says I; 'he's often so, and grows so glum nowadays that I will cut his acquaintance altogether if he does not improve.' “'He drinks awful hard,' says F——; 'may be he's got a fit of the delirium-tremulous.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

That's how I remember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face bright and joyous, in spite of his illness.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All the cities in Peloponnese, both small and great, shall be independent according to the customs of their country.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

And I placed in the class of extremes especially all promises by which somewhat of our freedom is abridged; not that I disapproved of the laws which, to provide against the instability of men of feeble resolution, when what is sought to be accomplished is some good, permit engagements by vows and contracts binding the parties to persevere in it, or even, for the security of commerce, sanction similar engagements where the purpose sought to be realized is indifferent: but because I did not find anything on earth which was wholly superior to change, and because, for myself in particular, I hoped gradually to perfect my judgments, and not to suffer them to deteriorate, I would have deemed it a grave sin against good sense, if, for the reason that I approved of something at a particular time, I therefore bound myself to hold it for good at a subsequent time, when perhaps it had ceased to be so, or I had ceased to esteem it such.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

With the same expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the house, taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once abandoning them.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

The groans of the stone are grown so familiar to my people, that nobody takes any notice of them.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

[1] Such as is worn by schoolgirls and girl students.—TV.]
— from The Little Angel, and Other Stories by Leonid Andreyev

So Anileus and his men were put to an ignominious rout, while men in despair were to attack those that were fresh and in good plight; so a great slaughter was made, and many ten thousand men fell.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

Suppose a ghost should walk into the room!
— from The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865-1900 by Dixon, Thomas, Jr.

"And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God: and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
— from The Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner

As for those who think that one kind of life is especially free from trouble, as some think that of farmers, others that of bachelors, others that of kings, Menander sufficiently exposes their error in the following lines: "Phania, I thought those rich who need not borrow, Nor groan at nights, nor cry out 'Woe is me,' Kicked up and down in this untoward world, But sweet and gentle sleep they may enjoy."
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

Even loyal Oxford, conscientious to a hair's-breadth—always behind the rest of the world—when Whitelock, in 1635, addresses the Quarter Sessions arrayed in the new fashion, owned "one may speak as good sense in a falling band as in a ruff."
— from History of Lace by Palliser, Bury, Mrs.

To the parents of such a girl she promised to give a lac of gold mohurs.
— from Wonder Tales from Many Lands by Katharine Pyle

Stop that snivelling and go send Kaku the Astrologer here.
— from Morning Star by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard