At the beginning of the modern age, there was in Europe no system of rules by which to regulate conduct between states.
— from A History of the Philippines by David P. Barrows

Down to the time when Rhampsinitos was king, they told me there was in Egypt nothing but orderly rule, and Egypt prospered greatly; but after him Cheops became king over them and brought them to every kind of evil: for he shut up all the temples, and having first kept them from sacrifices there, he then bade all the Egyptians work for him.
— from An Account of Egypt by Herodotus

The effect of such a series on imagination is to make us regard the sufferings which accompany it, and the catastrophe in which it ends, not only or chiefly as something which happens to the persons concerned, but equally as something which is caused [12] by them.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

XC Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, And do not drop in for an after-loss: Ah! do not, when my heart hath 'scap'd this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe; Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, To linger out a purpos'd overthrow.
— from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare

All singing birds are much pleased with it, especially nightingales, if we may believe Calcagninus; and bees amongst the rest, though they be flying away, when they hear any tingling sound, will tarry behind.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

It was a little too provoking even for her self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish on the disappointments of sadder and wiser people—making a meal of a nightingale and never knowing it—and that all the while his family should suppose that hers was in eager need of this sprig; and her vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total repression towards her husband.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

June is the time to see it in all its beauty, when in every narrow valley and on every slope, the most exquisite flowers are growing luxuriantly.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

What a picture rose before me of her sitting on the far-off shore, among the children like herself when she was innocent, listening to little voices such as might have called her Mother had she been a poor man’s wife; and to the great voice of the sea, with its eternal ‘Never more!’
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I lean opposite to the side it inclines to; as I find it going to plunge and make itself drunk with its own wine; I evade nourishing its pleasure so far, that I cannot recover it without infinite loss.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

I felt beyond all question that I was indeed Eden, not Elvesham.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

“Some worried, I expect?” “No, I do not worry much, Mr. Maclin.”
— from At the Crossroads by Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa) Comstock

"To get change we have to assume other structures which interact with it, existences not covered by the formula."
— from John Dewey's logical theory by Delton Thomas Howard

In my opinion, the League made two serious errors: First, in Article III of its constitution where it excepted "non-justiciable" cases from the control of the proposed league.
— from My Story by Anson Mills

The bishops and other clergy walked round it in solemn procession, sprinkling holy water in every nook and corner, and performing all other rites and ceremonies necessary to purify and sanctify it.
— from Spanish Papers by Washington Irving

We refer to Document Number 3012(1)-PS, which is Exhibit Number USA-190.
— from Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, Volume 3 by Various

At its best, a bed only four feet wide is esteemed narrow enough for one, and quite inadequate for two, but when it is considered that the bed now selected was of hard granite, rather round-backed than flat, with a sheer precipice descending a thousand feet, more or less, on one side of it, and a slope in that direction, there will be no difficulty in conceiving something of the state of mind in which Lewis Stoutley and Baptist Le Croix lay down to repose till morning in wet garments, with the thermometer somewhere between thirty-two and zero, Fahrenheit.
— from Rivers of Ice by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

He was in earnest now; she felt it, and her anger melted away like dew before the sun.
— from Proverb Stories by Louisa May Alcott

(The possibility of feeling and expressing contempt was the most agreeable sensation to Sitnikov; he used to attack women in especial, never suspecting that it was to be his fate a few months later to be cringing before his wife merely because she had been born a princess Durdoleosov.)
— from Fathers and Children by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Yes," I reply; "it looks as if we were going to have winter in earnest now; it looks like it," and a while after, I add: "Ah, well, it is none too soon."
— from Hunger by Knut Hamsun

I sometimes wonder if even now this profession really knows what great reason it has to be proud of him.
— from Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections by Clara Morris