The day when in the colleges professors of rhetoric shall put Juvenal above Virgil, and Tacitus above Bossuet, will be the eve of the day in which the human race shall have been delivered; when all forms of oppression shall have disappeared,—from the slave-owner up to the pharisee, from the cottage where the slave weeps to the chapel where the eunuch sings.
— from William Shakespeare by Victor Hugo

One may imagine with what difficulty our secretaries of state must have laboured through all the ambages of phrase in English, French, German, and Russ, to explain to Muscovite ears and Muscovite understandings, the meaning of indictments, pleadings, precedents, juries, and verdicts; and how impatiently Peter must have listened to promises of a hearing next term?
— from The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia by Voltaire

The tables of the Undergraduates, arranged according to their respective years, are supplied with abundance of plain joints, and vegetables, and beer and ale ad libitum , besides which, soup, pastry, and cheese can be " sized for ," that is, brought in portions to individuals at an extra charge.—
— from A Collection of College Words and Customs by Benjamin Homer Hall

those of Davoust, Ney, the King of Westphalia, the Viceroy of Italy, Poniatowski, Junot and Victor; and in numbers not falling below 250,000.
— from The History of Napoleon Buonaparte by J. G. (John Gibson) Lockhart

I like everything very plain, just a valise and a little hay, and then you see if I am hungry in the night——.... "P.S.—I had a most interesting letter from Oliver.
— from Raymond; or, Life and Death With examples of the evidence for survival of memory and affection after death. by Lodge, Oliver, Sir

The splendid Watley, with some nice asides upon Sophocles, Plautus, Judic, and Voltaire, admitted a difference: "This is not the Di Vernon of the Spring," he wrote; "here is a newer conception, something of Rejane, a voice of sincerity matured; introspective comedy and the drama of pathos...." The "Daily Shuffler," in plainer terms, said: "Miss Romney does not let herself go—she appears to take poor Di's troubles too greatly to heart.
— from The Lady Evelyn: A Story of To-day by Max Pemberton

"As to sexual inversion my personal experience has been confined to two or three grandes passions for boys, the first of which possessed me when between the ages of 16 and 18, and involved, when I was 17, the most intense mental emotion, of a romantic kind, tinged with poignant jealousy and vexation at comparative coldness toward myself.
— from Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 Analysis of the Sexual Impulse; Love and Pain; The Sexual Impulse in Women by Havelock Ellis