A chaplet of oak leaves would thus seem to have been part of the insignia of the old kings of Alba Longa as of their successors the kings of Rome; in both cases it marked the monarch as the human representative of the oak-god.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

Not that I am an advocate for the prevailing fashion of acquiring a perfect knowledge of all languages, arts, and sciences.
— from Lady Susan by Jane Austen

The fox, full of all kinds of arrogance, looked at the cat from head to foot, and for a long time did not know whether he would give any answer or not.
— from Grimms' Fairy Tales by Wilhelm Grimm

As every one knows, or at least as all intelligent people know, the special department in which Gibberne has gained so great and deserved a reputation among physiologists is the action of drugs upon the nervous system.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Deborah had the knack of always looking as if the latest fashion was p. 193
— from Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life; whom nature having furnished as liberally as any other people, with the materials of plenty, i.e. a fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance, what might serve for food, raiment, and delight; yet for want of improving it by labour, have not one hundredth part of the conveniencies we enjoy: and a king of a large and fruitful territory there, feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day-labourer in England.
— from Second Treatise of Government by John Locke

He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little like a king as any man I had ever seen.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

If the girls revisit the hill after marriage and the birth of offspring, they untie the knot on a leaf, and disarrange one of the hearths.
— from Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston

Then Thor became wroth, set the horn to his mouth and drank with all his might and kept on as long as he could, and when he looked into it its contents had indeed visibly diminished, but he gave back the horn and would not drink any more.
— from The Younger Edda; Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson

Or did they keep on a livin' and a livin' and a livin'?
— from Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a Politician by Marietta Holley

When the keepers obeyed as little as before, asserting that he issued the command not of his own free will, but under compulsion, Pompey was irritated and put Tigranes in chains.
— from Dio's Rome, Volume 2 An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus; and Now Presented in English Form. Second Volume Extant Books 36-44 (B.C. 69-44). by Cassius Dio Cocceianus

Wars indeed there shall be in the world, great and grievous, and yet few on this score; rather shall men fight as they have been fighting in France at the bidding of some lord of the manor, or some king, or at last at the bidding of some usurer and forestaller of the market.
— from A Dream of John Ball; and, A King's Lesson by William Morris

The showman grated his teeth, and cursed the piano man to himself; but the fellow sat there like a knot on a log, and seemed to think he was doing first-rate.
— from Sketches New and Old, Part 7. by Mark Twain

This sheathing of ships was not the only innovation we owe to the most scientific seaman of his time, for in his famous ordinances for the voyage many excellent new things are enjoined, including the keeping of a log and journal, which date from this expedition.
— from Round About the North Pole by W. J. (William John) Gordon

Cahill has a strongbox at the stage station, and Stein some kind of a lockup at his store—that's the total for the town.
— from Rebel Spurs by Andre Norton