Claudio, released from prison by the jubilant populace, informs him that the sentence of death for crimes of love is not intended for all times; messengers arrive to announce the unexpected arrival in harbour of the King; it is resolved to march in full masked procession to meet the beloved Prince, and joyously to pay him homage, all being convinced that he will heartily rejoice to see how ill the gloomy puritanism of Germany is suited to his hot-blooded Sicily.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

The armies and fleets of Xerxes, their numbers, the glorious stand made against them, and the unfortunate event of all his mighty preparations, are known to everybody.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he would only spoil men's memories and take away their understandings.
— from Phaedrus by Plato

All M is X; All Z is M; All Z is X. Will any one say that perhaps , we don't know but it might have been so made, as to appear to us that the conclusion was Some Z is not X?
— from Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer by Jesse Henry Jones

This is, in short, to say, that the ability to digest, digested; and the ability to move, moved; and the ability to understand, understood.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

We thought by this we should be eaten by these ugly men, as they appeared to us; and, when soon after we were all put down under the deck again, there was much dread and trembling among us, and nothing but bitter cries to be heard all the night from these apprehensions, insomuch that at last the white people got some old slaves from the land to pacify us.
— from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African Written By Himself by Olaudah Equiano

She had plenty of money, and bought a carriage and engaged a maid, and these arrangements took up her time during the last week she spent with me.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

In the meanwhile, some slight sign passed between Mr. Micawber and Traddles; and Traddles, unobserved except by me, went out. ‘Don’t wait, Micawber,’ said Uriah.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I am constantly wrestling in spirit, that the hearts of all such may be confirmed and strengthened in the faith; that they may be united in love; that they may attain to all the unspeakable wealth which comes from the firm conviction of an understanding mind, may be brought to the perfect knowledge of God’s mystery, which is nothing else than Christ—Christ containing in Himself all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden away.’
— from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A revised text with introductions, notes and dissertations by J. B. (Joseph Barber) Lightfoot

The version she repeated in cumulative form, told to me, ended as follows:— This is the knife with a handle of horn, that killed the cock that crowed in the morn, that wakened the priest all shaven and shorn, that married the man all tattered and torn, unto the maiden all forlorn, that milked the cow with a crumpled horn, that tossed the dog over the barn, that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
— from Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes by Lina Eckenstein

And Gilbert turned his mind's eyes to the darkness on the other side, and many a time, as the unwept tears burned in his brain, he wished that his mother were lying there too, beside his father, dead in the body but alive forever to him in that which is undying in woman; to be cherished still, still honoured; to be loved, and still obeyed in the memory of precept and teaching; to be his mother always, and he to be in thought her child, even until the grey years should be upon him, and the Bridge of Fear in sight.
— from Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford

“We had a long talk in which he recounted his life, that of a young man about town; and the upshot of it was that he promised to come to the communion service on the following morning.
— from Tuscan folk-lore and sketches, together with some other papers by Isabella Mary Anderton

But, near as that ridge looked from their mid-day camping-place, it was not reached until the evening of the fifth day of their march; and then, after toiling up a steep slope for half an hour, the party topped it, and a sudden shout of exultation burst from their throats as, standing in a little glade, they looked out over the tree-tops of the intervening forest and saw first another but much lower ridge, with a mountain valley between it and them, and beyond that ridge, and only some ten miles distant, the white towers and buildings of Panama nestling beside a river which discharged into its harbour, the harbour itself dotted with a few ships, and beyond it again the great, boundless, mystic Southern Sea, at the sight of which George and his crew, like the pious Christian mariners that they were, incontinently fell upon their knees and gave God thanks, vowing at the same time that by His grace they would sail those waters until they had recovered the lost ones of whom they were in search—or had fearfully avenged their death.
— from The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer by Harry Collingwood

This astonishing fact became apparent to him along with another matter even more astonishing, that apparently the Union Hill house had been arranged largely for his benefit, so that he could have the stability of a home atmosphere.
— from Rough-Hewn by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

I know of no abuse of Power and Place more immoral, than when a Scholar uses his Scholarship to libel others before the unlearned, than when a Preacher uses his sacred and elevated standing to make assertions that are taken upon his word, but which are not correct, and of which nothing but the certainty that they were correct could justify the utterance.
— from Unitarianism Defended A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Liverpool by John Hamilton Thom

To-day Gibraltar, to-morrow Malaga; and thence a trip up to Granada, the place, of all others in the world, that she longed to see!
— from The Quiver, 1/1900 by Anonymous

“I will go to Worms,” shouted Luther, “though the devils were combined against me as thick as tiles upon the housetops!”
— from Studies in the Scriptures, Volume 7: The Finished Mystery by C. T. (Charles Taze) Russell

She sent Aunt Medea away, then, at the usual hour, rang for her maid.
— from The Honor of the Name by Emile Gaboriau