No sooner had the caliph Moawiyah suppressed his rivals and established his throne, than he aspired to expiate the guilt of civil blood, by the success and glory of this holy expedition; 2 his preparations by sea and land were adequate to the importance of the object; his standard was intrusted to Sophian, a veteran warrior, but the troops were encouraged by the example and presence of Yezid, the son and presumptive heir of the commander of the faithful.
— 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

And when Artabanus perceived that the plot laid against him was not to be avoided, because it was laid by the principal men, and those a great many in number, and that it would certainly take effect,—when he had estimated the number of those that were truly faithful to him, as also of those who were already corrupted, but were deceitful in the kindness they professed to him, and were likely, upon trial, to go over to his enemies, he made his escape to the upper provinces, where he afterwards raised a great army out of the Dahae and Sacre, and fought with his enemies, and retained his principality.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

She would go over the house every morning, 166 with their only maid, from attic to kitchen, and the brass rods on the stairs and the door knobs and fittings would be scrubbed and polished till they shone again.
— from My Reminiscences by Rabindranath Tagore

The heroes of Musaeus and Eumolpus lie on couches at a festival, with garlands on their heads, enjoying as the meed of virtue a paradise of immortal drunkenness.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

I remembered how he had defrauded my grandmother of the hard earnings she had loaned; how he had tried to cheat her out of the freedom her mistress had promised her, and how he had persecuted her children; and I thought to myself that she was a better Christian than I was, if she could entirely forgive him.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. (Harriet Ann) Jacobs

“I am glad o’ that,” he exclaimed.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Very well and very fast the supper went off; no more serious difficulties occurring, than those which arose from the incessant demand for clean knives and forks; which made poor Mrs. Kenwigs wish, more than once, that private society adopted the principle of schools, and required that every guest should bring his own knife, fork, and spoon; which doubtless would be a great accommodation in many cases, and to no one more so than to the lady and gentleman of the house, especially if the school principle were carried out to the full extent, and the articles were expected, as a matter of delicacy, not to be taken away again.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

I’ve opened the safe every morning all that time (Sundays excepted) as the clock struck nine, and gone over the house every night at half-past ten (except on Foreign Post nights, and then twenty minutes before twelve) to see the doors fastened, and the fires out.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

When Themistokles was banished from Athens, he lived in Argos, during which time the proceedings of Pausanias gave a great opportunity to his enemies.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

But his brother loves application of force, builds wheels and mills; his head is full of cogs and levers and eccentrics; and after he has gone out to his engineering in the great machine-shop of a modern world, the old corn-chamber at home is lumbered with his mysterious contrivances, studies for a self-impelling or gravitating machine and perpetual motion.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 76, February, 1864 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

It might be a crude formation from the very same substance of which some of the worst errors of popery are constituted; and might strongly suggest to you, in a glance of thought, how easily popery might have become the religion of ignorance; how naturally ignorance and corrupt feeling mixing with a slight vague notion of Christianity, would turn it into just such a thing as popery.
— from An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance by John Foster

Gordon Duncan had lifted the glass once to his eyes and said: “It’s Timmie.”
— from Johnny Longbow by Roy J. (Roy Judson) Snell

It was in this way that this great man overcame all of his difficulties, and, at last, became one of the greatest orators that have ever lived.
— from Parker's Second Reader National Series of Selections for Reading, Designed For The Younger Classes In Schools, Academies, &C. by Richard Green Parker

No doubt she thought she was again giving orders to her equerry."
— from Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete by Various

And—why not admit it?—apart from my buried treasure, to the possible discovery of which the doubloon seemed to point, I was possessed with a growing desire for another glimpse of those haunting eyes.
— from Pieces of Eight Being the Authentic Narrative of a Treasure Discovered in the Bahama Islands in the Year 1903 by Richard Le Gallienne

I am unable to see that Saul's servant took any really different view of Samuel's powers, though he may have believed that he obtained them by the grace of the higher Elohim.
— from Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions by Thomas Henry Huxley

They passed the gates of the Hoover establishment.
— from The Man Who Lost Himself by H. De Vere (Henry De Vere) Stacpoole