The dictatorship was popular, both in consequence of his discourses containing invectives against the patricians, and because he passed three laws, most advantageous to the commons, and injurious to the nobility; one, that the orders of the commons should be binding on all the Romans; another, that the patricians should, before the suffrages commenced, declare their approbation of the laws which should be passed in the assemblies of the centuries; the third, that one at least of the censors [Pg 521] should be elected from the commons, as they had already gone so far as that it was lawful that both the consuls should be plebeians.
— from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy

When his verses came to be recited, the excellence of the delivery at first attracted the attention of the people; but when they afterwards came to poise the meanness of the composition, they first entered into disdain, and continuing to nettle their judgments, presently proceeded to fury, and ran to pull down and tear to pieces all his pavilions: and, that his chariots neither performed anything to purpose in the race, and that the ship which brought back his people failed of making Sicily, and was by the tempest driven and wrecked upon the coast of Tarentum, they certainly believed was through the anger of the gods, incensed, as they themselves were, against the paltry Poem; and even the mariners who escaped from the wreck seconded this opinion of the people: to which also the oracle that foretold his death seemed to subscribe; which was, “that Dionysius should be near his end, when he should have overcome those who were better than himself,” which he interpreted of the Carthaginians, who surpassed him in power; and having war with them, often declined the victory, not to incur the sense of this prediction; but he understood it ill; for the god indicated the time of the advantage, that by favour and injustice he obtained at Athens over the tragic poets, better than himself, having caused his own play called the Leneians to be acted in emulation; presently after which victory he died, and partly of the excessive joy he conceived at the success.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip. “Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

This remark as to the manner of treating a subject is no less applicable to the choice of it.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

Artillery and prisoners are therefore at all times regarded as the true trophies of victory, as well as its measure, because through these things its extent is declared beyond a doubt.
— from On War — Volume 1 by Carl von Clausewitz

" At this all stood amazed, and knew not where to look nor what to think or say, for they were all bewildered with the happening; so, while everyone looked at Robin as though they had been changed to stone, he clapped his bugle horn to his lips and blew three blasts so loud and clear, they echoed from floor to rafter as though they were sounded by the trump of doom.
— from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

Perhaps it is too rigorously applied to the same persons and the same hour; the example of the virtuous Godfrey awakened the piety of his companions; while they cleansed their bodies, they purified their minds; nor shall I believe that the most ardent in slaughter and rapine were the foremost in the procession to the holy sepulchre.
— 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

The herb or the root (all that the devil hath left of it) being boiled in wine, and drank, is very powerful against the plague, and all pestilential diseases or fevers, poisons also, and the bitings of venemous beasts: It helps also those that are inwardly bruised by any casuality, or outwardly by falls or blows, dissolving the clotted blood; and the herb or root beaten and outwardly applied, takes away the black and blue marks that remain in the skin.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

It will be noticed that the Humber is therein spoken of as the Toronto River, and that the early settler or trader St. John is named, from whom the Humber was sometimes called St. John's River.
— from Toronto of Old Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario by Henry Scadding

The four others sat for some time rooted apparently to the floor, the most pitiable objects of horror and utter despair my eyes ever encountered.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too.
— from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade) by Mark Twain

But the diffused merits—the so-to-speak "class-merits"—of the poems in general are very high indeed: and when the best of the other lyrics— aubades , débats , and what not—are joined to them, they supply the materials of an anthology of hardly surpassed interest, as well for the bubbling music of their refrains and the trill of their metre, as for the fresh mirth and joy of living in their matter.
— from The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) by George Saintsbury

379 For, as it had been first on earth, so was it afterwards in heaven [the Secret Doctrine teaches the reverse]; and thus the primary gods were held to be soulless like the earliest races of men....
— from The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4 by H. P. (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky

The enemy is in the breach, swarming over the ramparts, advancing to the heart of the fortress, not to be again repelled.
— from Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska by Hudson Stuck

But, when success had several times crowned his efforts, when exertions, which he fancied useless, had brought back to constitutional principles a neighbour who had been enlisted on the other side, by prejudices easy to be overcome; when an appeal to the proper autho [Pg 341] rity had obtained the redress of an illegal act; when a journey to the principal town had been of essential service to an election, important to the country; or, when the farmers had consented to adopt new and advantageous methods of culture, Monsieur de Manzay congratulated himself on having yielded to the entreaties of his daughter, and began to think that men are naturally accessible to reason, and that to induce them to submit to it completely, there is often nothing more required than to present it to them in their own way.
— from Popular Tales by Madame (Elisabeth Charlotte Pauline) Guizot

He is told by the captain to report at the training house for the Varsity signals.
— from Football Days Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball by William H. (William Hanford) Edwards

In England they keep a good many parish poor at work breaking stones for the roads; every man has a pile of stones before him, a hammer and a ring, he breaks a stone till it is small enough to go through the ring and then throws it on the pile.”
— from The Unseen Hand; or, James Renfew and His Boy Helpers by Elijah Kellogg

He considers man in every phase of his existence, from the rayless atom to the grand upbuilding of the noblest work of God.
— from The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred and Fifty Thousand by Ray Vaughn Pierce