To-morrow you can tell everybody that we are friends, and that though I am not a prince I am really a count; here is my passport from the King of Naples, pray read it.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

ance of the Eagles Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, The rushing amorous contact high in space together, The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull, A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing, Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight, She hers, he his, pursuing. H2 anchor Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel] Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality, And the vast all that is call'd Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

This set the chief "a-thynkynge," and as we were driving home he suddenly said: "I think they would never have spoken to the other representatives about Christianity, had it not been for the little piece of excitement I got up yesterday."
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

Mary Stringar ran a coffee house in Little Trinity Lane in 1669; Anne Blunt was mistress of one of the Turk's-Head houses in Cannon Street in 1672.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

The fear was entertained that it was a mere freak of history, a child's game of Time, the blowing up of a soap-bubble, perfect in its rondure and colouring, hollow in its heart and without substance.
— from Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore

This departure from his regular and constant habit, in one so regular and unvarying in all that appertained to the daily pursuit of riches, would almost of itself have told that the usurer was not well.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

The charity of St. Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom, relieved and conducted his itinerant brethren; 71 and from Belgrade to Antioch, they traversed fifteen hundred miles of a Christian empire.
— 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

It is instructive to observe that a gospel's congruity with natural reason and common humanity is regarded as the decisive mark of its supernatural origin.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

For when the believing soul, conscious of her own vileness, reflects upon the humiliation of the Son of God, and beholds him humbling himself so as not only to put off the form of God , that he might appear in that of man , but even to suffer the greatest of evils in this vile form, for the vilest of his creatures; by this reflection and consideration, he is not only made humble, but hence, also, in this his humility, there springs up a most noble flame of love to God, which burns more and more day by day.
— from True Christianity A Treatise on Sincere Repentence, True Faith, the Holy Walk of the True Christian, Etc. by Johann Arndt

These English exiles readily embraced the Geneva system; and having added farther improvements of their own, upon Queen Mary's death returned to England; where they preached up their own opinions; inveighing bitterly against Episcopacy, and all rites and ceremonies, however innocent and ancient in the Church: building upon this foundation; to run as far as possible from Popery, even in the most minute and indifferent circumstances: this faction, under the name of Puritan, became very turbulent, during the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth; and were always discouraged by that wise queen, as well as by her two successors.
— from The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. — Volume 04 Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church — Volume 2 by Jonathan Swift

Shelby told his whereabouts, and requested the prompt services of Jasper Hinchey and three or four kindred spirits, ringing off after certain mysterious, though concise, directions regarding a concert hall in the Flats, which he meant shortly to utilize.
— from The Henchman by Mark Lee Luther

The process of the evolution of religious rites and ceremonies has in its main outlines been the same all over the world, as the reader will presently see—and this whether in connection with the numerous creeds of Paganism or the supposedly unique case of Christianity; and now the continuity and close intermixture of these great streams can no longer be denied—nor IS it indeed denied by those who have really studied the subject.
— from Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning by Edward Carpenter

A political antagonist of Gaius Flaminius, and summoned to the head of affairs in virtue of the reaction against his foolish war-demagogism, Fabius departed for the camp just as firmly resolved to avoid a pitched battle at any price, as his predecessor had been determined at any price to fight one; he was without doubt convinced that the first elements of strategy would forbid Hannibal to advance so long as the Roman army confronted him intact, and that accordingly it would not be difficult to weaken by petty conflicts and gradually to starve out the enemy's army, dependent as it was on foraging for its supplies.
— from The History of Rome, Book III From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States by Theodor Mommsen

In the spring McArthur paid us off for our winter’s work, each man receiving a Cayuse horse in full of all demands.
— from Then and Now; or, Thirty-Six Years in the Rockies Personal Reminiscences of Some of the First Pioneers of the State of Montana by Robert Vaughn

They had gone round the southern part of Belgium like coopers round a cask, hooping it in with tight bands of steel.
— from Paths of Glory: Impressions of War Written at and Near the Front by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb

After the disastrous affair of Neerwinden, Miranda was accused of misconduct, arrested, and sent to Paris for trial, but was acquitted by the Tribunal Révolutionnaire , and conducted home in triumph.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 31, May, 1860 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

He passes over all the larger problems, such as those of development, inheritance, regeneration, and confines himself in the main to the physiological functions of protoplasm, especially to those of the absorption of food and metabolism.
— from Naturalism and Religion by Rudolf Otto