On being released he gathered a band of revolutionists, drew after him a number of cities, and finally, assuming the kingly garb and mustering an army, he reached Thrace.
— from Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek during the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form by Cassius Dio Cocceianus

Saturnia regna[Lat], Saturnian age; golden time, golden age; bed of roses, fat city [coll.]; fat of the land, milk and honey, loaves and fishes.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

“Joe quickly his sand had sold, sir, And Bess got a basket of rags; Then up to St. Giles’s they roll’d, sir; To every bunter Bess brags.
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

But they dwelt in an old wooden house—old even in those days—with overhanging gables and balconies of rudely-carved oak, which stood within a pleasant orchard, and was surrounded by a rough stone wall, whence a stout archer might have winged an arrow to St Mary’s Abbey.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Terrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak parlour where Mr. James was, who, having tried the bottle standing there and found no liquor in it, ordered Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum, which he fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and his son sat down, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys at that instant and never to show his face again.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

The end itself, the pleasure that we seek, is in the latter case not a good but a welfare; not a concept of reason, but an empirical concept of an object of sensation; but the use of the means thereto, that is, the action, is nevertheless called good (because rational deliberation is required for it), not however, good absolutely, but only relatively to our sensuous nature, with regard to its feelings of pleasure and displeasure; but the will whose maxim is affected thereby is not a pure will; this is directed only to that in which pure reason by itself can be practical.
— from The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant

Johnson, who did not like to hear of any thing concerning a future state which was not authorised by the regular canons of orthodoxy, discouraged this talk; and being offended at its continuation, he watched an opportunity to give the gentleman a blow of reprehension.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

Mayn’t I give a bit of riband to my own cousin?’
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

I want to get a bunch of really trustworthy people together and do a key-exchange web of trust thing Web of trust is one of those cool crypto things that I'd read about but never tried.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Before the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and Kissingen to Russian friends—to get a breath of Russian air, as he said—came back to his wife and daughter.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Kitty's heart gave a bound of rapture, and [Pg 67] then, forgetting all Nora's injunctions to keep by her side, she flew with lightning speed towards the figure of a horseman who was riding through the wood.
— from Red Rose and Tiger Lily; Or, In a Wider World by L. T. Meade

“An’ ye got a bottle o’ rum!
— from The Cruise of the Shining Light by Norman Duncan

Your hair has the gloss and brownness of ripe nuts, and your face is always pale.
— from Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

Let me get a bit o' rag and wipe the grease off of she.
— from Left on the Labrador: A Tale of Adventure Down North by Dillon Wallace

At first José seized upon this idea with all the warmth of generous affection, but, on raising his eyes to his work, he began to think the sacrifice beyond his strength.
— from Popular Tales by Madame (Elisabeth Charlotte Pauline) Guizot

Whenever we get a bit of realism as in the Eve, and Sleeping St. Joseph of Tabachetti, in the Herod, laughing boys, and Caiaphas of D’Enrico, and still more in the Vecchietto, or in the three or four of the figures in the St. Eusebius Chapel at Crea, we accept it with avidity, and we may be sure that the masters who gave us the figures above-named could have given us any number equally realistic if they had been inclined to do so.
— from Ex Voto: An Account of the Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem at Varallo-Sesia With Some Notice of Tabachetti's Remaining Work at the Sanctuary of Crea by Samuel Butler

We cannot grow a blade of rice on account of them."
— from The Argus Pheasant by John Charles Beecham