny lion would come from the mountain.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

O fortunatissime deorum Mars qui propter hanc vinctus fuisti.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

I read carelessly the first Georgick.' Such evidences of his unceasing ardour, both for 'divine and human lore,' when advanced into his sixty-fifth year, and notwithstanding his many disturbances from disease, must make us at once honour his spirit, and lament that it should be so grievously clogged by its material tegument.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

The discretion of parents often suspended the baptism of their children till they could understand the obligations which they contracted: the severity of ancient bishops exacted from the new converts a novitiate of two or three years; and the catechumens themselves, from different motives of a temporal or a spiritual nature, were seldom impatient to assume the character of perfect and initiated Christians.
— 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

Never was man less inquisitive or less prying into other men’s affairs than I. In our fathers’ days, Monsieur de Boutieres had like to have lost Turin from having, while engaged in good company at supper, delayed to read information that was sent him of the treason plotted against that city where he commanded.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

They contain bodies of fine dark mica schist, and many dikes of very coarse muscovite granite.
— from Old Mines of Southern California Desert-Mountain-Coastal Areas Including the Calico-Salton Sea Colorado River Districts and Southern Counties by Harold W. (Harold Wellman) Fairbanks

In later years the theater disappeared to make room for the apartments of the King's fair daughter, Madame Adelaïde.
— from The Story of Versailles by Francis Loring Payne

Children's diseases, 289 -291; from dirty milk, 37 .
— from A Handbook of Health by Woods Hutchinson

It will not do to traverse these rivers after dark unless well acquainted with the currents, the snags, and the dams, for disaster may readily overtake the unwary.
— from Historic Waterways—Six Hundred Miles of Canoeing Down the Rock, Fox, and Wisconsin Rivers by Reuben Gold Thwaites

Archduke Albert had found, to his cost, that the insurrection was not, as he had supposed, the work of a few discontented men.
— from The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years by C. Edmund (Charles Edmund) Maurice

There were excellent hunting and fishing hereabouts, I had been told, and I brought letters of introduction to Mr. Kirke from Dr. Meriden and Professor Blythe, who were his college friends.
— from Jessamine: A Novel by Marion Harland

At that moment, old Sir Juden, reassured by a nod from Dame Margaret, went on with his speech.
— from Tales From Scottish Ballads by Elizabeth W. (Elizabeth Wilson) Grierson

The bringing it into general use was reserved for Dr Maskelyne, our Astronomer Royal.
— from A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 15 Forming A Complete History Of The Origin And Progress Of Navigation, Discovery, And Commerce, By Sea And Land, From The Earliest Ages To The Present Time by Robert Kerr

A ship is a beauty and a mystery wherever we see it: its white wings touch the regions of the unknown and the imaginative; they seem to us full of the odors of quaint, strange, foreign shores, where life, we fondly dream, moves in brighter currents than the muddy, tranquil tides of every day.
— from The Pearl of Orr's Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine by Harriet Beecher Stowe