Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I have seen some of these small parts, each making two or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the establishment.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

At a soirée , par excellence , music, dancing, and conversation are all admissible, and if the hostess has tact and discretion this variety is very pleasing.
— from The Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness Being a Complete Guide for a Gentleman's Conduct in All His Relations Towards Society by Cecil B. Hartley

As I shall have briefly to relate doings of these folk, and would fain not seem to fabricate what conflicts with common belief or outsteps the faithful truth, it is worth the knowing that there were in old times three kinds of magicians who by diverse sleights practiced extraordinary marvels.
— from The Danish History, Books I-IX by Grammaticus Saxo

His adversaries do not now plead ceremonial restrictions, or at least do not plead these alone: but they erect an artificial barrier of spiritual privilege, even more fatal to the universal claims of the Gospel, because more specious and more insidious.
— from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A revised text with introductions, notes and dissertations by J. B. (Joseph Barber) Lightfoot

and such controversies in the New Testament at this day, amongst the Spirituall Prophets: Every man then was, and now is bound to make use of his Naturall Reason, to apply to all Prophecy those Rules which God hath given us, to discern the true from the false.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

His spirit, after some previous expiation, might have been permitted to mingle with the benefactors of mankind, if an Italian hermit had not been witness, in a vision, to the damnation of Theodoric, 108 whose soul was plunged, by the ministers of divine vengeance, into the volcano of Lipari, one of the flaming mouths of the infernal world.
— 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

At last he said, “Pray excuse my apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I should like to ask you a question in experimental psychology and the association of ideas.”
— from The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

And if one strophe sounded painfully— "Each mortal thinks of himself alone, This truth has been manifested"— on the other side the answer pealed forth— "A mighty stream of warmest love, All through the world shall guide us."
— from What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

One of his books has the following quaint impress :— “Parisii Sancti Pons est Michaelis in Urbe; Multae illic aedes; notior una tamen; Hanc cano, quae Sacri Baptistae fronte notata est Hic respondebit Bibliopola tibi; Vis impressoris nomen quoque nosse?
— from The History of Signboards, from the Earliest times to the Present Day by John Camden Hotten

And if perchance your statement is true that the Theosophical Sciety—which you so mistakenly identify with Theosophy—is now "in the days of scorning," possibly even more than it was in the old days; What and who is it that has made it so?
— from H. P. Blavatsky; A Great Betrayal by Alice Leighton Cleather

As to those who sell their labors for the oil of approbation, such persons excite my pity."
— from The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi by Candide Chalippe