Bunyan's perception that righteousness is filthy rags, his scorn for Mr Legality in the village of Morality, his defiance of the Church as the supplanter of religion, his insistence on courage as the virtue of virtues, his estimate of the career of the conventionally respectable and sensible Worldly Wiseman as no better at bottom than the life and death of Mr Badman: all this, expressed by Bunyan in the terms of a tinker's theology, is what Nietzsche has expressed in terms of post-Darwinian, post-Schopenhaurian philosophy; Wagner in terms of polytheistic mythology; and Ibsen in terms of mid-XIX century Parisian dramaturgy.
— from Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy by Bernard Shaw

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

This day wilt thou either bring back in triumph the gory head and spoils of Aeneas, and we will avenge Lausus' agonies; or if no force opens a way, thou wilt die with me: f
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

The contest was for a long time evenly balanced but in the end the Romans got the best of it.
— 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

For neither was he able to keep a watch upon all the cities so widely removed from each other,—while he remained entrenched at one spot, and the enemy were manœuvering against him with several armies,—nor could he divide his force into many parts; for he would have put an easy victory into the hands of the enemy by becoming inferior to them in numbers, and finding it impossible to be personally present at all points.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

IMG The soldiers, accustomed from childhood to live in the open air, erected no tents or huts of boughs for themselves in these temporary encampments, but bivouacked in the open, and the sculptures on the façades of the Theban pylons give us a minute picture of the way in which they employed themselves when off duty.
— from History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) by G. (Gaston) Maspero

The elaborate bronze brooch in the form of a ribbed band passing through a ring (No. 371 ; fig. 156) is stamped underneath with the name of the maker ( VLATI ), in the manner of the Roman pottery.
— from A Guide to the Exhibition Illustrating Greek and Roman Life by British Museum. Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities

Forgive what has seemed to you careless in the expression, but believe in the love that made it.
— from A Widow's Tale, and Other Stories by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

"I have been thinking," Miss Clyde replied, "that it would be wise not to enter Blue Bonnet in the Boston school immediately.
— from Blue Bonnet in Boston; or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's by Lela Horn Richards

In remarking on this communication, I will not say it is impossible that the extraordinary circumstance of two persons having each the same dream —I will call it—at the same hour, and that both believed they were awakened by the phantom of a distant relative, may not be explained by natural causes, as some things of a similar character were attempted to be explained, under the word “spirit,” in an early edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, but in the absence of facts , what do such attempts amount to?
— from Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXX, No. 6, June 1847 by Various

It pulled the sailor who was paying the rope out bodily out of the balcony, and only the agility and strength of the captain kept him from falling into the hands or upon the head of the enemy below, but in the struggle he let go of the rope.
— from Frontier Boys in Frisco by Wyn Roosevelt

This change of temperature however could not be obtained directly by any experiments which had been made at that epoch; but by inverting the problem, and assuming the velocity of sound as given by 135 experiment, it was computed that the temperature of a mass of air is raised nine-tenths of a degree when the compression is equal to 1 ⁄ 116 of its volume.
— from On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences by Mary Somerville

Only since the peace of Nangking in 1842, which shook to its foundation the exclusive system till then prevalent, and among other important advantages secured the island of Hong-kong to the English, besides bringing into the community of nations the huge unwieldy empire with its 367.png 357 400,000,000, occupying 78 degrees of longitude and 38 of latitude, has it been developed into the most important business centre of China.
— from Narrative of the Circumnavigation of the Globe by the Austrian Frigate Novara, Volume II (Commodore B. Von Wullerstorf-Urbair,) Undertaken by Order of the Imperial Government in the Years 1857, 1858, & 1859, Under the Immediate Auspices of His I. and R. Highness the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, Commander-In-Chief of the Austrian Navy. by Scherzer, Karl, Ritter von

Lady Chillingly and himself were both very glad to go to town, being bored at Exmundham; and very glad to go back to Exmundham, being bored in town.
— from Kenelm Chillingly — Volume 01 by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

At one time less than two cab-lengths separated them; then a Ford, driven Fordishly, wandered vaguely out of a crosstown street and hesitated in the middle of the thoroughfare with precisely the air of a staring yokel on a first visit to the city; and Lanyard's driver slammed on the emergency brake barely in time to escape committing involuntary but justifiable flivvercide.
— from The False Faces Further Adventures from the History of the Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance