He had been in imminent danger of persecution during the reign of the late king of Prussia, that strange compound of lawless debauchery and priest-ridden superstition: and it is probable that he had little inclination, in his old age, to act over again the fortunes, and hair-breadth escapes of Wolf.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If a young girl has good taste and a contempt for fashion, give her a few yards of ribbon, muslin, and gauze, and a handful of flowers, without any diamonds, fringes, or lace, and she will make herself a dress a hundredfold more becoming than all the smart clothes of La Duchapt.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Moreover, I should cause our local dvoriane to begin crying out in chorus that I am exploiting their extremities, their ruined position, for the purpose of acquiring land for under its value.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

But just as people on the sea, timid and prone to sea-sickness, think they will suffer from it less on board a merchantman than on a boat, and for the same reason shift their quarters to a trireme, but do not attain anything by these changes, for they take with them their timidity and qualmishness, so changes of life do not remove the sorrows and troubles 292 of the soul; which proceed from want of experience and reflection, and from inability or ignorance rightly to enjoy the present.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

Pliny often refers to the “Commentarii” of Agrippa, by which are meant, it is supposed, certain official lists drawn up by him in the measurement of the Roman world under Augustus.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

[Footnote A : The fact, that under the articles of Confederation, slaveholders, whose slaves had escaped into free states, had no legal power to force them back,--that now they have no power to recover, by process of law, their slaves who escape to Canada, the South American States, or to Europe--the case already cited, in which the Supreme Court of Louisiana decided, that residence " for one moment ," under the laws of France emancipated an American slave--the case of Fulton, vs. Lewis, 3 Har. and John's Reps., 56, where the slave of a St. Domingo slaveholder, who brought him to Maryland in '93, was pronounced free by the Maryland Court of Appeals--are illustrations of the acknowledged truth here asserted, that by the consent of the civilized world, and on the principles of universal law, slaves are not " property ," and that whenever held as property under law , it is only by positive legislative acts , forcibly setting aside the law of nature, the common law, and the principles of universal justice and right between man and man,--principles paramount to all law, and from which alone, law derives its intrinsic authoritative sanction.]
— from The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4 by American Anti-Slavery Society

My comrade and I carefully fastened our horses along one side of the barn where they could stand comfortably, or lie down on some old prairie hay during the night.
— from On the Indian Trail Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians by Egerton Ryerson Young

The King forced himself to receive Adams graciously in his closet, but afterwards he treated him even with rudeness; and of course the social circles of London did the same.
— from Beacon Lights of History, Volume 11: American Founders by John Lord

The starved cravings of love devour the first object":— "A Chinese who had suffered bitter disenchantments in marriage retired with his infant son to the solitude of a mountain inaccessible for little-footed Chinese women.
— from An Australian in China Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma by George Ernest Morrison

She called on Lady Delville that day.
— from Godolphin, Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

If she could only look down, Aaron, and see her little velvets, as she called him, lifting my little corduroys ower the pools!"
— from Sentimental Tommy The Story of His Boyhood by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie