The crowd of writers of every nation, who impute the destruction of the Roman monuments to the Goths and the Christians, have neglected to inquire how far they were animated by a hostile principle, and how far they possessed the means and the leisure to satiate their enmity.
— 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

It was true, as I observed in its place, that the throng was so great, and the coaches, horses, waggons, and carts were so many, driving and dragging the people away, that it looked as if all the city was running away; and had any regulations been published that had been terrifying at that time, especially such as would pretend to dispose of the people otherwise than they would dispose of themselves, it would have put both the city and suburbs into the utmost confusion.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

If a man have a horse stolen, and overtake the thief, and should his anger be so great as to cause him to shed his blood, let it remain on his own conscience, but no satisfaction shall be required for his life, from his relative or clan he may have belonged to.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

After which, having made Hippias from one step to another acknowledge the excellency of their form of public administration, and the felicity and virtue of their private life, he leaves him to guess at the conclusion he makes of the inutilities of his pedantic arts.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Now, in the night time, when John saw that there was no Roman guard about the city, he seized the opportunity directly, and, taking with him not only the armed men that were about him, but a considerable number of those that had little to do, together with their families, he fled to Jerusalem.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

Next year Gaius Atilius, the Consul, happened to be at anchor off Tyndaris, when he observed the Carthaginian fleet sailing by in a straggling manner.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

The gout, the rheumatism, the stone, the gravel, and the consumption, have all their several patrons in the faculty; and none more than the nervous fever, or the fever on the spirits.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

He instantly raised the royal captive from the ground; and thrice clasping his hand with tender sympathy, assured him, that his life and dignity should be inviolate in the hands of a prince who had learned to respect the majesty of his equals and the vicissitudes of fortune.
— 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

The wind was whistling down the gorges, and the clouds hung among the pine woods which still clothed the upper slopes of the hills, and the diggers, as they turned out one morning, looked up apprehensively.
— from Among Malay Pirates : a Tale of Adventure and Peril by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

You see, boys, he’s got all the clues he wants now; he don’t need anything more.
— from A Double Barrelled Detective Story by Mark Twain

It chanced that there was a little lull in the roar of guns, and they could hear what he was saying.
— from The Boy Scouts on War Trails in Belgium; Or, Caught Between Hostile Armies by Carter, Herbert, active 1909-1917

When the command is formed in line for ceremonies, a noncommissioned officer commanding a company takes post on the right of the right guide after the company has been aligned.
— from Manual of Military Training Second, Revised Edition by James A. (James Alfred) Moss

Girls and boys, the fire burns clear; Gather about the chimney here.
— from In My Nursery by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

Deprived by law, as they were at this time, of nearly all the rights of Christian ministers—of the right to marry, and all similar ones, (for both the government and the church had long contended against men whom they regarded and believed, in point of education and character, to be wholly unfit to exercise these sacred functions,) they declaimed from the very bottom of their hearts against the illiberality and exclusiveness of English institutions, of English feelings, and of English pride, in depriving them of these rights; and they applauded, with equal earnestness, that government under which their church flourished, in the fullest exercise of the widest privileges of a Christian denomination.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849 by Various

“Bang, bang,” went the farmer’s gun, and the cubs hearing the loud noise, terrified out of their small wits, scurried off and lost themselves in the shadows of the great woods, while their poor mother, with a scream of baffled rage and pain dropped crashing into the underbrush.
— from The Three Bears of Porcupine Ridge by Jean M. (Jean May) Thompson

A little blaze shone comfortably on the canvas of Crook’s tent, and Sergeant Keyser, being in charge of camp, had adopted the troop cook-fire for his camp guard after the cooks had finished their work.
— from Red Men and White by Owen Wister

Even Gershom, after the children had had their lesson, became conscious of my preoccupation and went so far as to ask if I wasn’t feeling well.
— from The Prairie Child by Arthur Stringer

I hear that he now goes about the cholera hospitals to administer Christian consolation; we cannot oppose that—but this universal comforter is of the true heretical stamp."
— from The Wandering Jew — Volume 11 by Eugène Sue