possessing the power of punishing promptly every aggression.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

Cagliostro, Count Alessandro di , assumed name of an arch-impostor, his real name being Giuseppe Balsamo, born in Palermo, of poor parents; early acquired a smattering of chemistry and medicine, by means of which he perpetrated the most audacious frauds, which, when detected in one place were repeated with even more brazen effrontery in another; married a pretty woman named Lorenza Feliciani, who became an accomplice; professed supernatural powers, and wrung large sums from his dupes wherever they went, after which they absconded to Paris and lived in extravagance; here he was thrown into the Bastille for complicity in the Diamond Necklace affair ( q. v .); on his wife turning informer, he was consigned to the tender mercies of the Inquisition, and committed to the fortress of San Leone, where he died at 52, his wife having retired into a convent (1743-1795).
— from The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by P. Austin Nuttall

By the time the nation had made a few such annual burnt offerings to the principle of profit, perhaps even after the first one, it is likely they would begin to question, in the light of such vivid object lessons, whether the moral beauties of the profit system were sufficient compensation for so large an economic sacrifice."
— from Equality by Edward Bellamy

No government will be respected by the Indians until they are made to feel the effects of its power, or see it practised on others; and the surest guarantee of savage fidelity to any government, is a thorough conviction in their minds that they do possess the power of punishing promptly, every act of aggression, which they may commit on the persons or property of their citizens.
— from History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. II To the Sources of the Missouri, Thence Across the Rocky Mountains and Down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Performed During the Years 1804-5-6. by William Clark

Much in the same manner, the notion of our knight's horse being moved by means of a concealed engine corresponds with their pretences of producing preternatural effects, and their love of surprising by geometrical powers.
— from Chaucer's Works, Volume 3 (of 7) — The House of Fame; The Legend of Good Women; The Treatise on the Astrolabe; The Sources of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer