For as in flutes and harps, and in all vocal performances, a certain unison and harmony must be preserved amidst the distinctive tones, which cannot be broken or violated without offending experienced ears; and as this concord and delicious harmony is produced by the exact gradation and modulation of dissimilar notes; even so, by means of the just apportionment of the highest, middle, and lower classes, the State is maintained in concord and peace by the harmonic subordination of its discordant elements: and thus, that which is by musicians called harmony in song answers and corresponds to what we call concord in the State—concord, the strongest and loveliest bond of security in every commonwealth, being always accompanied by justice and equity.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

From this cause thunder is more frequent in Italy, the air being more easily set in motion, in consequence of a milder winter and a showery summer, so that it may be said to be always spring or autumn.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

‘I suppose I must. I can’t be more miserable anywhere,’ whimpered the whelp, ‘than I have been here, ever since I can remember.
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

I seek, therefore, some such interest more immediately connected with government, and which may be at once the original motive to its institution, and the source of our obedience to it.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

She is mistaken in considering the cause so nearly won, 373 but it would be as impossible for her to realize the situation as it was for Rev. Thomas Beecher to be convinced that Mr. Smith saw more clearly than he.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

The emperor concluded me to be drowned, and that the enemy’s fleet was approaching in a hostile manner: but he was soon eased of his fears; for the channel growing shallower every step I made, I came in a short time within hearing, and holding up the end of the cable, by which the fleet was fastened, I cried in a loud voice, “Long live the most puissant king of Lilliput!”
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

The emperor concluded me to be drowned, and that the enemy's fleet was approaching in an hostile manner: but he was soon eased of his fears; for the channel growing shallower every step I made, I came in a short time within hearing; and holding up the end of the cable, by which the fleet was fastened, I cried in a loud voice, Long live the most puissant
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World by Jonathan Swift

In what words shall I describe this dread exploit, by what language shall I make it credible to ages to come, what eulogies are there unmeet for thee, though they be hyperboles piled on hyperboles!
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

For one instant he stopped dead, staring at the figure on the bed, and, at the same instant, Mrs. Inglethorp cried out in a strangled voice, her eyes fixed on the doctor: “Alfred—Alfred——” Then she fell back motionless on the pillows.
— from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

"I led his hoss by where de dogs was, and, sais I, 'Massa, I can't help larfin' no how I can fix it, at dat ar story you told me about dat young rascal Joy.
— from Nature and Human Nature by Thomas Chandler Haliburton

To acknowledge the law of heredity with its concomitant scientific implications, must inevitably change our mental outlook in many directions.
— from Race Improvement; or, Eugenics: A Little Book on a Great Subject by La Reine Helen McKenzie Baker

This she informed me I could do by telephone, as Boyd's name was in the book.
— from The Thread of Flame by Basil King

—The New Orleans Tropic gives the following recipe, which is said to be used with great success in Mexico, in cases of yellow fever: "A tumbler two-thirds full of olive oil, well mixed with the juice of two limes , and a tea-spoonful of fine table salt, is the common remedy in that country; that he has seen it used in hundreds of cases, many of them the most desperate he ever saw, and that he never knew it fail to produce a cure in a solitary instance!
— from Mrs. Hale's Receipts for the Million Containing Four Thousand Five Hundred and Forty-five Receipts, Facts, Directions, etc. in the Useful, Ornamental, and Domestic Arts by Sarah Josepha Buell Hale

He had very benevolently yielded to my importunities on former occasions, and I succeeded in making it clear to him that in so doing he had wrought unconsciously for his own benefit.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

So I must interpret charitably His desire to cuckold me?
— from Tartuffe; Or, The Hypocrite by Molière

"A strange, imperturbable man is Charles Wogan," said he to Gaydon and O'Toole the same evening.
— from Clementina by A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason

When king Solomon had finished these works, these large and beautiful buildings, and had laid up his donations in the temple, and all this in the interval of seven years, and had given a demonstration of his riches and alacrity therein, insomuch that any one who saw it would have thought it must have been an immense time ere it could have been finished; and would be surprised that so much should be finished in so short a time; short, I mean, if compared with the greatness of the work: he also wrote to the rulers and elders of the Hebrews, and ordered all the people to gather themselves together to Jerusalem, both to see the temple which he had built, and to remove the ark of God into it; and when this invitation of the whole body of the people to come to Jerusalem was every where carried abroad, it was the seventh month before they came together; which month is by our countrymen called Thisri, but by the Macedonians Hyperberetoets.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

The Lady Cathcart, whose romantic story is mentioned in "Castle Rackrent," was wont to say:—"I have been married three times; the first for money, the second for rank, the third for love; and the third was worst of all."
— from Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) Edited with notes and Introductory Account of her life and writings by Hester Lynch Piozzi

"No, sir," answered Ferdinand, smiling to find his father had fallen into the same mistake that he had done when he first saw Miranda, "she is a mortal, but by immortal Providence she is mine; I chose her when I could not ask you, my father, for your consent, not thinking you were alive.
— from Tales from Shakespeare by Charles Lamb