Kleomedes, we are told, was a man of unusual size and strength, but stupid and half-crazy, who did many deeds of violence, and at last in a boy's school struck and broke in two the column that supported the roof, and brought it down.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

At Athens it is said that the first man who gave money to the judges for his acquittal was Anytus the son of Anthemion, when he was tried for treachery at Pylos towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, a period when men of uncorrupted simplicity and virtue were still to be found in the Forum at Rome.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch

He loved the very quarries of Carrara, those strange grey peaks which even at mid-day convey into any scene from which they are visible something of the solemnity and stillness of evening, sometimes wandering among them month after month, till at last their pale ashen colours seem to have passed into his painting; and on the crown of the head of the David there still remains a morsel of uncut stone, as if by one touch to maintain its connexion with the place from which it was hewn.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

Many idiots are morose, passionate, restless, in a painful state of mind, or utterly stolid, and these never laugh.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

EISNER Manufacturer of U. S. Army and National Guard Uniform The Best Food for The Boy Scouts is Shredded Wheat because it has all the muscle-building, bone-making material in the whole wheat grain prepared in a digestible form, supplying all the strength needed for work or play.
— from Boy Scouts Handbook The First Edition, 1911 by Boy Scouts of America

I must add that in any case Black's position is, in my opinion, untenable, since all his pieces are tied up for the defence of a Pawn, while White's pieces are free to act.
— from Chess Fundamentals by José Raúl Capablanca

But if we concede the claim, we should have to conclude that God knew but little about them, for he certainly would not knowingly employ such moral outlaws upon such an important mission.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

nd, I could only make out uncertain, strange, and incomprehensible words.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

In a letter from Pepys to his nephew Jackson, April 8th, 1700, there is a reference to the breaking out three years before his death of the wound caused by the cutting for the stone: “It has been my calamity for much the greatest part of this time to have been kept bedrid, under an evil so rarely known as to have had it matter of universal surprise and with little less general opinion of its dangerousness; namely, that the cicatrice of a wound occasioned upon my cutting for the stone, without hearing anything of it in all this time, should after more than 40 years’ perfect cure, break out again.”
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

STANDARD STAMP CO., 4 Nicholson Place, St. Louis, Mo. Old U. S. and Confederate Stamps bought. $117.50 WORTH OF STAMPS FREE to agents selling stamps from my 50% approval sheets.
— from Harper's Round Table, April 7, 1896 by Various

After the distribution of pap I usually pitch my own umbrella somewhere away from their vicinity and make an hour's sketch.
— from The Girl Philippa by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

Most of us stayed, and after a few months, he paid wages.
— from Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves South Carolina Narratives, Part 1 by United States. Work Projects Administration

They had asked him to go to England, he had disregarded their request and come to Georgia, but he was dear to them through many months of united service and mutual help, and they gave him a hearty welcome, ignoring all cause for complaint, and taking him at once into their full confidence.
— from The Moravians in Georgia, 1735-1740 by Adelaide L. (Adelaide Lisetta) Fries

Such were the alternatives which Knox—a man of undoubted sensitiveness and tenderness, and who describes himself as naturally 'fearful' [15] —had to ponder during those days of seclusion at St Andrews.
— from John Knox by A. Taylor (Alexander Taylor) Innes

'The neighbours have sent in flowers often and often, and she has made me carry them out of the room; the vicar used to send them too, but he knows now that it is no manner of use: she always says they do not put flowers in tombs, only outside them: she will have it she is living in a tomb.'
— from Uncle Max by Rosa Nouchette Carey

Our argument, however, has no concern with the unknown possible, but with the actual fact—visible to the naked eye and confirmed by the telescope—that there is a portion of space in which millions of universes such as this might exist with safety, yet they do not.
— from Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity by Robert Patterson