I have desired to present to English readers a faithful copy of what Polybius wrote, which should at the same time be a readable English book.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

As soon as the mountains became passable, the emperor received the welcome news of the success of the conspiracy, the death of Chosroes, and the elevation of his eldest son to the throne of Persia.
— 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

From the river Padus the eleventh region receives its name of Transpadana; to which, situate as it is wholly in the interior, the river, by its bounteous channel, conveys the gifts of all the seas.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

What earthly reason could anyone have for being an optimist unless he had a god to defend who must have created the best of all possible worlds, since he is himself all goodness and perfection?—but what thinking man has now any need for the hypothesis that there is a god?—There is also no occasion whatever for [57] a pessimistic confession of faith, unless one has a personal interest in denouncing the advocate of god, the theologian or the theological philosopher, and maintaining the counter proposition that evil reigns, that wretchedness is more potent than joy, that the world is a piece of botch work, that phenomenon (Erscheinung) is but the manifestation of some evil spirit.
— from Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

After this was over, he gathered the army together to a congregation, and spake thus to those tribes that had their settlement in the land of the Amorites beyond Jordan,—for fifty thousand of them had armed themselves, and had gone to the war along with them:—"Since that God, who is the Father and Lord of the Hebrew nation, has now given us this land for a possession, and promised to preserve us in the enjoyment of it as our own for ever; and since you have with alacrity offered yourselves to assist us when we wanted that assistance on all occasions, according to his command; it is but just, now all our difficulties are over, that you should be permitted to enjoy rest, and that we should trespass on your alacrity to help us no longer; that so, if we should again stand in need of it, we may readily have it on any future emergency, and not tire you out so much now as may make you slower in assisting us another time.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

Questions of taste are peculiar to each race.
— from The Philippines a Century Hence by José Rizal

xi. 11), he even acknowledged John the Baptist to be greater than he; while it must be patent to every reader that no man could be greater than the almighty, supreme Potentate of heaven and earth, in any sense whatever.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

And he had for his companions in his philosophical studies, [425] his three brothers, Neocles, Chæredemus, and Aristobulus, who were excited by his exhortations, as Philodemus, the Epicurean, relates in the tenth book of the Classification of Philosophers.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

He now stands on the brink of Inferno, where the sounds peculiar to each region of it converge and are reverberated from its rim.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

In the United States National Museum in July, 1949, the specimen providing the easternmost record station of occurrence was examined by us.
— from A Synopsis of the American Bats of the Genus Pipistrellus by E. Raymond (Eugene Raymond) Hall

[324] Romani autem Pontifices, prout temporum et rerum conditio suadebat, nunc convocatis oecumenicis Conciliis aut explorata Ecclesiae per orbem dispersae sententia, nunc per Synodos particulares, nunc aliis, quae divina suppeditabat providentia, adhibitis auxiliis, ea tenenda definiverunt, quae sacris Scripturis et apostolicis Traditionibus consentanea, Deo adiutore, cognoverant.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870 by Various

Also, he promised them enormous returns in an exceedingly brief space of time.
— from Scattergood Baines by Clarence Budington Kelland

The Lords, Mary’s enemies, while perpetually protesting their extreme reluctance to publish Letters to Mary’s discredit, had now sent the rumour of them all through Europe.
— from The Mystery of Mary Stuart by Andrew Lang

“Ye have done well, sons of the stranger’s magic,” said the King, as the three young izanusi returned to his presence, their eyeballs rolling, and their mouths still drooping foam after the frenzied excitement attendant upon the discharge of their dread office.
— from The White Shield by Bertram Mitford

The statute created a new property right, giving to the author, after publication, the exclusive right to multiply copies for a limited period.
— from Commercial Law by Richard William Hill

To produce the effect referred to, a large quantity must be injected—from five to ten pounds in an adult—and repeated at longer or shorter intervals, as the state of the pulse, and other symptoms, may indicate.
— from The Cholera Gazette, Vol. I. No. 4. Wednesday, August 1st, 1832. by Various

There are even proposals to effectively replace copyright law altogether with potentially much more onerous contract law."
— from Project Gutenberg (1971-2008) by Marie Lebert

Upon the table were tumblers which they had emptied, and a strong smell of rum pervaded the entire room.
— from The Prose Tales of Alexander Pushkin by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

But throughout the day, from 6.30 in the morning to about 7 at night one must pursue the eternal round—two paces forward, right about, two paces back, right about, and so on.
— from Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons: Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot