[“It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.”—Nat.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

And now I must mount on the wave— My voyage perhaps there is death in; But what is a watery grave?
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

I shouted out in return, without a notion in my mind of who it was.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Having nothing now in my mind of trouble in the world, but quite the contrary, much joy, except only the ending of our difference with my uncle Thomas, and the getting of the bills well over for my building of my house here, which however are as small and less than any of the others.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

His style is vigorous, though we object to the meaning he attaches to two words very dear to the human heart: for religion is not ritualism , nor is morality made of the starched buckram of selfhood .
— from The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 Devoted to Literature and National Policy by Various

That learned and painefull writer Richard Eden, in a certain epistle of his to the Duke of Northumberland, before a work which he translated out of Munster in 1553, called A Treatise of New India , maketh mention of a voyage of discoverie undertaken out of England by Sir Thomas Pert and Sebastian Cabota, about the eighth year of Henry VIII.
— from A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 06 Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time by Robert Kerr

“My name is Martin, Master of Philosophy, from Wittenberg.”
— from Historical Miniatures by August Strindberg

Semi-civilization of the Mexican Tribes .--Nothing is more manifest, on reading the "Conquest of Mexico" by De Solis, than that the character and attainments of the ancient Mexicans are exalted far above the reality, to enhance the fame of Cortez, and give an air of splendor to the conquest.
— from Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Practically, it does not initiate measures; most of the laws which it frames come up to the Government of India from the Provincial Governments in the shape of proposed enactments.
— from Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo by William Wilson Hunter

Perhaps no people are the first to perceive their own character reflected in the writings of one of their countrymen; this nationality is much more open to the observation of a foreigner.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Volume 62, No. 386, December, 1847 by Various

["It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Volume 11 by Michel de Montaigne

Oh, the Legion marches! Is not its motto, " March or Die "?
— from The Wages of Virtue by Percival Christopher Wren

I would call in our high school boys from the side lines, from their vicarious athletics and their slavish imitation of college customs, and teach them how to dig trenches and serve cannon, which seem to be the chief need in modern military operations.
— from Introducing the American Spirit by Edward Alfred Steiner