And to avoid this difficulty and strangeness, that can in truth hardly lodge in our imagination, though they concluded that we were in no sort capable of knowledge, and that truth is engulfed in so profound an abyss as is not to be penetrated by human sight; yet they acknowledged some things to be more likely than others, and received into their judgment this faculty, that they had a power to incline to one appearance more than another, they allowed him this propension, interdicting all resolution.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

I do not know any thing that I ever thought so very distasteful as the Affectation which is recorded of Cæsar, to wit, that he would dictate to three several Writers at the same time.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

The organ, as the instrument appropriate to the church, invariably accompanies the singing, so that in all Mozart's church compositions the bass part is carefully figured, sometimes by his father's hand; it is sometimes, but rarely, employed obbligato, as in the Benedictus (259 K.), and then treated in easy style.
— from Life of Mozart, Vol. 1 (of 3) by Otto Jahn

Kitchen assistant, Tomas (Thomas in English), a Fiji man, very tall and handsome, moving like a marionette with sudden bounds, and rolling his eyes with sudden effort.—Washerwoman and precentor, Helen, Tomas’s wife.
— from Vailima Letters Being Correspondence Addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, November 1890-October 1894 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Little as is known about them, there is every reason to believe that the art of war formed no exception to the general rudeness and ignorance of the age.
— from Battles of English History by H. B. (Hereford Brooke) George

Nothing can now be known; and though the immense extent of the baths may be traced, far from hence, by the wide-spreading ruins, it is equally difficult and unprofitable to explore them any further.”
— from Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 2 of 2) With General and Particular Accounts of Their Rise, Fall, and Present Condition by Charles Bucke

Nothing could exceed the kindness and trustfulness the Indians exhibited towards their visitors.
— from The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner — Volume 3 by Charles Dudley Warner