Since everything then is cause and effect, dependent and supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though imperceptible chain, which binds together things most distant and most different, I hold it equally impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, and to know the whole without knowing the parts in detail.
— from Pascal's Pensées by Blaise Pascal

She devoted herself to her dolls the first evening, and when it was bedtime she undressed very quietly, but when she felt me get into bed with her, she jumped out on the other side, and nothing that I could do would induce her to get in again.
— from The Story of My Life With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy by Helen Keller

Of all these creatures the leopard is by far the commonest familiar of Fan wizards, and next to it comes the black serpent; the vulture is the rarest.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

No one else was around, not that I could tell.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

I love you—love as passionately now as I did when my passion was hopeless; and, now that I can win you, do you think I will forego you?
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

The next thing was to get the money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with the door?— whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on Coutts's, drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I can't mention, though it's one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very well known and often printed.
— from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The jealous man's disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

And notwithstanding the important character of their conference, political curiosity and perhaps some private feeling which not one of them cared to acknowledge, made them unanimously agree that Mr Tadpole should be admitted.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

After they had retired for the night it was customary for the adults to carry on a desultory conversation for a short time before lapsing into sleep, and now that I could understand their language I was always a keen listener, although I never proffered any remarks myself.
— from A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Money, did you but use it right, is a good thing in life, a necessary thing in civilised human life, as complicated, indeed, for its purposes, but as natural a growth as the bones in a man's wrist, and I do not see how one can imagine anything at all worthy of being called a civilisation without it.
— from A Modern Utopia by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

All at once the old art is remembered,—the administration of that delicious medicament, of so astonishingly affluent nature that it can make a queen out of a commoner, the enlargement of the narrow cradle to that ampler space which forbids the atrophy of a single fibre of the body.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 94, August, 1865 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

It might be my petulance, but this speech—such as she might have made to a child—annoyed me, and I said that I had reason for my lowness of spirits—meaning that they were not of so imaginary a nature that I could be diverted from them by the gambols of a kitten.
— from The Grey Woman and other Tales by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

They never showed an irritated expression, never an anxious nor that I could see a sad one.
— from The Gates Between by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

I confess ’tis possible a fool may reveal himself by his Dress, in wearing something extravagantly singular and ridiculous, or in preposterous suiting of colours; but a decency of Habit (which is all that Men of best sense pretend to) may be acquired by custom and example, without putting the Person to a superfluous expence of wit for the contrivance; and though there should be occasion for it, few are so unfortunate in their Relations and Acquaintance not to have some Friend capable of giving them advice, if they are not too ignorantly conceited to ask it.
— from Incognita; Or, Love and Duty Reconcil'd by William Congreve

Morphine is a necessary tool in controlling pain, and barbiturates are useful for control of convulsions.
— from Poisonous Dwellers of the Desert by Natt N. (Natt Noyes) Dodge

"I'll go back to my room for a little while, and next time I come I will be discreet enough to cough before opening the door."
— from A Secret of the Sea: A Novel. Vol. 3 (of 3) by T. W. (Thomas Wilkinson) Speight

Do you want me to show you, here and now, that I can live up to that threat?
— from Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters A Selection from His Correspondence with Boccaccio and Other Friends, Designed to Illustrate the Beginnings of the Renaissance by Francesco Petrarca

"I couldn't imagine what had started Vincent in such boisterous laughter; and now, that I come, Mr. Jack is as serious as we were at school when Madame Clarice told us of our sins."
— from The Iron Game A Tale of the War by Henry F. (Henry Francis) Keenan