The ceremonies which they observed for this purpose were in substance a dramatic representation of the natural processes which they wished to facilitate; for it is a familiar tenet of magic that you can produce any desired effect by merely imitating it.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

In good spirits we sailed past the beautiful castle of Elsinore, the sight of which brought me into immediate touch with my youthful impressions of Hamlet.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

quoth I, as I look'd towards the French coast—a man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad—and I never gave a peep into Rochester church, or took notice of the dock of Chatham, or visited St. Thomas at Canterbury, though they all three laid in my way— —But mine, indeed, is a particular case— So without arguing the matter further with Thomas o'Becket, or any one else—I skip'd into the boat, and in five minutes we got under sail, and scudded away like the wind.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

“Because I don’t expect anybody would believe me if I did,” replies the old fellow calmly, and without even a tinge of bitterness in his tone, as he refills his pipe, and requests the landlord to bring him three of Scotch, cold.
— from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

Again, every bad man is ignorant what he ought to do and what to leave undone, and by reason of such error men become unjust and wholly evil. 1111a]
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

“Politics bore me; if I have a letter from Warsaw, it is on business of our Order.
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

He cheered the heart of the worthy and zealous minister by an expression of his sympathy in his labors, and by many inquiries in regard to the religious state of the region.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner

Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made; it is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time, I have not neglected the other branches of science.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me; And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her, I should but teach him how to tell my story,
— from Othello, the Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare

SIR , I Send you here a Translation; but it is not onely to beleeve me, it is a great invention to have understood any piece of this Book, whether the gravity of the matter, or the Poeticall form, give it his inclination, and principium motus ; you are his center, or his spheare, and to you as to his proper place he addresses himself.
— from Letters to Severall Persons of Honour by John Donne

18, flā́nes: genāme ib. 71, hlḗorum: tḗarum Be Dōmes dæge 28, &c., and must, in our opinion, be metrically interpreted in exactly the same way.
— from A History of English Versification by J. (Jakob) Schipper

"How do you identify it?" " By my initials in indelible ink, on the right sleeve, where I placed them."
— from The Gloved Hand by Burton Egbert Stevenson

The complexity of the modern economic world and the large individual gains which have been made in it have obscured the fact that the economic structure exists to serve the needs of the community.
— from The War and Democracy by John Dover Wilson

These things are well understood as between men; it is easy to make an arrangement.
— from Stand Fast, Craig-Royston! (Volume I) by William Black

It would have broken me if I could not have had you...
— from The Bigamist by F. E. Mills (Florence Ethel Mills) Young

The Prince of Orange hath been so much upon this that it hath given others cause to believe that the Elector will be moved in it.”
— from The Sovereignty of the Sea An Historical Account of the Claims of England to the Dominion of the British Seas, and of the Evolution of the Territorial Waters by Thomas Wemyss Fulton

It was thought, too, that something might be done with the great malcontent nobles of Flanders, whose defection from the national cause had been so disastrous, but who had been much influenced in their course, it was thought, by their jealousy of William the Silent.
— from PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

In a little while we are skimming the surface of a bleak, black moor; it is a dead level, and not in the least interesting: but, after a plunge into the mirk darkness of a long tunnel, we emerge into daylight again; and there, sure enough, are the bright waters of the Clyde.
— from The Recreations of a Country Parson by Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd