But the thing is true; economy, properly understood, is the more poetic.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

that hee dedicated the Temple; that he blessed the People; and that he himselfe in person made that excellent prayer, used in the Consecrations of all Churches, and houses of Prayer; which is another great mark of Supremacy in Religion.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Fourteen feet high, covered with coarse hair, of a blackish brown, the hair on the arms, from the shoulder to the elbow joints, pointing downwards, while that from the wrist to the elbow pointed upwards, it advanced.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

The Senal Indians of California “profess to believe that the whole world was once a globe of fire, whence that element passed up into the trees, and now comes out whenever two pieces of wood are rubbed together.”
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

45 Tertium est propositum, ut in beneficentia dilectus esset dignitatis; in quo et mores eius erunt spectandi in quem beneficium conferetur, et animus erga nos et communitas ac societas vitae et ad nostras utilitates officia ante collata; quae ut concurrant omnia, optabile est; si minus, plures causae maioresque ponderis plus habebunt.
— from De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero

There are many mediaeval illustrations showing the ear probe used in this fashion.
— from Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times by John Stewart Milne

It has been said that, despite its alarming title, there is nothing in the book that even prudery, unless it were of the most irritable and morbid kind, could object to.
— from A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century by George Saintsbury

That was the exact phrase used (it is believed not for the first time) in describing the occasion in the "Netherby Chronicle and Advertiser."
— from Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City: His Progress and Adventures by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

A single piece of white cloth, fringed with bat fur, was draped about her waist and fell below her knee, the ends passing up in front and back of her round body to fasten loosely at the right shoulder.
— from Terry A Tale of the Hill People by Charles Goff Thomson

The extension of Egypt into the Equatorial Provinces under Ismail Pasha, due in large measure to the geographical discoveries of Grant, Speke, and Baker, led to an enormous accumulation of debt, which caused the country to become bankrupt, Ismail Pasha to be deposed, and Egypt to be administered jointly by France and England on behalf of the European bondholders.
— from The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became Known by Joseph Jacobs

The engines principally used in farm-work are what are termed high-pressure, or of the same class as the locomotive.
— from Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects by Caithness, James Sinclair, 14th earl of

Should they even prove unsuccessful in all that a sanguine admirer of yours hopes from them, you will at least have framed pieces to interest the human mind; and whoever gives a feeling of pleasure that is innocent to man, has added so much to the fair side of a life otherwise too much darkened by anxiety and too much injured by pain.
— from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

It was at this stage that the Japanese strategy has been most severely criticised, and it was just here they seem to have lost hold of the conception of a limited war, if in fact they had ever securely grasped the conception as the elder Pitt understood it.
— from Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Julian Stafford Corbett

His calcined eyes formed part of an ointment which the ancients tell us had such a wonderful efficacy as to enable persons using it to see in the dark.
— from The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 21, November 21, 1840 by Various

The effect of the perusal of this book, and the estimate put upon it by a reader,
— from The Eclipse of Faith; Or, A Visit to a Religious Sceptic by Henry Rogers

[33] The Inquisition, however, regarded the conviction of a heretic as only the preliminary to forcing him to denounce his associates; the earliest papal utterance, in 1252, authorizing its use of torture, prescribed the employment of this means to discover accomplices and finally Paul IV and Pius V decreed that all who were convicted and confessed should, at the discretion of the inquisitors, be tortured for this purpose.
— from A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3 by Henry Charles Lea