The gods await you in their azure dome; One age must serve for this your lower home.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

Some of the senators and representatives declined to present the petitions sent from their own districts; others offered them merely as petitions for "universal suffrage," carefully omitting the word "woman" and trusting that it would be inferred they meant suffrage for the negro men.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

This transaction was confirmed by the Imperial authority; and Justinian, generously yielding to the Franks the sovereignty of the countries beyond the Alps, which they already possessed, absolved the provincials from their allegiance; and established on a more lawful, though not more solid, foundation, the throne of the Merovingians.
— 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

instruction, charge, injunction, obtestation[obs3]; Governor's message, President's message; King's message, Queen's speech; message, speech from the throne.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

I fancy they were quite as strong as those of the Rev. Mr. Stelling; for Tom could predict with accuracy what number of horses were cantering behind him, he could throw a stone right into the centre of a given ripple, he could guess to a fraction how many lengths of his stick it would take to reach across the playground, and could draw almost perfect squares on his slate without any measurement.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

‘Serjeant Buzfuz and Mr. Skimpin for the plaintiff,’ said the judge, writing down the names in his note-book, and reading as he wrote; ‘for the defendant, Serjeant Snubbin and Mr. Monkey.’
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn’t clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that’s minding stones, for the corporation there near Butt bridge.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

Moreau stopped, facing this creature, who cringed towards him with the memory and dread of infinite torment.
— from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Many men suddenly found that they had urgent business to look after elsewhere, and sneaked away, leaving their wives and families behind them.
— from The Book of the Bush Containing Many Truthful Sketches of the Early Colonial Life of Squatters, Whalers, Convicts, Diggers, and Others Who Left Their Native Land and Never Returned by George Dunderdale

The Devil or Devils rather, which possessed the Man among the Tombs, is positively affirm’d to be the Devil in the Scripture; all the Evangelists agree in calling him so, and his very Works shew it; namely, the Mischief he did, as well to the poor Creature among the Tombs, who was made so fierce, that he was the Terror of all the Country, as to the Herd of Swine and to the Country in the Loss of them.
— from The History of the Devil, As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts by Daniel Defoe

Huck's heart shot into his throat, but he swallowed it again; and then he stood there shaking as if a dozen agues had taken charge of him at once, and so weak that he thought he must surely fall to the ground.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 7. by Mark Twain

Although it was true that his kingdom resembled an aggregation of countries rather than a single state, and that the differences of nationality and religion among his subjects placed the most material obstacles in the way of the government, yet the plan of introducing throughout his dominions Helleno-Roman manners and Helleno-Roman worship and of equalizing the various peoples in a political as well as a religious point of view was under any circumstances a folly; and all the more so from the fact, that this caricature of Joseph II was personally far from equal to so gigantic an enterprise, and introduced his reforms in the very worst way by the pillage of temples on the greatest scale and the most insane persecution of heretics.
— from The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) by Theodor Mommsen

Was it your small clothes you gave the devotees to kiss, in the manner of some grey friars, of whom Henry Estienne has narrated the adventures?” “Ah! your reverence,” meekly said Friar Ange with the expression of a martyr suffering for truth, “it was not my small clothes, it was a foot of St Eustache.”
— from The Queen Pedauque by Anatole France

Mr. Swinhoe found the eggs of this Gecko, or Lizard, in holes of walls or among mortar rubbish.
— from Eccentricities of the Animal Creation. by John Timbs