I knew from her own lips that she regarded herself as the innocent cause of his errors, and as owing him a great debt she ardently desired to pay.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

But when the messengers were come to the city of king Saul, and declared the dangers in which the inhabitants of Jabesh were, the people were in the same affliction as those in the other cities, for they lamented the calamity of those related to them.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

The extant "Contest", however, has clearly combined with the original document much other ill-digested matter on the life and descent of Homer, probably drawing on the same general sources as does the Herodotean "Life of Homer".
— from Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica by Hesiod

After begging pardon for having intruded upon your family at these hours, I must now tell you that my cousin, Count Melvil, was some time ago so much misrepresented to his mother by certain malicious informers, who delight in sowing discord in private families, that she actually believed her son an extravagant spendthrift, who had not only consumed his remittances in the most riotous scenes of disorder, but also indulged a pernicious appetite for gaming, to such a degree, that he had lost all his clothes and jewels at play.
— from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. (Tobias) Smollett

Scipio also did this on the Roman side.
— from Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek during the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form by Cassius Dio Cocceianus

She and Diana talked so constantly about it all day that with a stricter teacher than Mr. Phillips dire disgrace must inevitably have been their portion.
— from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn’t probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

But in this expedition or pilgrimage, his power was exercised in the administration of justice: he reformed the licentious polygamy of the Arabs, relieved the tributaries from extortion and cruelty, and chastised the luxury of the Saracens, by despoiling them of their rich silks, and dragging them on their faces in the dirt.
— 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

Coleridge, the author of that misleading phrase 'motiveless malignity,' has some fine remarks on Iago; and the essence of the character has been described, first in some of the best lines Hazlitt ever wrote, and then rather more fully by Mr. Swinburne,—so admirably described that I am tempted merely to read and illustrate these two criticisms.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

which with young children are brought into strong action during their screaming-fits, from slightly twitching or trembling.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

Norman next gave a description of the various modes of hunting the caribou practised by the Indians and Esquimaux; such as driving them into a pound, snaring them, decoying and shooting them with arrows, and also a singular way which the Esquimaux have of taking them in a pit-trap built in the snow.
— from The Young Voyageurs: Boy Hunters in the North by Mayne Reid

By the side of a rock, which hill him from Nefert, he paused, set the cup on a flat block of stone, and drew the flask with the philter out of his girdle.
— from Uarda : a Romance of Ancient Egypt — Complete by Georg Ebers

But in strength and durability the republic was hardly more fortunate than the limited monarchy.
— from A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. by Carlton J. H. (Carlton Joseph Huntley) Hayes

For when he had learned that the Scots there, in semblable wise as the Britains in their countrie, led not their liues in manie points according to the ecclesiasticall rules, as well in obseruing the feast of Easter contrarie to the vse of the Romane church, as in other things, he wrote vnto those Scots letters exhortatorie, requiring them most instantlie to an vnitie of catholike orders as might be agréeable with the church of Christ, spred and dispersed through the world.
— from Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. by Raphael Holinshed

[191] and a gloomy, mournful life in cores of pain, in prisons of fire, in streams of the rows of eternal fire, in the cup of eternal sorrow and death’ (tr.
— from An Irish Precursor of Dante A Study on the Vision of Heaven and Hell ascribed to the Eighth-century Irish Saint Adamnán, with Translation of the Irish Text by Charles Stuart Boswell

The queen, who had been somewhat distraite , and had good cause to be somewhat sad, and disposed to commune with herself, addressed Madame de Staël with the question, 'You have been in Italy, then?'
— from Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era by L. (Luise) Mühlbach

Surprised and divided, they were unable either to withstand the attack or to resist the passage, and they dispersed in hasty flight.
— from The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) by Theodor Mommsen