Such are the Heroick Part of Soldiers who are qualified for Leaders: As to the rest whom I before spoke of, I know not how it is, but they arrive at a certain Habit of being void of Thought, insomuch that on occasion of the most imminent Danger they are still in the same Indifference.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

THE THIRD STORY Day the Third UNDER COLOUR OF CONFESSION AND OF EXCEEDING NICENESS OF CONSCIENCE, A LADY, BEING ENAMOURED OF A YOUNG MAN, BRINGETH A GRAVE FRIAR, WITHOUT HIS MISDOUBTING HIM THEREOF, TO AFFORD A MEANS OF GIVING ENTIRE EFFECT TO HER PLEASURE Pampinea being now silent and the daring and subtlety of the horsekeeper having been extolled by several of the company, as also the king's good sense, the queen, turning to Filomena, charged her follow on; whereupon she blithely began to speak thus, "I purpose to recount to you a cheat which was in very deed put by a fair lady upon a grave friar and which should be so much the more pleasing to every layman as these [—friars, to wit—], albeit for the most part very dull fools and men of strange manners and usances, hold themselves to be in everything both better worth and wiser than others, whereas they are of far less account than the rest of mankind, being men who, lacking, of the meanness of their spirit, the ability to provide themselves, take refuge, like swine, whereas they may have what to eat.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

But let us leave illustrations both from story and from foreign lands and turn to real events in our own history.
— from De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Each coil referred to above is sixty to seventy fathoms long, and to the rope running nooses, made also of rattan rope, are attached about three feet [ 173 ] apart from each other.
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

At length, far out on the snow fields, he made out a dark form lumbering along toward the rocks.
— from The Bungalow Boys North of Fifty-Three by John Henry Goldfrap

When the bush work was formed, he went on usually to have the fires laid and the tents reared.
— from The Red River Half-Breed: A Tale of the Wild North-West by Gustave Aimard

“I shall try to find light as to the right thing to be done about it.”
— from Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

It went on unwavering, neither rising high nor falling low, as though the reader knew he had yet far to go, like a runner that brings great news across mountains, plains, and rivers.
— from Fraternity by John Galsworthy

I took one of the books I had brought with me from London, and tried to read, but that was impossible.
— from The Passion for Life by Joseph Hocking

Tyrrel had sufficient penetration to perceive that such was likely to be the current of Lindsay's feelings, and he had by frequent letters administered to this result.
— from Horse-Shoe Robinson: A Tale of the Tory Ascendency by John Pendleton Kennedy