The hearing of an articulate voice and rational discourse in the dark assures us of the presence of some person: Why?
— from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume

I think the reason of the strategy adopted by the two sides respectively was, that they both had seen that Hannibal’s cavalry was the main cause of the Carthaginian victory and Roman defeat.
— from The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Polybius

“You are very, very absurd,” repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking with tenderness into his face.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Thus, when the slave asks for a few hours of virtuous freedom, his cunning master takes advantage of his ignorance, and cheers him with a dose of vicious and revolting dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of LIBERTY.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

The accommodating temper of Polytheism might unite those various and remote deities; but the genuine Romans ahhorred the human sacrifices of Gaul and Germany.
— 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

when, just as some kinds of illness turn men's heads and make them forget the past, periods of violence and revolutions do to peoples what these crises do to individuals: horror of the past takes the place of forgetfulness, and the State, set on fire by civil wars, is born again, so to speak, from its ashes, and takes on anew, fresh from the jaws of death, the vigour of youth.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Quis unquam vidit avarum ringi, dum lucrum adest, adulterum dum potitur voto, lugere in perpetrando scelere?
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

V ARIANTS : Repentinamente; de improviso.
— from Heath's Modern Language Series: The Spanish American Reader by Ernesto Nelson

[84] Let them then, along with us, call to mind with what various and repeated disasters the prosperity of Rome was blighted, before ever Christ had come in the flesh, and before His name had been blazoned among the nations with that glory which they vainly grudge.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

It is the merit of Parmenides to have brought out the two points of view as radically distinct, and to have seen that the phenomenal world, if explained at all, must be explained upon general principles of its own, raised out of its own data of facts — not by means of an illusory Absolute and Real.
— from Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1 by George Grote

Likewise they had vnder colour requested that his friēds the Tlaxcaltecas shuld not come vnto their towne, & that he fulfilled therein their desire, & also cōmaunded his own men in no wise to be hurtful vnto thē, yea & although they had not prouided him of victuals as reason did require, yet he would not permit any of his men to take the value of one henne from them, so that in recompence of all his gentle dealings and good will, they had moste wickedly procured the death of him and all his companie.
— from The pleasant historie of the conquest of the VVeast India, now called new Spayne atchieued by the vvorthy Prince Hernando Cortes, marques of the Valley of Huaxacac, most delectable to reade by Francisco López de Gómara

He tossed his toilet articles and a few changes of linen into a small, flexible valise and ran down the stairs.
— from The Night Horseman by Max Brand

iators, and on this question the Whigs accordingly raised vehement and reiterated debates.
— from Addison by William John Courthope

The vultures are repulsive, dirty-looking birds who sit stolidly hour by hour upon the roof or walls of the temple, apparently without life or motion except when a body is brought for their repast.
— from The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe Being Sketches of the Domestic and Religious Rites and Ceremonies of the Siamese by Ernest Young

"Very," assented Rupert dryly: then he cast a side-long look on the Major, and spoke to the point.
— from The Mandarin's Fan by Fergus Hume

Is it not true, then?" "No!" After launching that word with somber energy, she wrapped up her head and face in her hood and vail, and remained during the rest of the way plunged into a silence which Monsieur de Lucan did not attempt to disturb.
— from Led Astray and The Sphinx Two Novellas In One Volume by Octave Feuillet

"Long ago two little old men, called Veisina and Rukuruku, drifted across the Great Ocean from the westward, and passing through the Yasawa Islands, they beached their canoe upon the little island of Yakuilau, which lies by the coast of Nandi.
— from The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of Custom by Basil Thomson