The duke understood that speech as the messenger of some approaching danger; and now himself thought it high time for Mr. Fox to quit the city, and even the country.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

With these petitions God was well pleased; and promised to give him all those things that he had not mentioned in his option, riches, glory, victory over his enemies; and, in the first place, understanding and wisdom, and this in such a degree as no other mortal man, neither kings nor ordinary persons, ever had.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

He then called to mind his former calamity, and considered that the disorders in his family had hindered him from enjoying any comfort from those that were dearest to him or from his wife whom he loved so well; and suspecting that his future troubles would soon be heavier and greater than those that were past, he was in great confusion of mind; for Divine Providence had in reality conferred upon him a great many outward advantages for his happiness, even beyond his hopes; but the troubles he had at home were such as he never expected to have met with, and rendered him unfortunate; nay, both sorts came upon him to such a degree as no one could imagine, and made it a doubtful question, whether, upon the comparison of both, he ought to have exchanged so great a success of outward good things for so great misfortunes at home, or whether he ought not to have chosen to avoid the calamities relating to his family, though he had, for a compensation, never been possessed of the admired grandeur of a kingdom.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

There were men, however, who told how they had seen three sails putting in to shore, and departing again northwards.
— from The Danish History, Books I-IX by Grammaticus Saxo

Most things you say and do are not necessary.
— from The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus A new rendering based on the Foulis translation of 1742 by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

The only object, of course, is the loaves and fishes; and instead of caucusing, paragraphing, libelling, feasting, promising, and lying, as with us, they take muskets and bayonets, and seizing upon the presidio and custom-house, divide the spoils, and declare a new dynasty.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

What am I to do if your image has grown into my soul, and day and night stands persistently before my eyes, like that pine there at this moment?
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

If I presuppose that a perfect virtue manifests itself in contending, in patient enduring of pain, and undergoing the uttermost extremity of the gout; without being moved in her seat; if I give her troubles and difficulty for her necessary objects: what will become of a virtue elevated to such a degree, as not only to despise pain, but, moreover, to rejoice in it, and to be tickled with the throes of a sharp colic, such as the Epicureans have established, and of which many of them, by their actions, have given most manifest proofs?
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

To obtain the valuable acquisition of a pound of bread, the Goths resigned the possession of an expensive, though serviceable, slave; and a small quantity of meat was greedily purchased with ten pounds of a precious, but useless metal, when their property was exhausted, they continued this necessary traffic by the sale of their sons and daughters; and notwithstanding the love of freedom, which animated every Gothic breast, they submitted to the humiliating maxim, that it was better for their children to be maintained in a servile condition, than to perish in a state of wretched and helpless independence.
— 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

You must not ask me how I came by the originals [such they really are] that I am going to present you with: for my mother would not read to me those parts of your uncle's letter which bore hard upon myself, and which leave him without any title to mercy from me: nor would she let me hear but what she pleased of her's in answer; for she has condescended to answer him—with a denial, however; but such a denial as no one but an old bachelor would take from a widow.
— from Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 4 by Samuel Richardson

Leocadia , This Tumult made the streets as dead as night, A man may talk as freely: what's become Of Leocadia ?
— from Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, Vol. 06 of 10 by John Fletcher

There were several young and youngish men, well-dressed, in various stages of intoxication, who had probably been at the lawless "late houses," singing and drinking all night, and were now going home to scare and horrify mothers, sisters, or wives, who may have been waiting five hours to hear the scratch of their latch-key against the front door.
— from Smoking and Drinking by James Parton

She had been strangely reserved and silent all day, and now had stolen quietly away to be alone and think.
— from Golden Face: A Tale of the Wild West by Bertram Mitford

THOUGHTS ON CHRISTMAS, 1891.—It is beautiful to give one day to the ideal—to have one day apart; one day for generous deeds, for good will, for gladness; one day to forget the shadows, the rains, the storms of life; to remember the sunshine, the happiness of youth and health; one day to forget the briers and thorns of the winding path, to remember the fruits and flowers; one day in which to feed the hungry, to salute the poor and lowly; one day to feel the brotherhood of man; one day to remember the heroic and loving deeds of the dead; one day to get acquainted with children, to remember the old, the unfortunate and the imprisoned; one day in which to forget yourself and think lovingly of others; one day for the family, for the fireside, for wife and children, for the love and laughter, the joy and rapture, of home; one day in which bonds and stocks and deeds and notes and interest and mortgages and all kinds of business and trade are forgotten, and all stores and shops and factories and offices and banks and ledgers and accounts and lawsuits are cast aside, put away and locked up, and the weary heart and brain are given a voyage to fairyland.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll

Divide it into sixty-four squares and draw a neat border round it.
— from Photographic Amusements, Ninth Edition Including A Description of a Number of Novel Effects Obtainable with the Camera by Walter E. Woodbury

Port Said is quite as cosmopolitan, but it is not grand or even picturesque; New York is as much of a mixture of nationalities and “colonies,” from those of the Syrians and Greeks on the lower East Side to those of the Hungarians, Poles, and Slavs on the West, but they have not yet become firmly enough established to have become picturesque,—they are simply squalid and dirty, and no one has ever yet expressed the opinion that the waterside life of New York’s wharves and locks has anything of the colour and life of the Mediterranean about it; Paris is gay, brilliant, and withal cosmopolitan, but there is a conventionality about it that does not exist in the great port of Marseilles, where each reviving and declining day brings a whole new arrangement of the mirror of life.
— from Rambles on the Riviera by M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

They appeared to be an exceedingly lively bunch, and were soon spinning about, displaying a nimbleness that excited apprehensions in many a loyal Scranton heart.
— from The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey by Donald Ferguson