For there might be a poetry which would be the hymn of divine perfection, the harmony of goodness and truth among men: a strain which should renew the youth of the world, and bring back the ages in which the poet was man’s only teacher and best friend,—which would find materials in the living present as well as in the romance of the past, and might subdue to the fairest forms of speech and verse the intractable materials of modern civilisation,—which might elicit the simple principles, or, as Plato clxv would have called them, the essential forms, of truth and justice out of the variety of opinion and the complexity of modern society,—which would preserve all the good of each generation and leave the bad unsung,—which should be based not on vain longings or faint imaginings, but on a clear insight into the nature of man.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

v. 12, § 8:—‘He only says that nothing is abiding, but that all things change in a certain cycle; and that the origin of the change is a base of numbers which are in the ratio of 4 : 3; and this when combined with a figure of five gives two harmonies; he means when the number of this figure becomes s
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

In the first part of the sentence he appears to be speaking of paeonic rhythms which are in the ratio of 3/2; in the second part, of dactylic and anapaestic rhythms, which are in the ratio of 1/1; in the last clause, of iambic and trochaic rhythms, which are in the ratio of 1/2 or 2/1.)
— from The Republic by Plato

She was already in the rapids of an ethical tirade about the “sickly medical notions” and the morbid admission of weakness implied in such an apparatus.
— from The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

But when the cobbler or any other man whom nature B designed to be a trader, having his heart lifted up by wealth or strength or the number of his followers, or any like advantage, attempts to force his way into the class of warriors, or a warrior into that of legislators and guardians, for which he is unfitted, and either to take the implements or the duties of the other; or when one man is trader, legislator, and warrior all in one, then I think you will agree with me in saying that this interchange and this meddling of one with another is the ruin of the State.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

Towards the North, they penetrated into the frozen regions of Siberia, among the savages who were accustomed, in their rage or hunger, to the taste of human flesh; and their Southern inroads were pushed as far as the confines of Persia and India.
— 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

Some of these troops were also in the rear of Alexander’s army; for the mountain near which they were posted in one part sloped a great way back and formed a sort of bay, like a bay in the sea, and afterwards bending forwards caused the men who had been posted at the foot of it to be behind Alexander’s right wing.
— from The Anabasis of Alexander or, The History of the Wars and Conquests of Alexander the Great by Arrian

Their Scythian empire of the sixth century was long since dissolved; but the name was still famous among the Greeks and Orientals; and the fragments of the nation, each a powerful and independent people, were scattered over the desert from China to the Oxus and the Danube: the colony of Hungarians was admitted into the republic of Europe, and the thrones of Asia were occupied by slaves and soldiers of Turkish extraction.
— 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

Thus, as soon as our attention is fixed on gesture and not on action, we are in the realm of comedy.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson

Either their Minds are wholly fixed on some particular Science, which is often the Case of Mathematicians and other learned Men; or are wholly taken up with some Violent Passion, such as Anger, Fear, or Love, which ties the Mind to some distant Object; or, lastly, these Distractions proceed from a certain Vivacity and Fickleness in a Man's Temper, which while it raises up infinite Numbers of Ideas in the Mind, is continually pushing it on, without allowing it to rest on any particular Image.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

There was the residence of Lord Rosse walled around in the castle of the O’Carrolls; and the castle of the O’Dempseys, walled around in the residence of Lord Bernard.
— from Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898 Childhood, boyhood, manhood; customs, habits and manners of the Irish people; Erinach and Sassenach; Catholic and protestant; Englishman and Irishman; English religion; Irish plunder; social life and prison life; the Fenian movement; Travels in Ireland, England, Scotland and America by Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

We are eternally reminded that Edwards believes in the existence of a will, and in the reality of its acts.
— from An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

[f] Doubtless his innocence in this respect was the effect of weakness; and if the revolution of 1399 had not put an end to his newly acquired despotism, this, like every other right of his people, would have been swept away.
— from View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, Vol. 3 by Henry Hallam

The French beat us hollow at ship-building, and we much improved by studying the make of the prizes we were constantly taking, so it is not to be wondered at if that rolling old tub, the Swallow , came to grief.
— from Eighteenth Century Waifs by John Ashton

Its great feature is the nearly total Page 320 [320] absence of all the forms of mammalia which abound in the rest of the world, their place being supplied by a great variety of marsupials—these animals being nowhere else found, except in the opossums of America.
— from The New Gresham Encyclopedia. Atrebates to Bedlis Vol. 1 Part 3 by Various

If I have written anything in these recollections of our army life that is in the least hurtful to any one's feelings, if I have in any way at all harmed you, forgive me, for such has not been my intention, and knowing me as many of you do, I trust you will believe what I tell you about this part of it.
— from The 125th Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry: Attention Batallion! by Robert M. Rogers

It now began to appear that Hannibal was hemmed in, the road to Casilinum being blockaded; and that while Capua, and Samnium, and so many wealthy allies in the rear of the Romans might supply them with provisions, the Carthaginian, on the other hand, must winter amid the rocks of Formiae and the sands and hideous swamps of Liternum.
— from The History of Rome, Books 09 to 26 by Livy

Our admiration for a rose is aesthetic; our admiration for goodness is ethical, and we give it with the implicit understanding that the quality we admire is the result of voluntary acts and decisions.
— from Problems of Immanence: studies critical and constructive by Joseph Warschauer