The secular judge had presumed to receive an appeal, and to pronounce a definitive sentence, in a matter of faith, and episcopal jurisdiction.
— 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

Yet there was no small difficulty in doing Rabelais justice in that double respect; the obsolete words and turns of phrase, and dark subjects, often as darkly treated, make the sense hard to be understood even by a Frenchman, and it cannot be easy to give it the free easy air of an original; for even what seems most common talk in one language, is what is often the most difficult to be made so in another; and Horace’s thoughts of comedy may be well applied to this: Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere Sudoris minimum; sed habet commoedia tantum Plus oneris, quanto veniae minus.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

In any case, most of these plays, perhaps all, do show, as a matter of fact, [4] considerable deviations from that standard; and, therefore, what is said of the pure tragedies must be applied to them with qualifications which I shall often take for granted without mention.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

In the celesta, small steel plates take the place of strings, and the hammers falling on them produce a delightful sound, very similar to the glockenspiel .
— from Principles of Orchestration, with Musical Examples Drawn from His Own Works by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

If he means to say that mythical fictions are mingled with real events, Forsan in alcun vero suo arco percuote, as Dante says, and I fully concede the point.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

It had been a gay party and different stages of sobriety were represented.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

To this, and to cleanliness, as well in the ship as amongst the people, too great attention cannot be paid; the least neglect occasions a putrid and disagreeable smell below, which nothing but fires will remove.
— from A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 15 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

They have not the slightest notion of music, literature, painting, and dancing; still, they have heretofore seen under these names only a rude imitation of the real thing.
— from Philip Hale's Boston Symphony Programme Notes by Philip Hale

Under such a stimulating psychic pabulum a dormant sexual volcano may become active.
— from Love: A Treatise on the Science of Sex-attraction for the use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence by Bernard Simon Talmey

Northern lights, pale and dim, stretched their arc across beneath the Dipper.
— from The Blazed Trail by Stewart Edward White

Frederick Henry thereupon declared that such an aspersion was an insult to his person and demanded satisfaction.
— from Anglo-Dutch Rivalry During the First Half of the Seventeenth Century being the Ford lectures delivered at Oxford in 1910 by George Edmundson

There he spent two years in patient and diligent study, and then two more in attending the medical lectures of Bowdoin College, Me.
— from History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens by George Washington Williams