To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.
— from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton

But, what is still more terrible, there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple, 23 began on a sudden to cry aloud, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!"
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

My Lord being gone I to the office, and there find Captain Ferrers, who tells me his wife is come to town to see him, having not seen him since 15 weeks ago at his first going to sea last.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Fax mentis honestæ gloria —Glory is the torch of an honourable mind.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

Johnson sat in great impatience till the gentleman had finished his tedious narrative, and then burst out (playfully however), 'It is a pity, Sir, that you have not seen a lion; for a flea has taken you such a time, that a lion must have served you a twelvemonth.'
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

Trim ! said my uncle Toby, I have a project in my head, as it is a bad night, of wrapping myself up warm in my roquelaure, and paying a visit to this poor gentleman.——Your honour’s roquelaure, replied the corporal, has not once been had on, since the night before your honour received your wound, when we mounted guard in the trenches before the gate of St. Nicholas; —and besides, it is so cold and rainy a night, 140 that what with the roquelaure, and what with the weather, ’twill be enough to give your honour your death, and bring on your honour’s torment in your groin.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

What guarantee is there that the State, in freeing itself, will not enslave its members?
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

And Samuel said unto him, The Lord hath rent the kingdom from Israel out of thine hand this day, and will give it to thy neighbour, who is good above thee, and will divide Israel in twain.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

And her mother said to him to let that be a warning to him for the rest of his days and he couldn’t even go to the funeral on account of the gout and she had to go into town to bring him the letters and samples from his office about Catesby’s cork lino, artistic, standard designs, fit for a palace, gives tiptop wear and always bright and cheery in the home.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

In the park the great trees, like giant ghosts, loomed gloomily indistinct through the dim atmosphere.
— from Castle Blair: A Story of Youthful Days by Flora L. (Flora Louisa) Shaw

25 The king himself had given it to the father of the Chamberlain; after his father the Chamberlain bore it worthily; whenever he tapped upon it, it was a sign that he wished to have the floor for a speech.
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

Fitzstephen, his description of London games in the twelfth century, 185 .
— from Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe From the Iron Period of the Northern Nations to the End of the Thirteenth Century by John Hewitt

The two former articles were issued under the sanction of Dr. Hall, who gave instructions that the doctors should report on the effects.
— from The British Expedition to the Crimea by Russell, William Howard, Sir

These houses are generally high and flat roofed, the one side is occupied by the inhabitants who sit and sleep on the ground, and the other side is appropriated for drying fish which are hung up generally in two tiers the one above the other the lower ones so near the ground that one has to stoop to get under them.—The air has a free circulation through these habitations from the [Pg 91] openness of their walls, which makes them cool & comfortable when there is the least air of wind, but in case of rain, from the openness of the roof, very little would be excluded.
— from The Washington Historical Quarterly, Volume V, 1914 by Various

I'm goin' into the town jest to finish a little buying."
— from Indian and Scout: A Tale of the Gold Rush to California by F. S. (Frederick Sadleir) Brereton

Manufacture and commerce reappeared: the artizans and merchants formed into communities; the communities grew into towns, the towns into cities; in the city arose the cathedral; the Lombard or Byzantine mouldings and traceries of the cathedral gave birth to figure-sculpture; its mosaics gave birth to painting; every forward movement of the civilization unfolded as it were a new form or detail of the art, until, when mediæval civilization was reaching its moment of consolidation, when the cathedrals of Lucca and Pisa stood completed, when Niccolo and Giovanni Pisano had sculptured their pulpits and sepulchres; painting, in the hands of Cimabue and Duccio, of Giotto and of Guido da Siena, freed itself from the tradition of the mosaicists as sculpture had freed itself from the practice of the stone-masons, and stood forth an independent and organic art.
— from Euphorion - Vol. I Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance by Vernon Lee

Submarines that had tried to pick one of the locks were like the fish who found 379 going good into the trap.
— from My Year of the Great War by Frederick Palmer

Are you going into the town? Kroll (taking up his hat).
— from Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen