Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

In the first place, they are wrong in forbidding men to premeditate on futurity and blaming their wish to do so; for there is nothing that breaks the edge of grief and lightens it more than considering, during one’s whole life, that there is nothing which it is impossible should happen, or than, considering what human nature is, on what conditions life was given, and how we may comply with them.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Then Panurge would have caused his head to be shaven, to see whether the lady had written upon his bald pate, with the hard lye whereof soap is made, that which she meant; but, perceiving that his hair was very long, he forbore, considering that it could not have grown to so great a length in so short a time.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

So we set out, and being gone a little way I sent home Will to look to the house, and Creed and I rode forward; the road being full of citizens going and coming toward Epsum, where, when we came, we could hear of no lodging, the town so full; but which was better, I went towards Ashted, my old place of pleasure; and there by direction of one goodman Arthur, whom we met on the way, we went to Farmer Page’s, at which direction he and I made good sport, and there we got a lodging in a little hole we could not stand upright in, but rather than go further to look we staid there, and while supper was getting ready I took him to walk up and down behind my cozen Pepys’s house that was, which I find comes little short of what I took it to be when I was a little boy, as things use commonly to appear greater than then when one comes to be a man and knows more, and so up and down in the closes, which I know so well methinks, and account it good fortune that I lie here that I may have opportunity to renew my old walks.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Agape (ag′a-pē; Gr. agapē , love), in ecclesiastical history, the love-feast or feast of charity, in use among the primitive Christians, when a liberal contribution was made by the rich to feed the poor.
— from The New Gresham Encyclopedia. A to Amide Vol. 1 Part 1 by Various

—Gulielmus Appulus, l. iii.
— 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

" "What! has he swopped with you for that big-boned hack of yours?" said Bryce, quite aware that he should get another lie in answer.
— from Silas Marner by George Eliot

I need not to ramble over earth and sky to discover a wondrous object woven of contrasts, of greatness and littleness infinite, of intense gloom and of amazing brightness—capable at once of exciting pity, admiration, terror, contempt.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

You must go and learn it again.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Dingy, ill-plumed, drowsy flutterers, sent, like many of the neighbouring children, to get a livelihood in the streets, they hop, from stone to stone, in forlorn search of some hidden eatable in the mud, and can scarcely raise a crow among them.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

She never could forget him, nor could she ever cease to think of him with feelings of the liveliest friendship, but people had begun to talk, the thing had been observed, and it was necessary that they should be nothing more to each other, than any gentleman and lady in society usually are.
— from Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

Cherish thy Gift; and let it be A Jacob's ladder unto thee, Down which the Angels come, To bring thee dreams of Home.
— from Hesperus and Other Poems and Lyrics by Charles Sangster

Menelaus, whose wife Paris had carried away, was as glad as a hungry lion when he finds a stag or a goat, and leaped in armour from his chariot, but Paris turned and slunk away, like a man when he meets a great serpent on a narrow path in the hills.
— from Tales of Troy: Ulysses, the Sacker of Cities by Andrew Lang

Already the dead-tired, or possibly the dead-drunk, had cast themselves, as if they had been shot down there, with their faces in the lifeless grass, and lay in greasy heaps and coils where the delicate foot of fashion had pressed the green herbage.
— from London Films by William Dean Howells

"'And therefore you are frightened at seeing me, as Hamlet was before his father's ghost?' "'At least I do not see you very clearly.' "'Well, then, you see yourself that we must become better acquainted with each other.
— from Problematic Characters: A Novel by Friedrich Spielhagen

Like St. John, Plotinos returns to God as love, in his old age.
— from Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4 In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods by Plotinus

possible way could an alleged deficiency of Greek and Latin in Shakspeare , affect a comparison, made by Jonson , between Shakspeare and the poets of Greece and Rome?
— from Notes and Queries, Vol. III, Number 86, June 21, 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various

Lifting the skin kaross and rubbing away the coating of grease and dirt that covered the right shoulder, Klaas pointed to two round white scars just below the blade-bone, several inches apart; then he gave a leap into the air, seized the old fossil by the neck and shrieked into his ears the most wonderful torrent of Bushman language I have ever heard.
— from From Veldt Camp Fires by H. A. (Henry Anderson) Bryden