Some parts they besmear with an earth so pure and resplendent, that it resembles painting and colours.
— from Tacitus on Germany by Cornelius Tacitus

The water seeks out all the low places, and ramifies the interior, running away into lovely bays and lagoons, leaving slender tongues of land and picturesque islands, and bringing into the recesses of the land, to the remote country farms and settlements, the flavor of salt, and the fish and mollusks of the briny sea.
— from The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner — Volume 1 by Charles Dudley Warner

Can it be laid down as a general rule that the movement of political and religious truth is rather downwards from the government to the people than upwards from the people to the government?
— from Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 2 With a Memoir and Index by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron

Its very minuteness involves the expression of principles, and reveals that, in relation to an art not his own, he could hold principles of execution, and indicate perfection of finish, which, to say the least, must proceed from a general capacity for art, and therefore might find an equally conscious operation in his own peculiar province of it.
— from A Dish of Orts : Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare by George MacDonald

Charles XII. , king of Sweden, son of Charles XI., a warlike prince; ascended the throne at the age of 15; had to cope with Denmark, Russia, and Poland combined against him; foiled the Danes at Copenhagen, the Russians at Narva, and Augustus II. of Poland at Riga; trapped in Russia, and cooped up to spend a winter there, he was, in spring 1709, attacked by Peter the Great at Pultowa and defeated, so that he had to take refuge with the Turks at Bender; here he was attacked, captured, and conveyed to Demotica, but escaping, he found his way miraculously back to Sweden, and making peace with the Czar, commenced an attack on Norway, but was killed by a musket-shot at the siege of Friedrickshall; "the last of the Swedish kings"; "his appearance, among the luxurious kings and knights of the North" at the time, Carlyle compares to "the bursting of a cataract of bombshells in a dull ballroom" (1697-1718).
— from The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by P. Austin Nuttall

Quoting directly: “Gauleiter Sauckel promises to make Russian labor available for the fulfillment of the iron and coal program and reports that, if required, he will supply a further million Russian laborers for the German armament industry up to and including October 1942.
— from Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, Volume 3 by Various

To imagine that the religious and moral problem is bound to be regarded by Mr Bergson as arising when it is too late for revision, as admitting proposition and solution only as functions of a previous theoretical philosophy beyond which we should not go; that in his eyes the solution of this problem will be deduced from principles already laid down without any call for the introduction of new facts or new points of view, without any need to begin from a new intuition; that his view precludes all considerations of strictly spiritual life, of inner and profound action, regarding things in relation to God and in an eternal perspective: such a view would be illegitimate and unreasonable, first of all, because Mr Bergson has said nothing of the kind, and secondly, because it is contrary to all his tendencies.
— from A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson by Edouard Le Roy

It is with the greatest pain and reluctance that I record it.
— from Barren Honour: A Novel by George A. (George Alfred) Lawrence

Thousands of ounces of gold were lying on deposit in the Escort Office at Ballarat; yet had the mutineers taken the place, I am confident this treasure would have been protected, and restored to its rightful owners.
— from Lost Lenore: The Adventures of a Rolling Stone by Mayne Reid