" Then Ulysses said, "Achilles, godlike and brave, send not the Achaeans thus against Ilius to fight the Trojans fasting, for the battle will be no brief one, when it is once begun, and heaven has filled both sides with fury; bid them first take food both bread and wine by the ships, for in this there is strength and stay.
— from The Iliad by Homer

To keep out of range of the revealing rays from within he made a circuit through the untrodden snow and gradually approached the farther angle of the basement wall.
— from Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

I would have been glad to have lived under 25 my woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than undertaken such a government as this.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Monsieur and Madame Preodot were dying with laughter; the young lady was confused, and I in despair at having uttered such a gross absurdity; but it could not be helped.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Semyonov aware of his awful misdemeanour, tried to stand up straight and give a report.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Now and then one ascends to the upper stories and gets a glimpse of the life beautiful, the life worth while.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

Philip paused at the summit of an upward slope, and gazed around him.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Everything seems to pass us softly and gently, and hardly to touch us until the moment is over; and then it is the positive feeling of something lacking that tells us of the happiness which has vanished; it is then that we observe that we have failed to hold it fast, and we suffer the pangs of self-reproach as well as of privation.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; the Art of Controversy by Arthur Schopenhauer

For my own part, I hope he may flourish long, and give us stories as good as ‘A Gentleman of France’ as often as he can.
— from My Contemporaries In Fiction by David Christie Murray

Seeing the willingness and single-mindedness of the child he laughed very much, but afterwards appreciating the beauty of the thing and the boy's youth, as father of all talent he thought to bestow his favour upon such a genius and take him into his house, and hearing from him whose son he was, he said: " Let your father know that I desire to speak with him. "
— from Michael Angelo Buonarroti With Translations Of The Life Of The Master By His Scholar, Ascanio Condivi, And Three Dialogues From The Portugese By Francisco d'Ollanda by Holroyd, Charles, Sir

Chase, Salmon Portland , Chief-Justice of the United States; a great anti-slavery advocate and leader of the Free-Soil party; aimed at the Presidency, but failed (1773-1808).
— from The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by P. Austin Nuttall

We may trace from Sebastopol also Tolstoy's characteristic attitude to war, which is peculiar because it unites such a great appreciation of war as a school of heroic virtue with such a whole-hearted condemnation.
— from Tolstoy by Lilian Winstanley

The boy had taken the notes with delighted thanks indeed, but with that tranquil and unprotesting readiness with which spoiled childishness or unhesitating selfishness accepts gifts and sacrifices from another's generosity, which have been so general that they have ceased to have magnitude.
— from Under Two Flags by Ouida

While we continue to condemn, unsparingly, selfishness and greed and all trafficking in the natural rights of man, let us not forget to respect thrift and industry and enterprise.
— from Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. A Collection of Speeches and Messages by Calvin Coolidge

United States against Germany, April 6, 1917.
— from History of the World War: An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War by Richard Joseph Beamish

The painted birds flitted through the shades; the careless deer reposed unhurt upon the fern—the oxen and the horses strayed from their unguarded stables, and grazed among the wheat, for death fell on man alone.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley