Here was a relative of mine, awakened to a sense of her shortcomings towards others, under the influence, not of conviction and duty, but of sentiment and impulse!
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

But when Felix saw that this quarrel was become a kind of war, he came upon them on the sudden, and desired the Jews to desist; and when they refused so to do, he armed his soldiers, and sent them out upon them, and slew many of them, and took more of them alive, and permitted his soldiers to plunder some of the houses of the citizens, which were full of riches.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

And the dream of the south branch, 410 sq. ; in the kingdom of Huai-an, 411 sq. ; marries the King’s daughter, 412 sq. ; takes office under the King, 414 sq. ; his greatness, 416 ; meets with disasters, 416 – 417 ; the prophecies, 417 ; returns home, 418 ; the prophecies come true, 419 Ch’ung Chêng .
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

" The next day about ten of the clock, the Governor came to us again, and after salutations, said familiarly; "That he was come to visit us;" and called for a chair, and sat him down: and we, being some ten of us, (the rest were of the meaner sort, or else gone abroad,) sat down with him, And when we were set, he began thus: "We of this island of Bensalem," (for so they call it in their language,) "have this; that by means of our solitary situation; and of the laws of secrecy, which we have for our travellers, and our rare admission of strangers; we know well most part of the habitable world, and are ourselves unknown.
— from New Atlantis by Francis Bacon

The papas also received instructions to sacrifice twenty of us to their idols.
— from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain. by Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Some persons, entirely resting upon the right which the law gives (for that which is legal is in some respects just), insist upon it that slavery occasioned by war is just, not that they say it is wholly so, for it may happen that the principle upon which the wars were commenced is unjust; moreover no one will say that a man who is unworthily in slavery is therefore a slave; for if so, men of the noblest families might happen to be slaves, and the descendants of slaves, if they should chance to be taken prisoners in war and sold: to avoid this difficulty they say that such persons should not be called slaves, but barbarians only should; but when they say this, they do nothing more than inquire who is a slave by nature, which was what we at first said; for we must acknowledge that there are some persons who, wherever they are, must necessarily be slaves, but others in no situation; thus also it is with those of noble descent: it is not only in their own country that they are Esteemed as such, but everywhere, but the barbarians are respected on this account at home only; as if nobility and freedom were of two sorts, the one universal, the other not so.
— from Politics: A Treatise on Government by Aristotle

Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves in the heart of the soft darkness.
— from The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. The Man Of Property by John Galsworthy

a nation nursed in sedition, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too feeble to resist.
— 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

Mr. Severe, the overseer, used to stand by the door of the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick and heavy cowskin, ready to whip any one who was so unfortunate as not to hear, or, from any other cause, was prevented from being ready to start for the field at the sound of the horn.
— from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass

It had taken him twenty minutes to force it wide enough for his arm and stick to operate upon the drift without: in fact, there had been a moment during which he had feared that the weight was too great for him to move alone.
— from The Lonely Stronghold by Reynolds, Baillie, Mrs.

The night was very dark—so dark that, standing under the quarter-boat, I was unable to see the officer upon the bridge.
— from The Dealings of Captain Sharkey, and Other Tales of Pirates by Arthur Conan Doyle

It appears that at John's country place they have breakfast at small tables out upon the broad, shaded terrace overlooking the glorious view of his little farm.
— from Why Marry? by Jesse Lynch Williams

It’s my opinion that that dark Count Chalmys fixed up something with these two good-lookers just to get us to visit his old palace and maybe play some tricks on us to get our cash,” said Mr. Alexander, rising to the very peak of tragic imagination.
— from Polly and Her Friends Abroad by Lillian Elizabeth Roy

The open vowel sounds, which are commonly but not very accurately termed long , are those which are the most easily protracted, yet they often occur in the shortest and feeblest syllables; while, on the other hand, no vowel sound, that occurs under the usual stress of accent or of emphasis, is either so short in its own nature, or is so "quickly joined to the succeeding letter," that the syllable is not one of long quantity.
— from The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

The houses seem toppling one upon the other—built in zig-zags, up and down sharp corners and defiles—with the spire or towers of some church perched away in mid-heaven, all brightly frescoed—the bases and gorges below being filled in with thick mist—leaving the loftier portions in distinct outline—closely resembling a city suspended in the sky.
— from Los Gringos Or, An Inside View of Mexico and California, with Wanderings in Peru, Chili, and Polynesia by H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

And thus she toiled on, until the last source of support had vanished.
— from The Trials of the Soldier's Wife A Tale of the Second American Revolution by Alex. St. Clair (Alexander St. Clair) Abrams

At length, one of the oldest Betongese chiefs, “saw the approaching ends of the long severed thread of unity that had caused the siege of hatred, and the concession offered by the prætor for uniting it with the durable bonds of privileged equality.”
— from The Manatitlans or, A record of recent scientific explorations in the Andean La Plata, S. A. by R. Elton Smile