Persia had already repented of her fatal rashness, which betrayed the heir of the house of Sassan to the ambition of a rebellious subject: and the bold refusal of the Magi to consecrate his usurpation, compelled Bahram to assume the sceptre, regardless of the laws and prejudices of the nation.
— 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 person has a relation of ideas to myself, according to the supposition; the passion, of which he is the object, by being either agreeable or uneasy, has a relation of impressions to pride or humility.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

This is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to Yorick's extraction, who, by what I can remember of him, and by all the accounts I could ever get of him, seemed not to have had one single drop of Danish blood in his whole crasis; in nine hundred years, it might possibly have all run out:—I will not philosophize one moment with you about it; for happen how it would, the fact was this:—That instead of that cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense and humours, you would have looked for, in one so extracted;—he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a composition,—as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions;—with as much life and whim, and gaite de coeur about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put together.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

A scientific explanation of the phenomenon ascribed it to phosphuretted hydrogen, a result of incipient decomposition.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think, that robbers and pyrates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master; or that men are bound by promises, which unlawful force extorts from them.
— from Second Treatise of Government by John Locke

No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed with apprehensions as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage containing Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of the gates.
— from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The first time she heard that form of salute used at the telephone she was surprised, and not pleased; but I told her I had given order for it: that henceforth and forever the telephone must always be invoked with that reverent formality, in perpetual honor and remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

and she didnt put her address right on it either she may have noticed her wogger people were always going away
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

Thus, throughout the century, these European powers harassed and raided one another, but no one of them was sufficiently strong to expel the others from the East.
— from A History of the Philippines by David P. Barrows

Caution has a sense of possible harm and risk only to be escaped, if at all, by careful deliberation and observation.
— from English Synonyms and Antonyms With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions by James Champlin Fernald

Yet as he perceived her a rush of cool air struck on his temples, he seemed to be walking down a garden, there was a scent of limes and roses.
— from The Testing of Diana Mallory by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.

Ah! unclean beasts, who despise and repudiate the figures, phantasies, harmonies, and roulades of the fair muse of drollery, will you not pare your claws, so that you may never again scratch her white skin, all azure with veins, her amorous reins, her flanks of surpassing elegance, her feet that stay modestly in bed, her satin face, her lustrous features, her heart devoid of bitterness?
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

She was standing by the fireplace in a splendid pose, her arm resting on the chimney-piece, the book from which she had been reciting in one hand, the other playing in her black curls, as her eyes glanced back ever and anon at her own profile in the mirror.
— from Two Years Ago, Volume I by Charles Kingsley

The younger pirate had already reached out for the English boat.
— from A Little Florida Lady by Dorothy C. (Dorothy Charlotte) Paine

He has resided almost entirely in Paris, cultivating the friendship of [pg 344] Napoleon instead of the welfare of the people who pay him a revenue of 60,000 l. a year.
— from The Land-War in Ireland: A History for the Times by James Godkin

I think I am scientifically accurate in saying that every known plant has a relative of the same species or genus, growing wild in this country.
— from The Life of the Fields by Richard Jefferies

In that way the greater part of the manor was theoretically "common" land, and no peasant had a right of private ownership to any one strip.]
— from A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. by Carlton J. H. (Carlton Joseph Huntley) Hayes

The road was not the safest in the world; for often the carriage approached within two or three feet of a precipice; but the driver, a merry fellow, lolled on his box, with his feet protruding horizontally, and rattled on at the rate of ten miles an hour.
— from Passages from the American Notebooks, Volume 1 by Nathaniel Hawthorne