The course through time of highest civilization, does it not wait the first glimpse of our contribution to its kosmic train of poems, bibles, first-class structures, perpetuities—Egypt and Palestine and India—Greece and Rome and mediaeval Europe—and so onward?
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

So I tromped right along ’mongst ’em, en went up on de b’iler deck en ’way back aft to de ladies’ cabin guard, en sot down dah in de 234 same cheer
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

"Remain a moment, Esther," said he, "You were in my thoughts."
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

[69] worked out the plots of his best plays without much reflection and many experiments; and it appears to me scarcely more possible to mistake the signs of deliberate care in some of his famous speeches.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

It was very natural for the plebeians, oppressed by debt, or apprehensive of injuries, to implore the protection of some powerful chief, who acquired over their persons and property the same absolute right as, among the Greeks and Romans, a master exercised over his slaves.
— 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

But, when I had secured my box-place by to-morrow's coach, and had been down to Mr. Pocket's and back, I was not by any means convinced on the last point, and began to invent reasons and make excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Experience abundantly shows that men can govern anything more easily than their tongues, and restrain anything more easily than their appetites; when it comes about that many believe, that we are only free in respect to objects which we moderately desire, because our desire for such can easily be controlled by the thought of something else frequently remembered, but that we are by no means free in respect to what we seek with violent emotion, for our desire cannot then be allayed with the remembrance of anything else.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

Then, too, our republican institutions were regarded as experiments up to the breaking out of the rebellion, and monarchical Europe generally believed that our republic was a rope of sand that would part the moment the slightest strain was brought upon it.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

Absolute commands, terrible compulsory methods, in order that they may rise above mere ease in life.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

It is well to remember that self-color rugs are most effective in chintz rooms.
— from The House in Good Taste by Elsie De Wolfe

The new government, called the "Horned Council," on account of its incapacity, was for a while unable to stop the revolts, and more executions followed.
— from The Story of Switzerland by Lina Hug

The red caps were not popular, and both sides receiving reinforcements, a melee ensued.
— from New Zealanders at Gallipoli by Fred Waite

When gals is full-rigged an' tonguey, they're reg'lar press-gangs to twist young fellers round, an' make 'em sail under the right colors.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

Here, as in the descriptions of the siege of Syracuse, the reader is haunted by the feeling that these great events are regarded as merely episodic.
— from Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal by Harold Edgeworth Butler

He nodded rapidly and most expressively, without speech.
— from A Likely Story by William De Morgan

He said that his unfortunate countrymen, who were then robbing and murdering each other, might probably be rendered better by the reading of the Gospel, but could never be injured.
— from The Bible in Spain, Vol. 2 [of 2] Or, the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula by George Borrow

Defense expenditures: exchange rate conversion - $2.8 billion, 2% of GDP (1992) *Djibouti, Geography Location: Eastern Africa, at the entrance to the Red Sea between Ethiopia and Somalia Map references: Africa, Middle East, Standard Time Zones of the World Area: total area: 22,000 km2 land area: 21,980 km2 comparative area: slightly larger than Massachusetts Land boundaries: total 508 km, Erithea 113 km, Ethiopia 337 km, Somalia 58 km Coastline: 314 km Maritime claims: contiguous zone: 24 nm exclusive economic zone: 200 nm territorial sea: 12 nm International disputes: possible claim by Somalia based on unification of ethnic Somalis Climate: desert; torrid, dry Terrain: coastal plain and plateau separated by central mountains Natural resources: geothermal areas Land use: arable land: 0% permanent crops: 0% meadows and pastures: 9% forest and woodland: 0% other: 91% Irrigated land: NA km2 Environment: vast wasteland Note: strategic location near world's busiest shipping lanes and close to Arabian oilfields; terminus of rail traffic into Ethiopia *Djibouti, People Population: 401,579 (July 1993 est.)
— from The 1993 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

And Besso sank down almost insensible; then he made a vain effort to rise again, murmuring ‘Eva!’
— from Tancred; Or, The New Crusade by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

Here, habited in full regalia, and seated in alignment on raised benches, the members of the Order were wont to receive trembling initiates, commune together about affairs of government, and plan midnight raids against mortal enemies.
— from K. K. K. Sketches, Humorous and Didactic Treating the More Important Events of the Ku-Klux-Klan Movement in the South. With a Discussion of the Causes which gave Rise to it, and the Social and Political Issues Emanating from it. by James Melville Beard