They go commission’d to require a peace, And carry presents to procure access.
— from The Aeneid by Virgil

He being newly baptised did, notwithstanding all that we could say to the contrary, dispute publicly concerning the Christian religion, with more zeal than discretion, and with so much heat, that he not only preferred our worship to theirs, but condemned all their rites as profane, and cried out against all that adhered to them as impious and sacrilegious persons, that were to be damned to everlasting burnings.
— from Utopia by More, Thomas, Saint

Mashenka went into her room, and then, for the first time in her life, it was her lot to experience in all its acuteness the feeling that is so familiar to persons in dependent positions, who eat the bread of the rich and powerful, and cannot speak their minds.
— from The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Departing thence, he returned to Ravenna and painted a chapel in fresco in S. Giovanni Evangelista, which is much extolled.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

The difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new and better goals.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Presently he decided to retire, and picked a cot, also removing his shoes.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser

It is now held, both in England and Scotland, that the tressure flory and counterflory is, as a part of the Royal Arms, protected, and cannot be granted to any person without the express licence of the Page 145 {145} Sovereign.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

As he conducted her into the room and placed a chair for her, he observed, by the light of the candles, that she was even prettier than he had at first believed.
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

In a minute and a half the fire seized upon a dense growth of dry manzanita chapparal six or eight feet high, and then the roaring and popping and crackling was something terrific.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

Otter-hunting is a poor man's sport, and few people realise what it costs to run a pack and country.
— from The Book of the Otter: A manual for sportsmen and naturalists by Richard Clapham

He laughed at it just as much; in short, he declared the rule absurd, pharisaical, and contrary to the spirit of the Gospel.
— from Bouvard and Pécuchet: A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life, part 2 by Gustave Flaubert

In Landor, it takes the shape of pagan Humanism, of too repellent and proud a character to win the suffrage of Europe.
— from Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 4. Naturalism in England by Georg Brandes

This empowers two justices of the peace ‘to rejecte and put away comen ale-selling in townes and places where they shall think convenyent, and to take suertie of the keepers of ale-houses of their gode behavyng, by the discrecion of the seid justices, and in the same to be avysed and aggreed at the time of their sessions.’
— from Nineteen Centuries of Drink in England: A History by Richard Valpy French

This conjecture is likewise favoured by my observation, that respiration and putrefaction affect common air in the same manner, and in the same manner in which all other processes diminish air and make it noxious, and which agree in nothing but the emission of phlogiston.
— from Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air by Joseph Priestley