Atrides, seize not on the beauteous slave; That prize the Greeks by common suffrage gave: Nor thou, Achilles, treat our prince with pride; Let kings be just, and sovereign power preside.
— from The Iliad by Homer

She might come in, they said, or stay out, just as she pleased, provided she kept the door shut.
— from L'Assommoir by Émile Zola

Twelve clerks, representing six Jews and six pagans, present themselves
— from Life on a Mediaeval Barony A Picture of a Typical Feudal Community in the Thirteenth Century by William Stearns Davis

Physically they resemble the Amerindians, and there are many curious resemblances between the prehistoric pottery and so forth of Japan and similar Peruvian products.
— from The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

When the involuntary partnership between mind and matter ceases through death, it is possible, or at least conceivable, that the impalpable soul, admitting that such a thing exists, may survive in some medium where it may be free from material shackles, but, while life endures, the flesh has wants which must be gratified, and which, therefore, take precedence of the yearnings of the soul, just as Saint Paul points out was the case with himself; and herein lies the inexorable conflict between the moral law and the law of competition which favors the strong, and from whence comes all the abominations of selfishness, of violence, of cruelty and crime.
— from The Emancipation of Massachusetts by Brooks Adams

Johnstone and Suffren, Porto Praya, Cape Verde Islands, April 16, 1781, 236 -238. Hughes and Suffren, Coromandel Coast, February 17, 1781, 240 -242.
— from The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

She could not be tortured in view of her advanced age and severe infirmities and, on August 9, 1492, the consulta de fe voted unanimously that, as torture was out of the question, she be sentenced to canonical purgation, at the judgement of the inquisitors when, if she should purge herself, she should abjure publicly as vehemently suspect of heresy and of Judaizing, and should perform penance at the discretion of the tribunal.
— from A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3 by Henry Charles Lea