This Mr. Hook tried casually with Glass Wedges filled with red and blue Liquors, and was surprized at the unexpected Event, the reason of it being then unknown; which makes me trust the more to his Experiment, though I have not tried it my self.
— from Opticks Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton

I am he who openeth his eyes and it is light, and who shutteth them and it is dark.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

In peace and war, the doge was still the chief of the republic; his legal authority was supported by the personal reputation of Dandolo: his arguments of public interest were balanced and approved; and he was authorized to inform the ambassadors of the following conditions of the treaty.
— 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

Caddy had a superstition about me which had been strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago when she had lain asleep with her head in my lap.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Thus there were three different nations of the Apulians, [the Daunii,] the Teani, so called from their leader, and who sprang from the Greeks, and the Lucani, who were subdued by Calchas 1696 , and whose country is now possessed by the Atinates.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny

And now the king was in a wild rage against them all, the innocent as well as those that had afforded ground for accusations; and when they were come, he ordered them to be all shut up in the hyppodrome, 9 and sent for his sister Salome, and her husband Alexas, and spake thus to them: "I shall die in a little time, so great are my pains; which death ought to be cheerfully borne, and to be welcomed by all men; but what principally troubles me is this, that I shall die without being lamented, and without such mourning as men usually expect at a king's death."
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

It seems very remarkable to me, and of great honour to the Dutch, that those of them that did go on shore to Gillingham, though they went in fear of their lives, and were some of them killed; and, notwithstanding their provocation at Schelling, yet killed none of our people nor plundered their houses, but did take some things of easy carriage, and left the rest, and not a house burned; and, which is to our eternal disgrace, that what my Lord Douglas’s men, who come after them, found there, they plundered and took all away; and the watermen that carried us did further tell us, that our own soldiers are far more terrible to those people of the country-towns than the Dutch themselves.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

“We shall be absent at least a week,” said the patron, “and then we must run out of our course to come here and take you up again.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

I should have exuded tears like a wet sponge.
— from Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Luther accordingly was sent to Augsburg.
— from Life of Luther by Julius Köstlin

She healed Lady Johnstone’s daughter, married to the young Laird of Stanelie, by giving her a drink brewed under Thom’s auspices, namely, strong ale boiled with cloves, ginger, aniseed, liquorice, and white sugar, which warmed the “cauld blude that gaed about hir hart, that causit hir to dwam and vigous away,” or, as we would say, to swoon.
— from Witch Stories by E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn) Linton

Wallflowers, wallflowers, growing up so high, We are but little, and we shall have to die!
— from The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Vol 1 of 2) With Tunes, Singing-Rhymes and Methods of Playing etc. by Alice Bertha Gomme

And yet no naturalist can be certain that, because they exhibit similarly marked characteristics, the one ever descended from the other; for the universal experience-rule still holds good that "like engenders like," and we search in vain for anything more than a similarity of idea , or logical connection, which justifies a recognition of the individuorum similium in Jessieu's definition of species.
— from Life: Its True Genesis by Horatius Flaccus

After this accommodation, our landlord and we sat down at a board, and dined upon shin of beef most deliciously; our reckoning amounting to twopence halfpenny each, bread and small beer included.
— from The Adventures of Roderick Random by T. (Tobias) Smollett

I felt sure that this union of hearts would remain with us and beautify our lives, and this thought was strengthened by the remark of the lady at whose side I sat, who said, "You see,--this activity is the salvation of many, as you can perceive in your grand-daughter Christiane.
— from Waldfried: A Novel by Berthold Auerbach

He led you on a wild-goose chase, Rayner," I laughed, as we stood together in Holborn.
— from The Place of Dragons: A Mystery by William Le Queux