The vigilance of government appears not to have neglected any of the precautions which might alleviate the sense of so dreadful a calamity.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

And we may liken the receiving principle to a mother, and the source or spring to a father, and the intermediate nature to a child; and may remark further, that if the model is to take every variety of form, then the matter in which the model is fashioned will not be duly prepared, unless it is formless, and free from the impress of any of those shapes which it is hereafter to receive from without.
— from Timaeus by Plato

The next thing is this cursed trouble my brother Tom is likely to put us to by his death, forcing us to law with his creditors, among others Dr. Tom Pepys, and that with some shame as trouble, and the last how to know in what manner as to saving or spending my father lives, lest they should run me in debt as one of my uncle’s executors, and I never the wiser nor better for it.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Thus hunger may oft be considered as the primary inclination of the soul, and the desire of approaching the meat as the secondary one; since it is absolutely necessary to the satisfying that appetite.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

Farewell to music, and the sound of song; to the marriage of instruments, where the concord of soft and harsh unites in sweet harmony, and gives wings to the panting listeners, whereby to climb heaven, and learn the hidden pleasures of the eternals!—Farewell to the well-trod stage; a truer tragedy is enacted on the world's ample scene, that puts to shame mimic grief: to high-bred comedy, and the low buffoon, farewell!—Man may laugh no more.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Flushes of heat went over me, and then spasms of shuddering.
— from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

By the first of August, we finished curing all our hides, stored them away, cleaned out our vats, (in which latter work we spent two days, up to our knees in mud and the sediments of six months' hide-curing, in a stench which would drive a donkey from his breakfast,) and got in readiness for the arrival of the ship, and had another leisure interval of three or four weeks; which I spent, as usual, in reading, writing, studying, making and mending my clothes, and getting my wardrobe in complete readiness, in case I should go on board the ship; and in fishing, ranging the woods with the dogs, and in occasional visits to the presidio and mission.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

But tell me, at the season of sweet sighs What sign made love, and what the means he chose To strip your dubious longings of disguise?’
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Something is before [Pg 192] us; we do our best to tell what it is, but in spite of our good will we may go astray, and give a description more applicable to some other sort of thing.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

" "To my apprehension, the subject of slavery involves interests of greater moment to our welfare as a republic, and demands a more prudent and minute investigation than any other which has come before the American people since the Revolutionary struggle—than all others which now occupy their attention.
— from William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist by Archibald Henry Grimké

"The donor," was the answer, "is Mr. Andrew Theophilus Smith," or some such unlikely pair of baptismals.
— from A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I by Augustus De Morgan

He was talked of by gaitered farmers at sheep-fairs, by teamsters at cross-roads, by maidens and their sweethearts on Sundays.
— from Rest Harrow: A Comedy of Resolution by Maurice Hewlett

The later progress in English church music is identified with the forward movement in all European music which began with the symphonies of Beethoven, the operas of Weber and the French masters, and the songs of Schubert, and which was continued in Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and the still more recent national schools.
— from Music in the History of the Western Church With an Introduction on Religious Music Among Primitive and Ancient Peoples by Edward Dickinson

BRAMANTE (DONATO) 1444-1514 Bramante was born at Urbino, but executed all his early work in Milan, producing the church of S. Maria delle Grazie, the Ospedale Maggiore, and the sacristy of San Satiro, which he not only built, but decorated internally.
— from Italian Villas and Their Gardens by Edith Wharton

The enemy airplanes which flew over Nancy were vigorously chased, and less than a month later the framework of a good dozen of them, arranged in an orderly manner around the statue of Stanislas Leczinski, reassured the population and served as an interesting spectacle for the visitor who could no longer have the pleasure of admiring, behind Lamour's gates, the two monumental fountains consecrated to Neptune and Amphitrite, by Guibal, and which were then covered by coarse sacks of earth.
— from Georges Guynemer: Knight of the Air by Henry Bordeaux

So anxious were they, and so nervous over their unusual experience that it seemed as if sleep would never come to close their eyes, as they lay once more in their bed at the Eagles' Nest; and they were astonished to find themselves waking up the next morning at the sound of someone knocking at their door.
— from Tabitha's Vacation by Ruth Brown MacArthur

She felt like a martyr at the stake; only she had no vision to bear her company.
— from Manslaughter by Alice Duer Miller

True types of the scientific worker are to be found in Michael Faraday and the elder Agassiz, who was "too busy to make money"; and the student of science who can not to some extent work in the spirit of these men may as well recognize that it is not scientific truth he is after but money.
— from Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899 Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899 by Various