“At the age of twenty-one years, one of the highest nobles of Venice adopted me as his son, and, having become rich, I went to see Italy, France, Germany and Vienna where I knew Count Roggendorff.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The vigilant Galerius was never reduced to the necessity of vanquishing an army of barbarians on the Roman territory.
— 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

The taking notice that men bestow the names of ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’ according to this rule of Reputation is all I have done, or can be laid to my charge to have done, towards the making vice virtue or virtue vice.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

The Prince della Catolica, invited me to dinner with the Venetian ambassador; and in the course of three weeks I had made a great number of valuable acquaintances.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Melancholy as a gib-cat over his counter all the forenoon, I think I see him, making up his cash (as they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared every one about him was a defaulter; in his hypochondry ready to imagine himself one; haunted, at least, with the idea of the possibility of his becoming one: his tristful visage clearing up a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where his picture still hangs, taken a little before his death by desire of the master of the coffee-house, which he had frequented for the last five-and-twenty years), but not attaining the meridian of its animation till evening brought on the hour of tea and visiting.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

And the rulers of our divine state ought to have an exact knowledge of the common principle in courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, which is called by the name of virtue; and unless we know whether virtue is one or many, we shall hardly know what virtue is.
— from Laws by Plato

Some vices indeed are condemned and others grown dishonourable; but we have still many that are honoured with the names of virtues, and it is become necessary that we should either have, or at least pretend to have them.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

And therefore in reasoning, a man bust take heed of words; which besides the signification of what we imagine of their nature, disposition, and interest of the speaker; such as are the names of Vertues, and Vices; For one man calleth Wisdome, what another calleth Feare; and one Cruelty, what another Justice; one Prodigality, what another Magnanimity; one Gravity, what another Stupidity, &c.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Evidently a bit light of love, neither popular nor unpopular—every girl there seemed to have had an affair with him at some time or other, but no one volunteered any really useful information.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

At the ensuing nightfall our victorious army retired from the front and abandoned its vantage-ground on the bluffs, which had been won at such a cost of blood.
— from The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 2 by Jefferson Davis

"] In 1840 it was determined to increase the number of vicars apostolic in England from four to eight, and
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865 A Monthly Eclectic Magazine by Various

What can be happier in this way than the “Brand of Hell,” applied to Pope Hildebrand; the title of “Slanders,” affixed by Fuller to Sanders, the foul-mouthed libeller of Queen Elizabeth; the “Vanity” and “Sterility,” which Baxter coined from the names of Vane and Sterry; and the term “Sweepnet,” which that skilful master of the passions, Cicero, gave to the infamous Prætor of Sicily, whose name, Verres ( verro ), was prophetic of his “sweeping” the province,—declaring that others might be partial to the jus verrinum (which might mean verrine law or boar sauce), but not he?
— from Words; Their Use and Abuse by William Mathews

BUTLER’S (Bishop) Analogy of Religion , Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature; together with two Dissertations on Personal Identity and on the Nature of Virtue, and Fifteen Sermons.
— from The Campaign of Sedan: The Downfall of the Second Empire, August-September 1870 by George Hooper

The cultivation of beets for sugar is not of very ancient date.
— from Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation by Hugo de Vries

Is it as to giving up the Mississippi and its tributaries, together with New Orleans, Vicksburg, and Tennessee?
— from The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 Devoted To Literature And National Policy by Various

Accordingly, this country which had been acquired by the lives, the labors, and fortunes of individual adventurers, was by these Princes, several times, parted out and distributed among the favorites and followers of their fortunes; and, by an assumed right of the Crown alone, were erected into distinct and independent governments; a measure, which it is believed, his Majesty's prudence and understanding would prevent him from imitating at this day; as no exercise of such power, of dividing and dismembering a country, has ever occurred in his Majesty's realm of England, though now of very ancient standing; nor could it be justified or acquiesced under there, or in any part of his Majesty's empire.
— from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 1 (of 9) Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private by Thomas Jefferson

Robbers roamed in the neighbourhood of Vaprio; already Messer Gerolamo Melzi was preparing to carry Francesco and Aunt Bona into refuge at Chiavenna.
— from The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, the Forerunner by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky