The licentious commerce of the sexes may be tolerated as an impulse of nature, or forbidden as a source of disorder and corruption; but the fame, the fortunes, the family of the husband, are seriously injured by the adultery of the wife.
— 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

Now that we had actually started, I began to believe in the reality of the undertaking!
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

For all his treasure was where he had been taught to hide and store it by Him who had also foretold that these calamities would happen in the world.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

In the place of so rude a bulwark, the emperor Probus constructed a stone wall of a considerable height, and strengthened it by towers at convenient distances.
— 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 two heads of the families concerted their measures, and so ordered their matters as that when the examiner was in the neighbourhood they appeared generally at a time, and answered, that is, lied, for one another, or got some of the neighbourhood to say they were all in health—and perhaps knew no better—till, death making it impossible to keep it any longer as a secret, the dead-carts were called in the night to both the houses, and so it became public.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

When he came home he found his wife Sigrid much irritated; and she reckoned up all the sorrow inflicted on her, as she insisted, by King Olaf.
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

I would not here be understood to say, that weakness betraying very bad health has any share in beauty; but the ill effect of this is not because it is weakness, but because the ill state of health, which produces such weakness, alters the other conditions of beauty; the parts in such a case collapse, the bright color, the lumen purpureum juventæ is gone, and the fine variation is lost in wrinkles, sudden breaks, and right lines.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

Hither, hither, from thy home, Airy sprite, I bid thee come!
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

He arranged his records on the table before him, and said— “I beg the indulgence of the court while I make a few remarks in explanation of some evidence which I am about to introduce, and which I shall presently ask to be allowed to verify under oath on the witness stand.
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

His wife heard him, and shook in bed from excitement at the crisis which approached.
— from The Price of Love by Arnold Bennett

That man must be evil before he can be good; dying, before deathless; material, before spiritual; sick and a sinner in order to be healed and saved, is but
— from Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 by Mary Baker Eddy

The patient gingerly took his arm from its support, and after a minute or two spent in experimenting with it, moved it freely up behind his head and swung it behind his back in a sweeping motion.
— from Zone Therapy; Or, Relieving Pain at Home by Edwin F. (Edwin Frederick) Bowers

In the midst of this acting, she caught Dinah's stern, reproachful eye fixed upon her, and she instantly became still.
— from Delusion; or, The Witch of New England by Eliza Buckminster Lee

Seeing the city in this condition, the shops shut, and all things in trouble, I went home and sat, it being office day, till noon.
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1661 N.S. by Samuel Pepys

[120] The following paragraph from an Irish journal exhibits strikingly the amount of political freedom exercised at the scene of these evictions:— "Lord Erne held his annual show in Ballindreat, on Monday, the 25th ult, and after having delivered himself much as usual in regard to agricultural matters, he proceeded to lecture the assembled tenants on the necessity of implicit obedience to those who were placed over them, in reference not only to practical agriculture, but the elective franchise.
— from The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished by Henry Charles Carey

It was “Miss Harding, this; darling Miss Harding, that; Miss Harding, dear, the other,” while I undid their mufflers, and smoothed their hair, and smiled in benevolent interest.
— from The Lady of the Basement Flat by Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.

Let me stay here a space, I beg, and watch the shooting.
— from The Story of Rolf and the Viking's Bow by Allen French