I had arms, and men, and horses; I possessed extraordinary riches; and can it be any wonder that I was unwilling to lose them?
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

In the long run, however, when the process of purification has come to a successful termination, all those forces which were formerly wasted in the struggle between the disharmonious qualities are at the disposal of the organism as a whole, and this is why purified races have always become stronger and more beautiful.—The Greeks may serve us as a model of a purified race and culture!—and it is to be hoped that some day a pure European race and culture may arise.
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

A lawn before the DUKE'S palace Enter ROSALIND and CELIA CELIA.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

This is a very respectable age, but it's pretty easily riled; and considerin upon how slight a provycation we who live in it go to cuttin each other's throats, it may perhaps be doubted whether our intellecks is so much massiver than our ancestors' intellecks was, after all.
— from The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (HTML edition) by Artemus Ward

Both committees, we are bound to assume are equally honest, disinterested, and competent, because the members of both committees considered in making up a decision such discrepancy of judgment and the system which renders it possible may be almost excusable, perhaps, but in the Fat Stock Show, where we deal so fully in details and exact figures, and where we pretend to use our best efforts in every practical manner to get at and publish for the benefit of a confiding world the reliable, bottom facts obtained by the labors of paid experts, reach a conflicting record is not, in any judgement, one to be greatly proud of.
— from Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside by Various

The chain of the Graba Balkan, which stretching in a direction from east to west ends on the Adriatic in the narrow tongue of land at Dyrrhachium, sends off—fourteen miles to the east of Dyrrhachium—in a south-westerly direction a lateral branch which likewise turns in the form of a crescent towards the sea, and the main chain and lateral branch of the mountains enclose between themselves a small plain extending round a cliff on the seashore.
— from The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) by Theodor Mommsen

I spared no effort to make the feeling pervade every regiment and company, that the cause of the country, their own success and honor, and even their own personal safety depended upon their entering the next campaign with such improved discipline and instruction as should make them always superior to an equal number of the enemy.
— from Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1861-November 1863 by Jacob D. (Jacob Dolson) Cox

Negotiations were accordingly opened on the Dniepr between the Muscovite leaders and the Khan Mourad-Gherni; and a peace was signed at Radzin, Feb. 12, 1681, by which the frontiers on both sides were left unaltered, while the Porte expressly renounced all claim to Kiow [Pg 177] and the Russian Ukraine, which had been in the possession of the Czar since 1656.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 by Various

In practice the absolute power was no less a reality, since by royal decree the king not only made war and peace, determined upon foreign and internal policy, established religion, and codified law, but also disposed of the property of his subjects through arbitrary taxation.
— from The American Nation: A History — Volume 1: European Background of American History, 1300-1600 by Edward Potts Cheyney

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim , a German author, and founder of modern German literature, born at Kamenz, Saxony, son of the pastor there; sent to study theology at Leipzig, studied hard; conceived a passion for the stage; wrote plays and did criticisms; wrote an essay on Pope; took English authors as his models, revolted against those of France; made it his aim to inaugurate or rather revive a purely German literature, and produced examples regarded as classics to this day; his principal dramas, all conceived on the soil, are "Miss Sara Sampson," "Mina von Barnhelm," "Emilia Galotti," and "Nathan der Weise," and his principal prose works are his "Fables" and "Laocoon," a critical work on art still in high repute (1729-1781).
— from The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by P. Austin Nuttall

Patriotism is all right in its place but unless you can afford to contribute money for purely emotional reasons, a cold business estimate of the situation is advisable.
— from The War After the War by Isaac Frederick Marcosson

Ternaux: “Le général le rétablit dans sa dignité, examina le pays, et retourna au camp.”
— from The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542. Excerpted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1892-1893, Part 1. by George Parker Winship

Halleck, under whom all this progress had been made, properly enough received a credit, which critics later have found to be excessive, though it is plain that he had reorganised his army well; but Grant was felt to have been caught napping at Shiloh; there were other rumours about him, too, and he fell deep into general disfavour.
— from Abraham Lincoln by Charnwood, Godfrey Rathbone Benson, Baron