This domestic animosity was refined into a generous resolution of seeking a successor, not in his family, but in the republic; and the artful Sophia recommended Tiberius, his faithful captain of the guards, whose virtues and fortune the emperor might cherish as the fruit of his judicious choice.
— 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

In a case like this, moral certainty assumes the force of scientific certainty.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe.
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Feng family are, besides, people of not much consequence, and (the fuss made by them) being simply for money, they too will, when they have got the cash in hand, have nothing more to say.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and stuffed up the door-crack again.
— from My Antonia by Willa Cather

And then with Mr. Creed and two friends of his (my late landlord Jones’ son one of them), to an ordinary to dinner, and then Creed and I to Whitefriars’ to the Play-house, and saw “The Mad Lover,” the first time I ever saw it acted, which I like pretty well, and home.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and vistas again to peace restored, To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the South and the North, To the leaven'd soil of the general Western world to attest my songs, To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi, To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods, To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading wide, To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air; And responding they answer all, (but not in words,) The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely, The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son, The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end, But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so.
— from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass

But according to my method of advising just and profitable things, I say that you will do your consciences more right to set me at liberty, unless you see further into my cause than I do; and, judging according to my past actions, both public and private, according to my intentions, and according to the profit that so many of our citizens, both young and old, daily extract from my conversation, and the fruit that you all reap from me, you cannot more duly acquit yourselves towards my merit than in ordering that, my poverty considered, I should be maintained at the Prytanaeum, at the public expense, a thing that I have often known you, with less reason, grant to others.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Next morning came a telegram from Stella in Paris: join me here rather quickly.
— from Sinister Street, vol. 2 by Compton MacKenzie

They were about five feet high, contained a bed and a chair apiece, and were merely curtained at the foot.
— from Fathers of Men by E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

Far from the eye of the mighty Cardinal and the feeble mind of Louis the Just, they swaggered through life, preaching the divine mission of the Church to the natives one hour, drinking deeply, or duelling in terrible earnest, the next.
— from The Plowshare and the Sword: A Tale of Old Quebec by John Trevena

They are contemptuous at the idea of a flower being intended for the selfish pleasure of man and not for its own purposes, and they point to plants of beauty that “blush unseen” where man cannot admire them, forgetting, however, that man has seen them, or he would not know of their existence.
— from The English Flower Garden with illustrative notes by Henry Arthur Bright

Some one had to pay for it, the silks and georgettes and white flannels, furs and strings of pearls and gold trinkets, the good food, the motor cars, and the fun.
— from Poor Man's Rock by Bertrand W. Sinclair

My clothes are too fine."
— from The Curious Book of Birds by Abbie Farwell Brown

This," and he tapped the little package, "would prove everything; marked cards are the finest of evidence.
— from The Princess Galva: A Romance by David Whitelaw

When morning came and the family had eaten breakfast, Joe's busy mother said nothing about last evening, and he rushed out to play without worrying his head about yesterday's dust; for this was vacation time and Joe knew that the end of it would soon come, and back to school he must go.
— from Wenonah's Stories for Children by Warren Proctor

Kind friends are won by her courage, her brother achieves manly character, and the family are finally re-established on the road to prosperity: all better, happier, and more to each other than had selfishness not been so well met and overcome by "An Honor Girl."
— from Ruth Erskine's Son by Pansy