The warders of the gate but scarce maintain Th’ unequal combat, and resist in vain.’
— from The Aeneid by Virgil

Many Tumults Under Cumanus, Which Were Composed By Quadratus.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

Thus it is the work of the retentive faculty to make the uterus contract upon the foetus at every point, so that, naturally enough, when the midwives palpate it, the os is found to be closed, whilst the pregnant women themselves, during the first days—and particularly on that on which conception takes place—experience a sensation as if the uterus were moving and contracting upon itself.
— from Galen: On the Natural Faculties by Galen

[5471] Anacreon, a glass, a gown, a chain, anything, Sed speculum ego ipse fiam, Ut me tuum usque cernas, Et vestis ipse fiam, Ut me tuum usque gestes.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

I took one last look at the natural wonders and artistic treasures amassed in the museum, this unrivaled collection doomed to perish someday in the depths of the seas, together with its curator.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

—It was Heaven's mercy to us, continued my uncle Toby, which put it into the corporal's head to maintain that due contention betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforceing the fever, as he did all along, with hot wine and spices; whereby the corporal kept up (as it were) a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground from the beginning to the end, and was a fair match for the moisture, terrible as it was.—Upon my honour, added my uncle Toby, you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother Shandy, twenty toises.—If there was no firing, said Yorick.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

At the same time, as an evidence of how much the unsupported cruisers suffered, even under these favorable conditions, it may be mentioned that the English report fifty-nine ships-of-war captured against eighteen admitted by the French during the war,—a difference which a French naval historian attributes, with much probability, to the English failing to distinguish between ships-of-war properly so called, and those loaned to private firms.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

When it was over I escorted the girls—who had enjoyed themselves immensely—back to the house, and made the ugly cousin stay to supper, as I foresaw that they would again sleep together.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

That women are conceited does not much matter to us criminal psychologists; we know it and do not need to be told.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross

I will write to the former to-morrow, to whom you will make the usual compliments.
— from Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796-1812 For the First Time Collected and Translated, with Notes Social, Historical, and Chronological, from Contemporary Sources by Emperor of the French Napoleon I

"Lest we forget," these ghosts of towns should haunt us for ever, stirring the memory and quickening the imagination, a reproach to conscience, an incorruptible judge of blood-guiltiness, which we should neither pardon nor forget till the fullest reparation has been made, the utmost contrition has been shown.
— from Round about Bar-le-Duc by Susanne R. (Susanne Rouviere) Day

In the mean time, Don Alonso, with two hundred cavaliers, maintained the unequal contest.
— from Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, from the mss. of Fray Antonio Agapida by Washington Irving

* It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated.
— from Note-Book of Anton Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

He must farther believe that the original performers, in these prodigious frauds on the world, acted not only without any assignable motive, but against all assignable motive; that they maintained this uniform constancy in unprofitable falsehoods, not only together, but separately, in different countries, before different tribunals, under all sorts of examinations and cross-examinations, and in defiance of the gyves, the scourge, the axe, the cross, the stake; that these whom they persuaded to join their enterprise, persisted like themselves in the same obstinate belief of the same 'cunningly devised' frauds; and though they had many accomplices in their singular conspiracy, had the equally singular fortune to free themselves and their coadjutors flout all transient weakness towards their cause and treachery towards one another; and, lastly, that these men, having, amidst all their ignorance, originality enough to invent the most pure and sublime system of morality which the world has ever listened to, had, amidst all their conscious villany, the effrontery to preach it, and, which is more extraordinary, the inconsistency to practise it!* ____
— from Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts From The Edinburgh Review, October 1849, Volume 90, No. CLXXXII. (Pages 293-356) by Henry Rogers

Toward night it became clear to Gregg that he could maintain the unequal contest no longer, and he then decided to retreat, but not until convinced that the time won had enabled all the trains to pass Charles City Court House in safety.
— from Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, Volume 1, Part 3 by Philip Henry Sheridan

LINENOTES: After 4 ( making the usual compliment after meals ) 1800 , 1828 , 1829 .
— from The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Vol 2 (of 2) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"But don't you think," said Pheasant, "that a certain fixed dress, marking the unworldly character of a religious order, is desirable?
— from The Chimney-Corner by Harriet Beecher Stowe