During my short absence, my charming C—— C—— had thrown herself dressed on the bed, but I told her that the god of love disapproved of unnecessary veils, and in less than a minute I made of her a new Eve, beautiful in her nakedness as if she had just come out of the hands of the Supreme Artist.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

For he told him he was afraid lest God should appear to him again, and he should go away into another place; and that when the king should send him for Elijah, and he should miss of him, and not be able to find him any where upon earth, he should be put to death.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

My duty to my operatives has a narrow limit,—the pay-hour on Saturday night.
— from Life in the Iron-Mills; Or, The Korl Woman by Rebecca Harding Davis

My letters of recommendation will be in my own handwriting, and nobody need know where you are going.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

And if the causes of English rebellions be searched out, they shall be found in effect to be these twain, ambition and covetousness; of which the first reigneth in the minds of high and noble personages, or of such others as seek to be gracious and popular, and have robbed the hearts of the multitude; whereas in London, if any where in the world, honos vere onus est , and every man rather shunneth than seeketh the mayoralty, which is the best mark amongst them; neither hath there been any strong faction, nor any man more popular than the rest, forasmuch as the government is by a pattern, as it were, and always the same, how often soever they change their magistrate.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

] he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must tremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature having reserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our reason and the stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness; he turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if not with desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice: “Humani a se nihil alienum putet.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

The same will account for his manner of heaping a number of comparisons together in one breath, when his fancy suggested to him at once so many various and correspondent images.
— from The Iliad by Homer

A gold belt was the ensign which distinguished the office of the counts and dukes; and besides their pay, they received a liberal allowance sufficient to maintain one hundred and ninety servants, and one hundred and fifty-eight horses.
— 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

Did you not tell me one hundred and nine francs?”
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

After this young Bayard was given into the special charge of the lord of Ligny, who was greatly pleased and felt sure that he would make of him a noble knight.
— from Bayard: the Good Knight Without Fear and Without Reproach by Christopher Hare

You make of him a nonentity.
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, December 1883 by Chautauqua Institution

And yet my glance, too much opprest, Had almost need of such a rest.
— from The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 4 by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

Judge Pepperleigh spoke and said that there was no need to dwell on the victory that they had achieved, because it was history; there was no occasion to speak of what part he himself had played, within the limits of his official position, because what he had done was henceforth a matter of history; and Nivens, the lawyer, said that he would only say just a few words, because anything that he might have done was now history; later generations, he said, might read it but it was not for him to speak of it, because it belonged now to the history of the country.
— from Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock

‘Being desired by Mr David Gregorie, Mathematics Professor of the Colledge in Edinburgh to testifie my knowledge of him, and having known him by his printed Mathematical performances, and by discoursing with travellers from Scotland, and of late by conversing with him, I do account him one of the most able and judicious Mathematicians of his age now living.
— from The Academic Gregories by Agnes Grainger Stewart

They were so mysterious, often heard and never seen; so high up, so far off, so full of such a deep strong melody, that he regarded them with a species of awe; and sometimes when he looked up at the dark arched windows in the tower, he half expected to be beckoned to by something which was not a Bell, and yet was what he had heard so often sounding in the Chimes.
— from The Chimes A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year out and a New Year In by Charles Dickens

We have seen, that the making of Ham a negro, is not in the name, which is one of the constituents, now let us see, if it is in the other constituent, the curse .
— from The Negro: What is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. by Ariel

Some friends of his have arrived in town, and I think they're taking up the most of his attention now.
— from Frank Merriwell's Pursuit; Or, How to Win by Burt L. Standish

"No, it wasn't that, he said, but he had a son who had brought him great sorrow, for he could never make a man of him, and now he must say he had gone clean out of the little wit he had before, and then he went on,— "'For now he has hunted me up to the palace gate with a big birch cudgel, and forced me to ask for the king's daughter to wife.' "'Hold your tongue, my man,' said the king; 'and as for this son of yours, go and ask him to come here indoors to me, and then we will see what to make of him.'
— from Tales from the Fjeld: A Second Series of Popular Tales by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

It was she, Alice asserted, who had had the faith and the courage to take Maud vigorously in hand and make of her a new creature as far as the outward presentment was concerned.
— from The Beauty by Woodrow, Wilson, Mrs.