we have inherited little more than the fame, and the faint echo; if Stesichorus, Anacreon, and Simonides were employed in the noble task of compiling the Iliad and Odyssey, so much must have been done to arrange, to connect, to harmonize, that it is almost incredible that stronger marks of Athenian manufacture should not remain.
— from The Odyssey by Homer

When the dole was ended, laughingly she said, “Master, of a million mouths, is not one unfed?” Laughing, Shiv made answer, “All have had their part, Even he, the little one, hidden ‘neath thy heart.”
— from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

The words bear, bridge, fir, darkness, bog, Raven, snowstorm, tempest, fog, Et cetera ; but nothing showed Her Martin Zadeka in aid, Though the foul vision promise made Of a most mournful episode, And many a day thereafter laid
— from Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] A Romance of Russian Life in Verse by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

* Note: M. de. Tillemont, as an honest writer, explains the difficulties which he felt about the text of Pontius, and concludes by distinctly stating, that without doubt there is some mistake, and that Pontius must have meant only Africa Minor or Carthage; for St. Cyprian, in his 58th (69th) letter addressed to Pupianus, speaks expressly of many bishops his colleagues, qui proscripti sunt, vel apprehensi in carcere et catenis fuerunt; aut qui in exilium relegati, illustri itinere ed
— 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

For I know, in general, that there is such a thing as physic, as jurisprudence: four parts in mathematics, and, roughly, what all these aim and point at; and, peradventure, I yet know farther, what sciences in general pretend unto, in order to the service of our life: but to dive farther than that, and to have cudgelled my brains in the study of Aristotle, the monarch of all modern learning, or particularly addicted myself to any one science, I have never done it; neither is there any one art of which I am able to draw the first lineaments and dead colour; insomuch that there is not a boy of the lowest form in a school, that may not pretend to be wiser than I, who am not able to examine him in his first lesson, which, if I am at any time forced upon, I am necessitated in my own defence, to ask him, unaptly enough, some universal questions, such as may serve to try his natural understanding; a lesson as strange and unknown to him, as his is to me.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

He was the presiding officer, and his rank and duties were analogous to those of the master of a masonic lodge.
— from The Symbolism of Freemasonry Illustrating and Explaining Its Science and Philosophy, Its Legends, Myths and Symbols by Albert Gallatin Mackey

He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy enough; and as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see; but he had about him all the airs and manners of a man.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

"Since my return to England, I have spent all my time in missionary operations among my Jewish brethren in various towns of this realm, and have sought, by the grace of God, to lead them to Jesus Christ, the true Messiah and Redeemer.
— from Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ by Aaron Bernstein

But here, in Japan, it seems to have achieved its success, and deeply sunk into the minds of all men, and permeated their muscles and nerves.
— from Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore

A shoulder band from the handles of the barrow relieves the strain on the hands and, when the load or the road is heavy, men or animals may aid in drawing, or even, when the wind is favorable, it is not unusual to hoist a sail to gain propelling power.
— from Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan by F. H. (Franklin Hiram) King

This is a modification of a method devised by Liebig.
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume II by Richard Vine Tuson

But, as in the mass of conspiracies--and this was especially true of the conspiracies of that age--the acute eye can detect the existence of an inner and outer ring of conspirators, whereof the latter are commonly the dupes of the former, so I took it that here Smith and the woman meditated other and more serious results than those which my lady foresaw; and, thinking less of my lord's safety in the event of a Restoration than of punishing him or obtaining a hold upon him--and more of private revenge than of the Good Cause--had madam for their principal tool.
— from Shrewsbury: A Romance by Stanley John Weyman

We have also seen that the extreme marginal tentacles appear to have no power to transmit an impulse to the adjoining tentacles; yet the little bundle of vessels which enters each marginal tentacle sends off a minute branch to those on both sides, and this I have not observed in any other tentacles; so that the marginal ones are more closely connected together by spiral vessels than are the others, and yet have much less power of communicating a motor impulse to one another.
— from Insectivorous Plants by Charles Darwin

They're very dissimilar, but they've got something like the unifying motive of a monastery, and they're willing to serve and to plod and to be patient.
— from Changing Winds A Novel by St. John G. (St. John Greer) Ervine

They are the golden, easeful, crowning moments of a manner which is always pitched in another key from that of prose; a manner changed and heightened; the Elizabethan style, regnant in most of our dramatic poetry to this day, is mainly the continuation of this manner of Shakspeare’s.
— from Celtic Literature by Matthew Arnold

The savour of wandering in the ocean of deathless life has rid me of all my asking: As the tree is in the seed, so all diseases are in this asking.
— from Songs of Kabir by Kabir

On this passage Mr. Cairnes observes:—"If to look forward to such a state of things as an ideal to be striven for is socialism, I at once acknowledge myself a socialist; but it seems to me that the idea which 'socialism' conveys to most minds is not that of any particular form of society to be realized at a future time when the character of human beings and the conditions of human life are widely different from what they now are, but rather certain modes of action, more especially the employment of the powers of the State for the instant accomplishment of ideal schemes, which is the invariable attribute of all projects generally regarded as socialistic.
— from Contemporary Socialism by John Rae