"I thank my God," said this excellent man, "with all the power of a grateful soul, for the mercies he has most graciously bestowed on me in preserving you.
— from The Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson by Robert Southey

Thou know'st, great son, The end of war's uncertain; but this certain, That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name Whose repetition will be dogg'd with curses; Whose chronicle thus writ: 'The man was noble,
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

In a thriving town, the people who have great stocks to employ, frequently cannot get the number of workmen they want, and therefore bid against one another, in order to get as many as they can, which raises the wages of labour, and lowers the profits of stock.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Thus the thorny path of honor shows itself as a glory, surrounding the earth with its beams.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they cannot trace how, rather than to root them out.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects by Mary Wollstonecraft

The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not understand it he begged Pierre to continue.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

What they seemed to think of more than anything else was to get something to eat, and it did not matter much to them how they got it.
— from The Aesop for Children With pictures by Milo Winter by Aesop

80 Hard by, a Cottage chimney smokes, From betwixt two aged Okes, Where Corydon and Thyrsis met, Are at their savory dinner set Of Hearbs, and other Country Messes, Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses; And then in haste her Bowre she leaves, With Thestylis to bind the Sheaves; Or if the earlier season lead To the tann'd Haycock in the Mead, 90 Som times with secure delight The up-land Hamlets will invite, When the merry Bells ring round, And the jocond rebecks sound To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the Chequer'd shade; And young and old com forth to play On a Sunshine Holyday, Till the live-long day-light fail, Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale, 100 With stories told of many a feat, How Faery Mab the junkets eat, She was pincht, and pull'd she sed, And he by Friars Lanthorn led Tells how the drudging Goblin swet, To ern his Cream-bowle duly set, When in one night, ere glimps of morn, His shadowy Flale hath
— from The Poetical Works of John Milton by John Milton

Their dominion was well assured by the beginning of the seventh century, and their language, which they usually called “English” (that is, “the tongue of the Angles”), gradually spread through England and most of Scotland.
— from An Advanced English Grammar with Exercises by George Lyman Kittredge

If you read Genesis in the original Hebrew, you will find that Al or El, the sun, not the Christian God, says: “To every beast of the earth I gave a living soul.”
— from King Solomon's Goat by George Willard Bartlett

[Pg 389] DECEMBER 9th There was a time when you and I and all of us were all very close to God; so that even now the colour of a pebble (or a paint), the smell of a flower (or a firework) comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty; as if they were fragments of a muddled message, or features of a forgotten face.
— from A Chesterton Calendar Compiled from the writings of 'G.K.C.' both in verse and in prose. With a section apart for the moveable feasts. by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

I'll git sumfin to eat, now, sure.”
— from The Blue and the Gray; Or, The Civil War as Seen by a Boy A Story of Patriotism and Adventure in Our War for the Union by Annie Randall White

Sir Patrick received next day, with gratified surprise, the explicit declaration of his friend's unbounded, and, at length, undisguised, attachment for Marion, which he had already, in some degree, suspected, though so much accustomed to Captain De Crespigny's being in jest, that he could scarcely believe now that he was in earnest, while listening to the vehement expressions of his attachment, and promising, nevertheless, to enlist himself in the cause, with all the zeal and all the interest he could command.
— from Modern Flirtations: A Novel by Catherine Sinclair

"Ask him about getting something to eat," said Sandy.
— from The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon by John Henry Goldfrap

"Then by Gox," said the excited mate, "Ye'ar the beggar I've been luckin' for these last few neights!"
— from The Shellback's Progress In the Nineteenth Century by Runciman, Walter Runciman, Baron

On my theory these several relations throughout time and space are intelligible; for whether we look to the forms of life which have changed during successive ages within the same quarter of the world, or to those which have changed after having migrated into distant quarters, in both cases the forms within each class have been connected by the same bond of ordinary generation; and the more nearly any two forms are related in blood, the nearer they will generally stand to each other in time and space; in both cases the laws of variation have been the same, and modifications have been accumulated by the same power of natural selection.
— from On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (2nd edition) by Charles Darwin