This execution was seen by many of the citizens, yet would not one of them discover the doers of it, till upon Herod's making a strict scrutiny after them, by bitter and severe tortures, certain women that were tortured confessed what they had seen done; the authors of which fact were so terribly punished by the king, that their entire families were destroyed for this their rash attempt; yet did not the obstinacy of the people, and that undaunted constancy they showed in the defense of their laws, make Herod any easier to them, but he still strengthened himself after a more secure manner, and resolved to encompass the multitude every way, lest such innovations should end in an open rebellion.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

From them I go This uncouth errand sole, and one for all Myself expose, with lonely steps to tread Th' unfounded Deep, and through the void immense To search, with wandering quest, a place foretold Should be—and, by concurring signs, ere now Created vast and round—a place of bliss In the purlieus of Heaven; and therein placed A race of upstart creatures, to supply Perhaps our vacant room, though more removed, Lest Heaven, surcharged with potent multitude, Might hap to move new broils.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton

Circumstanced as I was, my existence was little short of intolerable, for, besides the fearful suspicions which attached to my husband, I plainly perceived that if Lord Glenfallen were not relieved, and that speedily, insanity must supervene.
— from Two Ghostly Mysteries A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and the Murdered Cousin by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

And yet, after this very damaging admission, in the same page he winds up, "Ah, if the world ever comes to know who was the mighty entity, who laboured sixty years under that quivering mask of flesh, it will repent its cruel treatment of H. P. B., and be amazed at the depth of its ignorance."
— from The Wanderings of a Spiritualist by Arthur Conan Doyle

She addressed women audiences in various parts of the city, and had even gone on a few flying motor excursions with leading suffragists, speaking to the people in villages and at country schoolhouses.
— from The Precipice: A Novel by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

At one time my escape with life served to console me for all I endured; at another, my bondage excited my whole wrath.
— from Arthur O'Leary: His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands by Charles James Lever

In the above mentioned engagement we lost several brave officers and men, chief among whom was the colonel of the regiment, of whom it may not be inappropriate here to remark that a braver or more efficient officer in line of his peculiar duties, the army of the Union does not contain.
— from The 125th Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry: Attention Batallion! by Robert M. Rogers

which has blessed us with your society during a few short weeks, has spared the feelings of more distant relatives, who may expect with less solicitude than would be a father or a mother's portion.
— from Tales of My Time, Vol. 2 (of 3) Who Is She? [concluded]; The Young Reformers by William Pitt Scargill

The great moral effect was lost sight of, and it seemed from some arguments that Christianity did not require the Bible to be taught to the poor slave unless profit followed.
— from Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama by Walter L. (Walter Lynwood) Fleming

Dawn overtook us on the broad flat part of the glacier, the first [141] beams of the sun falling on the summit of Mount Everest, which lay straight in front of us, and changing the colour of the snow gradually from pink to orange, all the time with a background of deep purple sky, every detail showing up sharp and clear in the frosty air.
— from Mount Everest, the Reconnaissance, 1921 by A. F. R. (Alexander Frederick Richmond) Wollaston

My ear was long since accustomed to the sad sounds of the sickbeds; the cries of suffering, and the low moanings of misery had ceased to move me; even the wild and frantic ravings of the wounded man near broke not in upon my musings, and I lived like one immured within a solitary dungeon.
— from Arthur O'Leary: His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands by Charles James Lever

I If she but breathe her wild breath in my face, If she but shake her wild hair past mine eyes, When life sits tearless in grief’s sunless chamber, Then through the vasts of separating space, Robed on with fire of hope my soul shall rise And claim her.
— from The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 5 (of 5) Poems of meditation and of forest and field by Madison Julius Cawein