,” said Louis XI., “with the two companies of my unattached troops and one discharge of a serpentine, short work is made of a populace of louts.”
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

For they do not admit of the display of genius, nor, indeed, is mine one of the highest order; they admit of no excursions, nor orations, nor discussions, nor of any wonderful adventures, nor any variety of transactions, nor, from the barrenness of the matter, of anything particularly pleasant in the narration, or agreeable to the reader.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

The Mysteries of Adonis, principally celebrated in Phoenicia and Syria.
— from The Symbolism of Freemasonry Illustrating and Explaining Its Science and Philosophy, Its Legends, Myths and Symbols by Albert Gallatin Mackey

Her mouth and nails were very red, while on her head she wore a large hat of palm leaves in the manner of a parasol, 315 with a crown about it of the same leaves, like the tiara of the pope; and she never goes any place without such a one.
— from The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century by Antonio Pigafetta

In 1708 we find mention of a powerful expedition by the Cherokee, Creeks, and Catawba against the Choctaw living about Mobile bay.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

But if thou shalt say I am meroz, or a part, thou dost not yet love men from thy heart.
— from Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

The story of the manner in which the early German settlers in Cracow, Galicia, were Polonized mainly under the influence of the Polish nobility, is all the more interesting when it is contrasted with the German colonists in the Siebenbürgen, which have remained strongholds of the German language and culture in the midst of a population of Roumanian peasants for nearly eight hundred years.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. (Ernest Watson) Burgess

All the way I did my best to cheer her, for I knew only too well the fatal effects of melancholy on a pregnant woman, especially in such a delicate girl as Charlotte.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

She threw herself into my arms, and hugged me close to her heaving bosom, kissed me tenderly, and hoped she had relieved me of all pain.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

The Rue Veuve Saint Roch was thronged with a mass of affrighted passers-by, who came from the Boulevards flying rather than walking.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

In this gas lighter the inflammation is produced by a small spark, but this latter, instead of being obtained by means of a pile, which, after a certain length of time, has to be mounted anew or entirely renewed, is secured by borrowing the energy produced by the operator pressing upon a button.
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 467, December 13, 1884 by Various

One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence.
— from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The order was obeyed, but they had not gone more than half a mile, when a battery, mounted on a point which ran for some distance out into the river, opened on the steamer.
— from Frank on the Lower Mississippi by Harry Castlemon

"Oh that her Majesty knew," he cried, "how easy a match now she hath with the King of Spain, and what millions of aficted people she hath relieved in these, countries.
— from PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

In the midst of a painful silence he stood a long while looking at her.
— from The Shadow of the Cathedral by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

" Then, seeming to return into herself, her gaze wandered again to the sky, and she murmured, "The mother of a prophet, the mother of a prophet!"
— from The Mormon Prophet by L. (Lily) Dougall

“What in the worl’ ken you do, Cove Mills, ole an’ puny as you is, an’ got the rheumatiz all the time, too?”
— from The Burial of the Guns by Thomas Nelson Page

At the temperature of -52.2°, Mr. Kendall froze some mercury in the mould of a pistol-bullet, and fired it against a door at the distance of six paces.
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 12, No. 341, November 15, 1828 by Various

"Is that much of a place?"
— from Lord Loveland Discovers America by A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson