Pohlenz was in a bath of perspiration, the recitative did not come off, and I really began to think that Beethoven must have written nonsense; the double bass player, Temmler, a faithful veteran of the orchestra, prevailed upon Pohlenz at last, in rather coarse and energetic language, to put down the baton, and in this way the recitative really proceeded properly.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

It stood in the Forum, where some ruins on a prodigious scale, still remaining, were traditionally considered to be those of the Temple of Peace, until Piranesi contended that they are part of Nero’s Golden House.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

ATHENIAN: And our third law, if I am not mistaken, will be to the effect that our poets, understanding prayers to be requests which we make to the Gods, will take especial heed that they do not by mistake ask for evil instead of good.
— from Laws by Plato

One puffs up paste, the other pastes up puffs.
— from The Handbook of Conundrums by Edith B. (Edith Bertha) Ordway

On one side the broad, green, cultivated fields, stretched away fair in the sunlight; on the other, pile upon pile, were the huge, dark mountains, up whose steep sides the soft mist was wreathing itself in a thousand fantastic, graceful shapes.
— from Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things. by Fanny Fern

Those old peoples understood pretty well how to make themselves comfortable, didn't they?
— from Music-Study in Germany, from the Home Correspondence of Amy Fay by Amy Fay

His unbounded enthusiasm for his peculiar calling and his desire so to state the facts of his experience as to give the general public a fairer and fuller understanding of its real conditions inspired him to the labor of crowding into his busy life the pleasant task of putting upon paper the main points of his interesting career.
— from Sawdust & Spangles: Stories & Secrets of the Circus by W. C. (William Cameron) Coup

The notion held by the Puritans concerning a proper worship music was that of plain unison psalmody.
— from Music in the History of the Western Church With an Introduction on Religious Music Among Primitive and Ancient Peoples by Edward Dickinson

Definition .—A condition of periostitis and ostitis in the region of the pyramidal process of the os pedis, usually preceded, but sometimes followed, by fracture of the process, and characterized by deformity of the hoof and an alteration in the normal angle of the joint.
— from Diseases of the Horse's Foot by H. Caulton (Harry Caulton) Reeks

Seven years—and in its passage the air encircling the globe has become one gigantic battle area, the British Isles have lost the age-long security which the seas gave them, and to regain the old proud unassailable position must build a gigantic aerial fleet—as greatly superior to that of their neighbours as was, and is, the British Navy.
— from The Mastery of the Air by William J. Claxton

Those who argue for independent invention rest their case largely on a distortion of the theory of “psychic unity” put forward by Adolf Bastian in mid-Victorian days.
— from Early Man in the New World by Joseph A. Hester

They'll cure one another; I must have none but kills, and those kill stinking: Or look ye, let the single Pox possess them, Or Pox upon Pox. Puts.
— from Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10): The Loyal Subject by John Fletcher