After promising Esther to return before the end of the year, I set out with a clerk of the company who had brought the French securities, and I reached the Hague, where Boaz received me with a mingled air of wonder and admiration.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

PART VI Three years have now elapsed since I finished the treatise containing all these matters; and I was beginning to revise it, with the view to put it into the hands of a printer, when I learned that persons to whom I greatly defer, and whose authority over my actions is hardly less influential than is my own reason over my thoughts, had condemned a certain doctrine in physics, published a short time previously by another individual to which I will not say that I adhered, but only that, previously to their censure I had observed in it nothing which I could imagine to be prejudicial either to religion or to the state, and nothing therefore which would have prevented me from giving expression to it in writing, if reason had persuaded me of its truth; and this led me to fear lest among my own doctrines likewise some one might be found in which I had departed from the truth, notwithstanding the great care I have always taken not to accord belief to new opinions of which I had not the most certain demonstrations, and not to give expression to aught that might tend to the hurt of any one.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

I could with less pain endure the raging in my own natural unsatisfied appetites, even hunger or thirst, than I could submit to leave ungratified the most whimsical desires of a woman on whom I so extravagantly doated, that, though I knew she had been the mistress of half my acquaintance, I firmly intended to marry her.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Nay, instead of shrieking more, it were perhaps edifying to remark, on the other side, what a singular thing Customs ( in Latin, Mores ) are; and how fitly the Virtue, Vir-tus, Manhood or Worth, that is in a man, is called his Morality, or Customariness.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

The favor of Julian was almost equally divided between the Pagans, who had firmly adhered to the worship of their ancestors, and the Christians, who prudently embraced the religion of their sovereign.
— 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

There is a passage from Condorcet's Des Progrès de l'esprit humain , which seems to have been written as a warning to our epoch: Le zèle religieux des philosophes et des grands n'était qu'une dévotion politique: et toute religion, qu'on se permet de défendre comme une croyance qu'il est utile de laisser au peuple, ne peut plus espérer qu'une agonie plus ou moins prolongée .
— from Essays of Schopenhauer by Arthur Schopenhauer

The inquisitors sent a foot-soldier to notify the proprietor that he should inform the first person entering the room that he was to present himself before their tribunal.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

Notwithstanding his manly resolution Pompeianus escaped the resentment of the tyrant, and, with his honor, had the good fortune to preserve his life.
— 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

The seditious prelate was condemned, by the magistrate of the province, either to rebuild the synagogue, or to repay the damage; and this moderate sentence was confirmed by the emperor.
— 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

The squaw, though she evidently comprehended the meaning of her imploring gestures, shook her head, and in plaintive earnest tone replied in her own language that she must go with the canoes to the other shore, and she pointed to the north as she spoke.
— from Lost in the Backwoods: A Tale of the Canadian Forest by Catharine Parr Strickland Traill

In many parts every turn reveals some splendid relic of bygone days, of an age of cross-bows, of processions headed by men-at-arms bearing naming braziers through the dark streets, of gallant companies of splendid dames, and flaunting cavaliers in slashed doublets, trunk hose, and inconveniently long swords, all flashing and clanking in the glare as they pass; of an age of night broils, when the clash of arms was heard beneath the dark tower, grated window, and overhanging eaves.
— from The Sunny South: An Autumn in Spain and Majorca by John William Clayton

In after years Gaston seemed to understand, and, as a consequence of [40] understanding, to judge his old patron equitably: the religious sense too, had its various species.
— from Gaston de Latour; an unfinished romance by Walter Pater

He was a tolerably capable, thoroughly well-meaning, conservative patriot, who simply did not know what he was doing; who in the fullest belief that he was calling the people evoked the rabble, and grasped at the crown without being himself aware of it, until the inexorable sequence of events urged him irresistibly into the career of the demagogue-tyrant; until the family commission, the interferences with the public finances, the further "reforms" exacted by necessity and despair, the bodyguard from the pavement, and the conflicts in the streets betrayed the lamentable usurper more and more clearly to himself and others; until at length the unchained spirits of revolution seized and devoured the incapable conjurer.
— from The History of Rome, Book IV The Revolution by Theodor Mommsen

"Oh, how pretty!" exclaimed the recipient.
— from A Pasteboard Crown: A Story of the New York Stage by Clara Morris

I thought him a bit of a fop—an old fop, too—when I met him here; but he may ‘cut up’ better under his own roof.” “Rickards,” said he, as that bland personage entered to remove the breakfast-things, “I am not going to dine here to-day.” “Lor, Sir!
— from Luttrell Of Arran by Charles James Lever

In this hope, they, as far as circumstances and ability permitted, endeavored to retard the progress of the captors by slow movements; and Durant was finally constrained to threaten them, if they did not step with greater alacrity; for he feared they might be overtaken.
— from Ellen Walton Or, The Villain and His Victims by Alvin Addison

Solids would also fall to pieces by the weight of their particles, if the force of cohesion were not powerful enough to resist the efforts of gravitation.
— from On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences by Mary Somerville

III.[1] — Ipse per omnes Ibit personas, et turbam reddet in unam.
— from The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. — Volume 09 Contributions to The Tatler, The Examiner, The Spectator, and The Intelligencer by Jonathan Swift