It is now six o’clock, and we are to meet in the study in half an hour and take something to eat; for Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward are agreed that if we do not eat we cannot work our best.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

Well, I said, and is there no evil which corrupts the soul?
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

She spoke only when there was nobody else who could or would do so.
— 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

But how can we imagine that the citizens in general will at once follow the example set to them; and how can he have this power both of persuading and of compelling them? ATHENIAN: Let no one, my friends, persuade us that there is any quicker and easier way in which states change their laws than when the rulers lead: such changes never have, nor ever will, come to pass in any other way.
— from Laws by Plato

My natural elasticity was crushed; my intellect languished; the disposition to read departed; the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! Sunday was my only leisure time.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

As the soul, too, is a proof that not everything which can suffer pain can also die, why then do they yet demand that we produce real examples to prove that it is not incredible that the bodies of men condemned to everlasting punishment may retain their soul in the fire, may burn without being consumed, and may suffer without perishing?
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

"General Walker, with his division, after accomplishing the object in which he is now engaged, will cross the Potomac at Cheek's Ford, ascend its right bank to Lovettsville, take possession of Loudoun Heights, if practicable, by Friday morning.
— from From Bull Run to Appomattox: A Boy's View by Luther W. Hopkins

For the existence in his time of court-minstrelsy, or indeed of any poetry dealing with contemporary persons and events, we have no evidence which can be called satisfactory
— from The Heroic Age by H. Munro (Hector Munro) Chadwick

Plate, jewels, and ornaments were quickly transferred to their pockets, or to bags with which they had come prepared; but, with the exception of a few clothes, to which some of them took a fancy, and a collection of eatables from the housekeeper’s store-room, nothing else was carried off.
— from Ronald Morton; or, the Fire Ships: A Story of the Last Naval War by William Henry Giles Kingston

The Pilgrims and Puritans, whose migration to the New World marks the beginning of permanent settlement in New England, were children of the same age as the enterprising and adventurous pioneers of England in Virginia, Bermuda, and the Caribbean.
— from The Fathers of New England: A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths by Charles McLean Andrews

This is a strikingly low number, especially when compared with the large Jewish immigration for the same period, which numbered 417,016, and averaged annually 83,400 Jewish immigrants.
— from Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910 Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, Vol. LIX, No. 4, 1914 by Samuel Joseph

Nearly everybody who could get away was gone.
— from The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by Fox, John, Jr.

The story of the Moabitess, whose blood flowed in David's veins, was a standing protest against the later narrow exclusiveness which called Gentiles 'dogs,' and prided itself on outward connection with the nation, in the exact degree in which it lost real union with the nation's God, and real understanding of the nation's mission.
— from Expositions of Holy Scripture Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I to VII by Alexander Maclaren