It doubtless multiplied the wailings of the mourners who brought to this spot two thousand years ago the ashes of the dead; it sent back the rude sounds of warfare which disturbed the peace of the tomb in the middle ages; and now it haunts the spot like the voice of the past, "informing the solitude," and giving a response to each new-comer according to his mood.
— from Roman Mosaics; Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood by Hugh Macmillan

The only hope was in help from without, and before the lines were entirely finished horsemen were sent out with orders to ride for their lives into every district in Gaul and raise the entire nation.
— from Caesar: A Sketch by James Anthony Froude

The modern state must conduct its enormous businesses through a system of ministries; its vital interests go all round the earth; nothing that any ancient Greek would have recognized as democracy is conceivable in a great modern state.
— from In the Fourth Year: Anticipations of a World Peace by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Unlike the rest, he lived almost a hermit's life, receiving nobody in his garret, and retiring there every night neither to read nor to write, but to think, a queer occupation for a Bohemian.
— from Vie de Bohème: A Patch of Romantic Paris by Orlo Williams

We have only to recall the lake stages cited from the Scottish glens and remember that each new stage was begun in a retirement of the glacier front which unblocked an outlet of lower level than the last.
— from Earth Features and Their Meaning An Introduction to Geology for the Student and the General Reader by William Herbert Hobbs

The true reformers have been (and are) men who assisted the good and resisted the evil, not simply because it would pay or bring preferment or popularity, but because they felt in their hearts the impulses (and compulsions, if you will) of duty.
— from A History of the Durham Miner's Association 1870-1904 by John Wilson