So Moreau for three months, at Kehl, withstood all the efforts of the Archduke Charles; while if Strasbourg had not been there upon the opposite bank his camp would easily have been turned by a passage of the Rhine.
— from The Art of War by Jomini, Antoine Henri, baron de

When Corporal Trim had brought his two mortars to bear, he was delighted with his handy-work above measure; and knowing what a pleasure it would be to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying them directly into his parlour.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

I only wish we may all keep well and be together, nothing else.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

C H A P. XV W HEN Corporal Trim had brought his two mortars to bear, he was delighted with his handy-work above measure; and knowing what a pleasure it would be to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying them directly into his parlour.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

The most distinguished men hence learned to consider cutting each other's throats a duty; at length men massacred their fellow-creatures by thousands without so much as knowing why, and committed more murders in a single day's fighting, and more violent outrages in the sack of a single town, than were committed in the state of nature during whole ages over the whole earth.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Mother always knows what a body means.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

It was not one man, it was not a few men, it was France, France entire, France victorious and intoxicated with her victory, who seemed to be coming to herself, and who put into practice, before the eyes of the whole world, these grave words of Guillaume du Vair after the day of the Barricades:— “It is easy for those who are accustomed to skim the favors of the great, and to spring, like a bird from bough to bough, from an afflicted fortune to a flourishing one, to show themselves harsh towards their Prince in his adversity; but as for me, the fortune of my Kings and especially of my afflicted Kings, will always be venerable to me.”
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Nor, though it wake thy sorrow, deem My verse intrudes on this sad theme; For sacred was the pen that wrote, “Thy father’s friend forget thou not:” And grateful title may I plead, For many a kindly word and deed, To bring my tribute to his grave:— ’Tis little—but ’tis all I have.
— from Marmion: A Tale Of Flodden Field by Walter Scott

The minx had been to see me one day, as I sat up in my bed, convalescent; she was in such high spirits, and so gracious and kind to me, that my heart poured over with joy and gladness, and I had even for my poor mother a kind word and a kiss that morning.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

But punch abounded everywhere, and the bibulous found Washington a rosy place, where jocund mirth and joyful recklessness went arm in arm to flout vile melancholy, and kick, with ardent fervor, dull care out of the window.
— from Perley's Reminiscences, v. 1-2 of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis by Benjamin Perley Poore

Mort and kinshen , wife and child.
— from A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the Gipsy Language by Walter Simson

I do not so much as know what all Calvin’s doctrines are, or whether I should subscribe to them myself.
— from Model Women by William Anderson

This Second Sight has been often pretended to in Our Regions , and some Famous Old Wives have told us, they can see Death , the Soul , Futurity , and the Neighbourhood of them, in the Countenance: By this wonderful Art , these good People unfold strange Mysteries, as under some Irrecoverable Disease, to foretell Death ; under Hypocondriack Melancholy, to presage Trouble of Mind ; in pining Youth, to predict Contagious Love ; and an Hundred other Infallibilities, which never fail to be true as soon as ever they come to pass , and are all grounded upon the same Infallibility, by which a Shepherd may always know when any one of his Sheep is Rotten , viz. when he shakes himself to pieces .
— from The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon by Daniel Defoe

Donelson and Shiloh and Vicksburg; Nashville, and Murfreesboro, and Kenesaw; Winchester and South Mountain and Antietam; Gettysburg and the Wilderness and Appomatox—these and five hundred more.
— from The Army Mule, and Other War Sketches by Henry A. (Henry Anson) Castle

No, she could never let Miss Amesbury know what a cheat she was.
— from The Camp Fire Girls at Camp Keewaydin; Or, Paddles Down by Hildegard G. Frey

Man had ever been a selfish, conceited, cowardly tyrant from the day in which our father Adam disgraced his sex by taking without question the forbidden fruit; and, after eating it, crying with selfish, pusillanimous cowardice: "The woman thou gavest to be with me gave me of the tree and I did eat," and he has always sought to make and keep woman an inferior, dependent, submissive slave.
— from The Jericho Road by W. Bion Adkins

Soon after the battle of Manassas, Arch Kendricks was advised that Sam had suffered a severe wound in the engagement.
— from Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 by United States. Work Projects Administration