1 I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To match the three tall spires; 2 and there I shaped The city's ancient legend into this: Not only we, the latest seed of Time, New men, that in the flying of a wheel Cry down the past, not only we, that prate Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well, And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she Did more, and underwent, and overcame, The woman of a thousand summers back, Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled In Coventry: for when he laid a tax Upon his town, and all the mothers brought Their children, clamouring, "If we pay, we starve!"
— from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

Then reflect, Cebes: of all which has been said is not this the conclusion?—that the soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intellectual, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and that the body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintellectual, and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable.
— from Phaedo by Plato

The Padre made the best of his way home, but wisely abstained from narrating the facts mentioned above until after the discovery of gold, when the whole of this veracious incident was related, with the assertion of the Padre that the secret which was thus mysteriously snatched from his possession was nothing more than the discovery of gold, years since, by the runaway sailors from the expedition of Sir Francis Drake.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers by Bret Harte

I am convinced that all mankind are upon an equal footing; and to give you an unquestionable proof, Madam, that I am in earnest, here is a very sensible, civil, well-behaved fellow-citizen, your footman; I desire that he may be allowed to sit down and dine with us."
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

Two types of men seldom do: dull men are usually afraid of her cleverness and intellectual men are usually afraid of her beauty.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

[Greek: Echthros gar moi keinos, homôs Aïdao pylêsin, / Hos ch' heteron men keuthei eni phresin, allo de bazei]—Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is he who conceals one thing in his mind and utters another.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

In five minutes the eleven and half a dozen of the Wellesburn and Marylebone men got partners somehow or another, and a merry country-dance was going on, to which every one flocked, and new couples joined in every minute, till there were a hundred of them going down the middle and up again; and the long line of school buildings looked gravely down on them, every window glowing with the last rays of the western sun; and the rooks clanged about in the tops of the old elms, greatly excited, and resolved on having their country-dance too; and the great flag flapped lazily in the gentle western breeze.
— from Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes

So that they are, as they swear, in absolute ignorance how this fire should come; which is a strange thing, that so horrid an effect should have so mean and uncertain a beginning.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

“Let one imagine a similar letter,” says Loménie, “suddenly falling from six hundred miles away, upon a man forty-six years of age, the busiest man of France and Navarre, who had need to confer every morning with the Ministers, who had forty ships on the seas, who pleaded against the comedians, who was preparing a pamphlet against the English Government, who was busy founding a bank, who dreamed of editing Voltaire; surely this man would throw into the waste basket the sorrows of a young and unknown girl.
— from Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, Vol. 2 by Elizabeth Sarah Kite

He came out of his monastery, all unsuspecting, and the [38] people carried him off by force to Poitiers, and he had to consent to be consecrated Bishop.
— from Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light by Vera C. (Vera Charlesworth) Barclay

With all her sense and courage, she was as yet in many things a perfect child, yielding as easily as a child might do to the first ray of sunshine that brightened on her path, and accepting the happiness of the present moment as unrestrainedly as if never even suspecting the shadows that were lurking in her future.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868 by Various

Then we, the Federal Government, broke the faith; we committed the first act of hostility; and from this first act of hostility arose all those acts to which reference is made in the message as unprovoked aggressions—the seizing of forts elsewhere.
— from The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 1 by Jefferson Davis

Giving my horse therefore liberty to go where he pleased, and hanging up my arms upon a tree near my cave, I took possession of this solitary mansion, with a gloomy kind of satisfaction, and devoted all my hours to the contemplation of my misfortunes.
— from The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella, v. 1-2 by Charlotte Lennox

I knew afterward that it was a man whom I had seen, a man whom you yourself had introduced into the house; but at the instant I thought it a phantom of my forgotten past sent to shock and destroy me; and, struck speechless with the horror of it, I lost that opportunity of mutual explanation which might have saved me an unnecessary and cruel experience.
— from The Mayor's Wife by Anna Katharine Green

I was out in the act of posting guards a short distance from the dwellings, when two men assailed us, armed with guns and pistols; and supposing it against our principles to make any defense, they attacked the guards.
— from History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Volume 1 Period 1. History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet by Smith, Joseph, Jr.

During all these operations the enemy had a signal-station on Three Top Mountain, almost overhanging Strasburg, from which every movement made by our troops could be plainly seen; therefore, early on the morning of the 17th he became aware of the fact that we were retiring down the valley, and at once made after us, and about sundown drove Torbert out of Winchester, he having been left there-with Wilson and Lowell, and the Jersey brigade of the Sixth Corps, to develop the character of the enemy's pursuit.
— from Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, General, United States Army — Volume 1 by Philip Henry Sheridan

[Pg 56] a scene; the knights and dames with whom it was peopled, actors; and its court, its manners, and usages, a facility of transferring thither whatever real events might suit his design.
— from The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries by Thomas Keightley