—The brilliancy of Nelson's fame, dimming as it does that of all his contemporaries, and the implicit trust felt by England in him as the one man able to save her from the schemes of Napoleon, should not of course obscure the fact that only one portion of the field was, or could be, occupied by him.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

Thus far God, working according to an eternal pattern, out of his goodness has created the same, the other, and the essence (compare the three principles of the Philebus—the finite, the infinite, and the union of the two), and out of them has formed the outer circle of the fixed stars and the inner circle of the planets, divided according to certain musical intervals; he has also created time, the moving image of eternity, and space, existing by a sort of necessity and hardly distinguishable from matter.
— from Timaeus by Plato

I asked Winckelmann to come and eat polenta with the scopatore santissimo, and told my brother to shew him the way; and I then called on the Marquis Belloni, my banker, to look into my accounts, and to get a letter of credit on the firm at Naples, who were his agents.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs.
— 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

Othello's colour—the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff—do they haunt us perpetually in the reading? or are they obtruded upon our conceptions one time for ninety-nine that we are lost in admiration at the respective moral or intellectual attributes of the character?
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

They discussed philosophical questions and even how there could have been light on the first day when the sun, moon, and stars were only created on the fourth day, and how that was to be understood.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

was the last great Sultan of Cordova, of the family of the Omeyyads.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole

And sliding from the bed before I could hinder her, she crossed the room, walking very uncertainly, threw it back, and bent out, careless of the frosty air that cut about her shoulders as keen as a knife.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

He never dreamed of any one coming out to fight him, but said that he was rather going up to view the place; and if he waited for his reinforcements, it was not in order to make victory secure in case he should be compelled to engage, but to be enabled to surround and storm the city.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

To preserve their arms, the haughty warriors consented, with some reluctance, to prostitute their wives or their daughters; the charms of a beauteous maid, or a comely boy, secured the connivance of the inspectors; who sometimes cast an eye of covetousness on the fringed carpets and linen garments of their new allies, or who sacrificed their duty to the mean consideration of filling their farms with cattle, and their houses with slaves.
— 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

I continued my visits of inquiry, nearly always meeting some person of consequence, or the footman of such, come on the same errand as myself.
— from Project Gutenberg Complete Works of Winston Churchill by Winston Churchill

You may covet no nobler fame than that of creator of the Flying Sandwich of Annandale.
— from Rosalind at Red Gate by Meredith Nicholson

Out of thirty-four States, eleven have derived their existence, their permission to exist, their territory, their power to make a Constitution, from the General Government itself, out of whose territory—either acquired originally by the wealth or conquest of the Federal Government, or derived directly or indirectly through the cession or partition or separation of the original Colonies—they have sprung into existence.
— from Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York by A. F. (Adolphus Frederick) Warburton

147 There were two laudanums of Paracelsus; one was red oxide of mercury , the other consisted of the following substances: Chloride of antimony, 1 ounce; hepatic aloes, 1 ounce; rose-water, ½ ounce; saffron, 3 ounces; ambergris, 2 drams.
— from The History of Chemistry, Volume 1 (of 2) by Thomas Thomson

Hugh looked from under his mosquito-net, and saw old Considine over the fire, earnestly frying a large hunk of buffalo meat.
— from An Outback Marriage: A Story of Australian Life by A. B. (Andrew Barton) Paterson

Moreover, we doe give unto you, & any 5. or more of you, power & spetiall com̅and over all y e charters, leters patents, and rescripts royall, of y e regions, provinces, ilands, or lands in foraigne parts, granted for raising colonies, to cause them to be brought before you, & y e same being received, if any thing surrepticiously or unduly have been obtained, or y t by the same priviledges, liberties, & prerogatives hurtfull to us, or to our crowne, or to foraigne princes, have been prejudicially suffered, or granted; the same being better made knowne unto you 5. or more of you, to com̅and them according to y e laws and customs of England to be revoked, and to doe such other things, which to y e profite & safgard of y e afforesaid collonies, and of our subjects residente in y e same, shall be necessary.
— from Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' From the Original Manuscript. With a Report of the Proceedings Incident to the Return of the Manuscript to Massachusetts by William Bradford

The mischief dreaded was that the administration party would take advantage of the insolent and outrageous conduct of the French minister to show the folly of precipitancy, and to gain popularity and strength for itself.
— from James Madison by Sydney Howard Gay

Do you happen to know whether the letter we are now speaking of contained anything like an avowal or confession of the forgery?”
— from After Dark by Wilkie Collins