As the feet were ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off flannel petticoat to make new soles.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

As he ought to govern the body by not being a slave to its pleasures and desires, so he ought to rule his wife by cheerfulness and complaisance.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

His passive and dutiful submission had been honored with the praise of Justinian himself, whose vanity was incapable of discerning how often that submission degenerated into the grossest adulation.
— 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

Aufidus; Qui regna Dauni perfluit Appuli, Dum saevit, horrendamque cultis Diluviem meditatur agris;” [“So the biforked Aufidus, which flows through the realm of the Apulian Daunus, when raging, threatens a fearful deluge to the tilled ground.”—Horat., Od., iv.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

[ Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, and the medals, (Pax Augg.) inform us of this temporary reconciliation; though I will not presume (as Dr. Stukely has done, Medallic History of Carausius, p. 86, &c) to insert the identical articles of the treaty.]
— 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

Why Plato, who was himself a poet, and whose dialogues are poems and dramas, should have been hostile to the poets as a class, and especially to the dramatic poets; why he should not have seen that truth may be embodied in verse as well as in prose, and that there are some indefinable lights and shadows of human life which can only be expressed in poetry—some elements of imagination which always entwine with reason; why he should have supposed epic verse to be inseparably associated with the impurities of the old Hellenic mythology; why he should try Homer and Hesiod by the unfair and prosaic test of utility,—are questions which have always been debated amongst students of Plato.
— from The Republic by Plato

" As if on purpose a dog suddenly howls in the yard, at first low and irresolute, then aloud, in two voices.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The Imperial minister demanded, that Franco should make restitution of all the places and dominions she had wrested from the empire since the peace of Munster, whether by force of arms or pretence of right.
— from The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II. by T. (Tobias) Smollett

The first heedless scheme had been to go in the morning and return at night; but to this Mr Musgrove, for the sake of his horses, would not consent; and when it came to be rationally considered, a day in the middle of November would not leave much time for seeing a new place, after deducting seven hours, as the nature of the country required, for going and returning.
— from Persuasion by Jane Austen

Papers concerning the estate were mostly preserved at the agent’s office in Tunbridge Wells: only those concerning his own private affairs did Sir Henry keep in the library.
— from The Broken Thread by William Le Queux

those papers are destroyed," said Henry; and in a few words he told her the fate that had befallen his pocket-book.
— from The Forgery; or, Best Intentions. by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

After the most patient and diligent search, he was compelled to return home without further tidings of them.
— from Isaac T. Hopper: A True Life by Lydia Maria Child

By this time they had caught half a dozen fine pickerel, and, disembarking, soon had their fire built, tents pitched and hammocks swung.
— from Sword and Pen Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier by John Algernon Owens

He dared not break the sanctity of that solitude by going out into it, any more than he dared disturb the quiet of the fully populated and deeply sleeping house.
— from Two Strangers by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant