Opinion is powerless in despotic countries: there is nothing solid but the friendship of the pasha.
— from On Love by Stendhal

As to my own particular, I do certainly believe that since that age, both my understanding and my constitution have rather decayed than improved, and retired rather than advanced.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

A rash and foolish young rabbit jumped into his bag, and Monsieur Puss, immediately drawing close the strings, took and killed him without pity.
— from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

Thus says Hornklofe:— "Whistles the battle-axe in its swing O'er head the whizzing javelins sing, Helmet and shield and hauberk ring; The air-song of the lance is loud, The arrows pipe in darkening cloud; Through helm and mail the foemen feel The blue edge of our king's good steel Who can withstand our gallant king?
— from Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson

just as I set out to pursue my plan I discovered Charbono walking up shore some distance below me and waited untill arrived I now learnt that the canoes were behind, they arrived shortly after.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

what is publicly inculcated, doctrine, &c. Ro. 16.25, et al.
— from A Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament by William Greenfield

Each house is, as it necessarily must be, the judge of the elections, qualifications, and returns of its members; and whatever improvements may be suggested by experience, for simplifying and accelerating the process in disputed cases, so great a portion of a year would unavoidably elapse, before an illegitimate member could be dispossessed of his seat, that the prospect of such an event would be little check to unfair and illicit means of obtaining a seat.
— from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton

When I got to Parma I dismissed Costa, but in a week after I had the misfortune to take him on again.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

What religion is, and of what parts it doth consist, every catechism will tell you, what symptoms it hath, and what effects it produceth: but for their superstitions, no tongue can tell them, no pen express, they are so many, so diverse, so uncertain, so inconstant, and so different from themselves.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

“So we have contracted our field of search to a large book, printed in double columns and in common use.”
— from The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle

An officer of government, invested with different powers in different countries.
— from A Collection of College Words and Customs by Benjamin Homer Hall

In addition, if we may believe Clarendon, he had always several beds prepared in different chambers, so that no one knew in what particular room he would pass the night.—Hist.
— from The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of King George the Fifth Volume 8 by Hilaire Belloc

Scarlatina is a contagious disease; so, when one lives in a large city, half the family has to move away from its residence (we did it twice), and yet every man in the city is a centre through which pass innumerable diameters, carrying threads of all sorts of contagions.
— from The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

The aspects of Kant’s problems are so complex and various, and he is so preoccupied in doing complete justice {90} to each in turn, that the question of the mutual consistency of his results is much less considered than is ideally desirable.
— from A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' by Norman Kemp Smith

The books are of uniform style and size (6½×8½), each containing 96 large pages in double column.
— from The Prince of the House of David by J. H. (Joseph Holt) Ingraham

And the writer believes that he is perfectly consistent with himself in thinking both that the abstract right of insurrection existed in the case of the Southern States of the Union and the abstract right of repression in the Federal Government, and also that this particular insurrection deserved condemnation
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics by Various

Now he fancied she had granted him a private interview,—that she was sitting by his side, but resolute, unconvinced, unmoved, while he besieged her with arguments, appealed to her with all the passionate fervor that convulsed his soul, portrayed in darkest colors the fearful results of her inflexibility.
— from Fairy Fingers A Novel by Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie

Perhaps Dickens's best piece of Will-making is given in the case of Mr. Spenlow, who, being a practitioner in Doctors' Commons, spoke about his own will with "a serenity, a tranquillity, a calm sunset air" which quite affected David
— from Seeing and Hearing by George William Erskine Russell