The richest wines, the most extraordinary victims, and the rarest aromatics, were profusely consumed on his altar.
— 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

Nor was it among the least of the horrors they endured, that, as ministers of Christ, and honest men, they were chained side by side to felons and the most execrable villains, whose blasphemous tongues were never idle.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

And this question is daily determined, not upon the evidence of the right, but upon the observance or neglect of some forms of words in use with the gentlemen of the robe, about which there is even amongst themselves such a disagreement, that the most experienced veterans in the profession can never be positively assured that they are not mistaken.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

“I warn you, Captain,” one of the officers, a short thin man, evidently very angry, was saying.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Jn Queſti tre meſi et vinti giorni andaſemo circa de quatro millia legue in vn golfo ꝓ queſto mar pacifico in vero he benne pacifico ꝓ q̃ in qʒſto tempo nõ haueſsemo fortuna Senſa vedere
— from The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century by Antonio Pigafetta

In the more equitable view of Mosheim, (Institut.
— 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

In vain would history be ransacked for a parallel to this emperor, who united the most shameful vices to the most extravagant vanity, the most abject meanness to the strongest but most preposterous ambition; and the whole of whose life was one continued scene of lewdness, sensuality, rapine, cruelty, and folly.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

588 The Manguiguinʼs eventful visit to Zamboanga.
— from The Philippine Islands A Political, Geographical, Ethnographical, Social and Commercial History of the Philippine Archipelago, Embracing the Whole Period of Spanish Rule by Foreman, John, F.R.G.S.

Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get all the attention.
— from State of the Union Addresses of Barack Obama, 2009-2016 by Barack Obama

Rubruquis did his work well, and, while failing to find Prester John or to convert any of the Tartars, he penetrated to the very centre of the Mongol empire, visited Karakorum, the capital of the Great Khans, and brought back much valuable information, giving a clear, accurate, and intelligent account of the lands he had seen and the people he had met, with such news of distant China as he could obtain without actually crossing the Great Wall.
— from Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 12 (of 15), Japanese and Chinese by Charles Morris

You must think me either very cruel or very blind, my beloved.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

Over great regions money was still in use, but with the most extravagant variations in price and the most disconcerting fluctuations of public confidence.
— from The World Set Free by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

The circumstance that Byron championed the art theories of a past age, whilst he in everything else belonged to the party of progress, produces a certain likeness between him and Armand Carrel, who also remained faithful to antiquated classicism in literature, though he held the most emancipated views in politics and religion.
— from Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 4. Naturalism in England by Georg Brandes

While absorbed in these reflections, his senses must have been dormant; for just then Miss Edith Van Kirk entered, unheralded by anything but a hovering perfume, the effect of which was to lull him still deeper into his wondering abstraction.
— from Tales from Two Hemispheres by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

Will it be pretended, that this does not come up to his definition of an efficient cause, as that which brings something to pass by “a positive influence?” Such a pretext would amount to nothing; for Edwards has said, that “motives excite volition;” and “to excite, is to be a cause in the most proper sense, not merely a negative occasion, but a ground of existence by positive influence, ” p. 96.
— from An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

In the solution, there is a story of the most exciting voyage that man ever undertook.
— from The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South by Dixon, Thomas, Jr.

Now Mr. Lee (let me light my pipe and get this right) is the most eminent victim of words that ever lived in New England (or indeed anywhere east of East Aurora).
— from Shandygaff A number of most agreeable Inquirendoes upon Life & Letters, interspersed with Short Stories & Skits, the whole most Diverting to the Reader by Christopher Morley