Children of tender age were sent among utter strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they frequently—once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of learning,—came together in small groups and passed the night without sleep, in reading aloud by turns.
— from Bushido, the Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe

This hath been the case of Haman, the son of Ammedatha, by birth an Amalekite, and alien from the blood of the Persians, who, when he was hospitably entertained by us, and partook of that kindness which we bear to all men to so great a degree, as to be called my father, and to be all along worshipped, and to have honor paid him by all in the second rank after the royal honor due to ourselves, he could not bear his good fortune, nor govern the magnitude of his prosperity with sound reason; nay, he made a conspiracy against me and my life, who gave him his authority, by endeavoring to take away Mordecai, my benefactor, and my savior, and by basely and treacherously requiring to have Esther, the partner of my life, and of my dominion, brought to destruction; for he contrived by this means to deprive me of my faithful friends, and transfer the government to others: 20 but since I perceived that these Jews, that were by this pernicious fellow devoted to destruction, were not wicked men, but conducted their lives after the best manner, and were men dedicated to the worship of that God who hath preserved the kingdom to me and to my ancestors, I do not only free them from the punishment which the former epistle, which was sent by Haman, ordered to be inflicted on them, to which if you refuse obedience, you shall do well; but I will that they have all honor paid to them.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

Against the pure scroll of the sky, a blot, Stands out her sepulchre, a fatal spot That seems a baneful breath around to spread.
— from Poems by Victor Hugo

And this is the Doctrine, not onely that Bellarmine here, and many other Doctors teach in their Sermons and Books, but also that some Councells have decreed, and the Popes have decreed, and the Popes have accordingly, when the occasion hath served them, put in practise.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

FIVE-FRANC PIECE CHAPTER XVIII—MARIUS’ TWO CHAIRS FORM A VIS-A-VIS CHAPTER XIX—OCCUPYING ONE’S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS CHAPTER XX—THE TRAP CHAPTER XXI—ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE VICTIMS CHAPTER XXII—THE LITTLE ONE WHO WAS CRYING IN VOLUME TWO VOLUME IV.—SAINT-DENIS.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured through it that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but that for her part she had never been mixed up in such a business before, and that on her honour as a Christian all she and Haffen had thought of was that the letters mustn't go any farther.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

It was a cardinal sin, and, bed being accounted the place for sleep and not for conversation, it was admitted that a pupil who slept out of his own bed, did so only for immoral purposes.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

H2 anchor CHAPTER XXI—ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE VICTIMS At nightfall, Javert had posted his men and had gone into ambush himself between the trees of the Rue de la Barrière-des-Gobelins which faced the Gorbeau house, on the other side of the boulevard.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The youngest lad in the ship, a Boston boy about thirteen years old, was coxswain of this boat, and had the entire charge of her, to keep her clean, and have her in readiness to go and come at any hour.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

But Mithraism centred upon some now forgotten mysteries about Mithras sacrificing a sacred and benevolent bull; all the Mithraic shrines seem to have contained a figure of Mithras killing this bull, which bleeds copiously, and from this blood a new life sprang.
— from The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Just as a competitor in a long-distance race takes his nourishment without halting, so should a battleship be able to coal "on the wing."
— from The Romance of Modern Mechanism With Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wonderful Machinery and Mechanical Devices and Marvellously Delicate Scientific Instruments by Archibald Williams

The guns were again loaded, the party took their stations as before; but, although they waited another half-hour, neither hyena nor jackal made their appearance.
— from The Bush Boys: History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family by Mayne Reid

If, in like manner, we were to allow our imagination to conceive the existence of a being as much in need of a microscope for our time and affairs as we for those of our own component cells, the years would be to such a being but as the winkings or the twinklings of an eye.
— from Life and Habit by Samuel Butler

Not only the configuration of the straits and bays, but also the earth’s rotation from west to east, causes the currents here to set towards the west, and wash the western coasts, while they act very little on the eastern.
— from Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage by Richard Hakluyt

She had never seen such a bird before, and thought it could not possibly be a usual one, for a little gold chain was fastened to its foot, and its tail seemed made of sunbeams instead of feathers.
— from An Egyptian Princess — Complete by Georg Ebers

"I would be an Indian princess and wear a wonderful red mantle with purple stripes and have chains about my neck, and my hair braided and shining, and beautiful bracelets, and they would all bow down to me—and you'd have to, too."
— from Wenonah's Stories for Children by Warren Proctor

Sir, a breath blows all this triumph away.
— from The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style by Edwin Percy Whipple