The famous author of the “Imitation of Christ,” Thomas à Kempis, whose book is, saving the Bible, the most wide-spread on earth, says: “Occasiones hominem fragilem non faciunt, sed, qualis sit, ostendunt.”
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross

Nicholas was prepared for something odd, but not for something quite so odd as the sight he encountered.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

I take it, you have not forgotten some quite recent occurrences.
— from Anabasis by Xenophon

Sometimes men and women from the city came down to inspect the High Cliff House, preparatory to opening negotiations for summer quarters.
— from Thankful's Inheritance by Joseph Crosby Lincoln

how sweetly does St. Austin say of them—" Librarii nostri facti sunt, quemadmodum solent libros post dominos ferre ." Page 412 The arca degli orefici is a curious thing too, and worth observing: the goldsmiths set it up in honour of Caracalla and Geta; but one plainly discerns where poor Geta's head has been carried off in one place, his figure broken in another, apparently by Caracalla's order.
— from Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Hester Lynch Piozzi

But the officer making a bow to him, he understood that presently, and bowed again; at which all his men fell down flat upon their faces, as flat to the ground as if they had been shot to death with a volley of our shot; and they did not fall so quick but they were up again as nimbly, and then down flat on the ground again; and this they did three times, their king bowing himself to our men at the same time.
— from A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before by Daniel Defoe

I never felt so queer in all my life.
— from Betsy Gaskins (Dimicrat), Wife of Jobe Gaskins (Republican) Or, Uncle Tom's Cabin Up to Date by W. I. (William I.) Hood

Yet go not forth so quickly.
— from The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 5 Poetry by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

You have as the nucleus of naval forces something quite definite and precise—the battleship—and it also happens that that particular unit is extremely costly, and takes a long time to build, and no man has yet ever succeeded in concealing the existence of a battleship.
— from Essays in Liberalism Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 by Various

The donkeys were advancing, and it was advisable to begin the descent immediately, for the night fell so quickly that it would be dark before they were home again.
— from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

[388] 'Antiqui Barbari qui Romanis mulieribus elegerint nuptiali foedere sociari, quolibet titulo praedia quaesiverint, fiscum possessi cespitis persolvere, ac super indictitiis oneribus parere cogantur.'
— from The Letters of Cassiodorus Being a Condensed Translation of the Variae Epistolae of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator by Senator Cassiodorus