The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.
— from Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Let us, on the contrary, confirm it by mutual offices; let the mind rouse and quicken the heaviness of the body, and the body stay and fix the levity of the soul: “Qui, velut summum bonum, laudat animac naturam, et, tanquam malum, naturam carnis accusat, profectd et animam carnatiter appetit, et carnem carnaliter fugit; quoniam id vanitate sentit humans, non veritate divina.”
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love is—he finds that it rather DESTROYS than saves!—It is possible that under the holy fable and travesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LOVE: the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart, that never had enough of any human love, that DEMANDED love, that demanded inexorably and frantically to be loved and nothing else, with terrible outbursts against those who refused him their love; the story of a poor soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to send thither those who WOULD NOT love him—and that at last, enlightened about human love, had to invent a God who is entire love, entire CAPACITY for love—who takes pity on human love, because it is so paltry, so ignorant!
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

" Philippe le Bel went still further, for, in 1287, he invited "all those who possess temporal authority in the kingdom of France to appoint, for the purpose of exercising civil jurisdiction, a bailiff, a provost, and some serjeants, who were to be laymen, and not ecclesiastics, and if there should be ecclesiastics in the said offices, to remove them."
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

"Woman," he said, "was made to be loved, and not enslaved.
— from Skookum Chuck Fables: Bits of History, Through the Microscope by R. D. (Robert Dalziel) Cumming

Mose did as he was ordered, but looked around nervously, expecting a charge of cattlemen.
— from The Eagle's Heart by Hamlin Garland

a child's voice, soft and clear, Pulsing through the gloaming drear; And the word the singer brings Like a new evangel rings; "Jesus loves me!
— from The Canadian Elocutionist Designed for the Use of Colleges, Schools and Self Instruction, Together with a Copious Selection in Prose and Poetry of Pieces Adapted for Reading, Recitation and Practice by Anna K. (Anna Kelsey) Howard

The sight of beauty has been like a new existence.
— from The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

[1] One of the most difficult tasks of the historian is to depict the moral physiognomy of a nation in such a way that no trait shall be lost, and none exaggerated at the cost of the others.
— from Sketches from Eastern History by Theodor Nöldeke

With the breaking of a cocoanut, and the offering of some powdered rice, betel leaf, areca nut, etc., the body is taken to the pyre.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 5 of 7 by Edgar Thurston

Remains of blocked-up staircases had certainly been found, and many of the floors resounded with a suggestively hollow ring; but all tradition of these had been lost, and not even a legend lingered to gratify the curious.
— from The School by the Sea by Angela Brazil