The Prince of Morocco, as brave as he was black, was among the first to submit to this test.
— from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

There must ’a’ been an angel there.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The princess Nerovens de Morganore was missing, and two of her ladies in waiting: namely, Miss Angela Bohun, and the Demoiselle Elaine Courtemains, the former of these two being a young black sow with a white star in her forehead, and the latter a brown one with thin legs and a slight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side—a couple of the tryingest blisters to drive that I ever saw.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Proceeding then in that reasoning, wherein we have advanced three steps; that chance is merely the negation of a cause, and produces a total indifference in the mind; that one negation of a cause and one total indifference can never be superior or inferior to another; and that there must always be a mixture of causes among the chances, in order to be the foundation of any reasoning: We are next to consider what effect a superior combination of chances can have upon the mind, and after what manner it influences our judgment and opinion.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

To them must also be attributed the illiberal sneers at the Greeks, the furious party spirit, the contempt for the arts of peace, the love of war for its own sake, the ungenerous exultation over the vanquished, which the reader will sometimes observe.
— from Lays of Ancient Rome by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron

If this therefore be absurd in fact and reality, it must also be absurd in idea; since nothing of which we can form a clear and distinct idea is absurd and impossible.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

But Hyrcanus having taken the high priesthood that had been his father's before, and in the first place propitiated God by sacrifices, he then made an expedition against Ptolemy; and when he made his attacks upon the place, in other points he was too hard for him, but was rendered weaker than he, by the commiseration he had for his mother and brethren, and by that only; for Ptolemy brought them upon the wall, and tormented them in the sight of all, and threatened that he would throw them down headlong, unless Hyrcanus would leave off the siege.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

“Many new men are bothered at first by the fact that we Lani are naked, but they adjust quickly.
— from The Lani People by Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin) Bone

Nay, every race on earth of men, and beasts, And ocean-folk, and flocks, and painted birds, Rush to the raging fire: love sways them all.
— from The Georgics by Virgil

The two hostile armies still lay encamped and watching each other in the positions before mentioned, at Bloomhill and M'Cord's ferry; but about the beginning of September, Gen. Greene, for the want of boats, marched up the Wateree and crossed it not far below Camden,* and marching down through the fork between the two rivers, passed the Congaree at Howell's ferry and encamped at Motte's plantation, on a direct route to meet the enemy, who had been encamped but a short distance below him.
— from A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion and a History of His Brigade by William Dobein James

We have made no startling discovery on this our first night together by the badger "set," but probably we have made a better acquaintance with badgers in this hour than we could have gained in any museum of natural history, with the assistance of the most erudite Fellow of the Zoological Society.
— from The Badger: A Monograph by Pease, Alfred E. (Alfred Edward), Sir

He is no longer a young man, and beyond a certain military erectness and precision in his movements there is nothing to mark him the great soldier he has shown himself to be.
— from Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front by Mary Roberts Rinehart

He received me very hospitably, ordered a lithe black-eyed little girl of ten years not to go to the Iglesia until El Capitan had made a breakfast, and pointing to a bedstead in the sala, upon which was tightly stretched a side of dressed leather, desired me to repose until he could procure horses.
— from Los Gringos Or, An Inside View of Mexico and California, with Wanderings in Peru, Chili, and Polynesia by H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

These feminine subtleties of motive are beyond any but the finest natures in the other sex, and perhaps all that Jeff perceived was the note of insincerity in her words.
— from The Landlord at Lion's Head — Complete by William Dean Howells

The mule stared in toward him, and Cyril made a bull, as a sudden thought flashed through his mind.
— from Real Gold: A Story of Adventure by George Manville Fenn

[5] Above the congregated heaps of mud and brick are seen the white domes of monuments and temples of later construction, like the ghosts of decayed Eastern grandeur peering out on the surrounding desolation.
— from Military Service and Adventures in the Far East: Vol. 1 (of 2) Including Sketches of the Campaigns Against the Afghans in 1839, and the Sikhs in 1845-6. by Daniel Henry MacKinnon

Her eyes were large, blue and expressive, while her complexion, clear as alabaster, was rendered more attractive by a rosy hue.
— from Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound by Emily Inez Denny

Other people lived in the big house also, a father, a mother, a butler, a French maid, and a host of other servants.
— from A Little Book for Christmas by Cyrus Townsend Brady

[75] Elsewhere there is almost a savage stoicism; he cries that he is attacked not by one but by many, almost by all, and the reason is that he hates the people, cares not for the multitude, adores one thing only:—”That through which he in subjection is free, in pain content, in necessity rich, in death living, and through which he envies not those who in freedom are slaves, in pleasure pained, in riches poor, in life dead, because in the body they have a chain that binds them, in the spirit an inferno that depresses them, in the soul error that weakens them, and in the mind lethargy that slays, etc.”
— from Giordano Bruno by J. Lewis (James Lewis) McIntyre