Has anyone ever been able to say precisely how a log is changed on the hearth into burning carbon, and by what mechanism lime is kindled by fresh water?
— from Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire

Then come a crowd of under-strappers, whose vocation is in their very look, who even play their parts hourly, and live in character—either aping the grandee, the gallant, the swaggerer, or the lisping idiotic driveller; the clowns and jesters making up the file.
— from William Shakespeare as He Lived: An Historical Tale by Henry Curling

But she was not without a champion, for [232] at the precise moment when Scatterly placed his audacious lips in contact with the blooming cheek of Mrs. M., Tom entered the garden and beheld the outrage.
— from The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales by Francis A. (Francis Alexander) Durivage

You can get fond of a hen, especially a cantankerous and homely old one whose personality has a lot in common with your own.
— from Angel's Egg by Edgar Pangborn

From the time of Cecrops to Theseus, according to Thucydides, the [Pg 259] Attic people had always lived in cities, having their own prytaneums and archons, and when not in fear of danger did not consult their basileus, but governed their own affairs separately according to their own councils.
— from Ancient Society Or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to Civilization by Lewis Henry Morgan

Pitmen have always lived in communities; they have associated only among themselves, and have thus acquired peculiar habits and ideas.
— from The Subterranean World by G. (Georg) Hartwig

Il me convient porter honneur aux lards; Il convient ail et biscuit avaler, Et chevaucher un périlleux cheval.”
— from Chaucer and His England by G. G. (George Gordon) Coulton

Not one of Milton's pamphlets had a larger immediate circulation or provoked a more rapid fury of criticism than his Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth .
— from The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time by David Masson

In the Hellenic myth, Aphroditê and Love play at seeing who will pluck most flowers; winged Love is winning, but the nymph Peristera helps Aphroditê; Love indignant, changes her into the peristera or dove, which Aphroditê, to console her, takes under her protection.
— from Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 2 (of 2) by Angelo De Gubernatis

Then quickly he added, walking along beside us still, and speaking still in that hoarse, melodramatic voice (which pleased him a little, I couldn't help thinking), "Les Allemands will give me a year in prison if they catch me, so I have to make it pay, n'est-ce-pas?
— from A Woman's Experiences in the Great War by Louise Mack