One chooses by land to seek flight: to another, the water Appeals, and the sea than his own land is safer!
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter

Test it seriously, whether I have crept into the heart of life itself, and into the roots of its heart!
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The old chair in which the Prince slept, and the remains of his plaid (which plaid he gave Mrs. Graham when he thanked her on leaving in the morning), are now in the possession of Miss Graham, to whom the Editor is indebted for the above details of her father and ancestors.
— from The Waterloo Roll Call With Biographical Notes and Anecdotes by Charles Dalton

Helvius Cinna, tribune of the people, admitted to several persons the fact, that he had a bill ready drawn, which Caesar had ordered him to get enacted in his absence, allowing him, with the hope of leaving issue, to take any wife he chose, and as many of them as he pleased; and to leave no room for doubt of his infamous character for unnatural lewdness and adultery, Curio, the father, says, in one of his speeches, “He was every woman’s man, and every man’s woman.” LIII.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

For years she had been what is called "stage-struck" and had paraded through the streets with traveling men guests at her father's hotel, wearing loud clothes and urging them to tell her of life in the cities out of which they had come.
— from Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson

For a long time he was the centre and tragic hero of life in general; then he endeavoured to demonstrate at least his relationship to the most essential and in itself most valuable side of life—as all metaphysicians do, who wish to hold fast to the dignity of man, in their belief that moral values are cardinal values.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, deprived of their situations, were gradually reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers in that very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over others.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Here, as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he treated them with absent-minded contempt.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

By a mistake of Nakai's about the hour of leaving I kept the party waiting for me at the custom house and a mounted messenger had to be sent to fetch me.
— from A Diplomat in Japan The inner history of the critical years in the evolution of Japan when the ports were opened and the monarchy restored, recorded by a diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time, with an account of his personal experiences during that period by Ernest Mason Satow

It was like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an Aeolian harp.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Now or never was the peremptory alternative presented to the consul, who, taking his official life in his hands, had to decide and act on his own personal responsibility.
— from The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era, Vol. 1 (of 2) As Illustrated in the Career of Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., D.C.L., Many Years Consul and Minister in China and Japan by Alexander Michie

Instead of following More's example, and accepting well-meant advice, he persisted in the same tone, and drew up an address to the House of Lords, in which he repeated the defence which he had made to Cromwell.
— from History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. by James Anthony Froude

I'd like to have one like it, if it's as dangerous as it looks."
— from Red Saunders: His Adventures West & East by Henry Wallace Phillips

This has become so habitual with him that he often looks in upon us at dinner when we are not expecting him; he lays aside the sternness of the philosopher and jokes with us in the pleasantest fashion.
— from Roman life in the days of Cicero by Alfred John Church

Thus thought Cesarine, involuntarily perhaps, yet not altogether crudely; she gave a bird’s-eye glance at the harvest of love in her own home, and reasoned by induction; the happiness of her mother was before her eyes,—she wished for no better fate; her instinct told her that Anselme was another Cesar, improved by his education, as she had been improved by hers.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

Miss Ferrier, in one of her novels ("Marriage," I think), makes a Highland girl [Pg 244] protest that "no Englishman with his round face " shall ever wean her heart from her own country; but England is not the land of round faces; and those have observed little, indeed, who think so: France it is that grows the round face, and in so large a majority of her provinces that it has become one of the national characteristics.
— from The Collected Writing of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II by Thomas De Quincey

During the Wars of the Roses the partisans of the House of Lancaster in the contest for the crown of England as opposed to the House of York.
— from Phrases and Names, Their Origins and Meanings by Trench H. Johnson