A fragment of Anaximander says that the unity of the world was destroyed by a primordial crime and everything that issued from it must carry on the punishment for this crime
— from Totem and Taboo Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics by Sigmund Freud

None; only I should like further to know whether the Athenians are supposed to have been made better by Pericles, or, on the contrary, to have been corrupted by him; for I hear that he was the first who gave the people pay, and made them idle and cowardly, and encouraged them in the love of talk and money.
— from Gorgias by Plato

No living creature appeared, except the izard, scrambling among the rocks, and often hanging upon points so dangerous, that fancy shrunk from the view of them.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

ſe partiſſemo de lui Como amiçi et tornaſſemo indrieto f a la yſola de cagajan et
— from The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century by Antonio Pigafetta

I shall begin with the most comprehensive relation, wherein all things that do, or can exist, are concerned, and that is the relation of CAUSE and EFFECT: the idea whereof, how derived from the two fountains of all our knowledge, sensation and reflection, I shall in the next place consider.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

This was an added advantage, for the reason that I found the white people possessing a degree of culture and education that is not surpassed by many localities.
— from Up from Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington

One should, therefore, train up this boy to be sparing and an husband of his knowledge when he has acquired it; and to forbear taking exceptions at or reproving every idle saying or ridiculous story that is said or told in his presence; for it is a very unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything that is not agreeable to our own palate.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

At the time of the publication in the Weekly Dispatch , in 1902, of a method of cutting an equilateral triangle into four parts that will form a square (see No. 26, "Canterbury Puzzles"), no geometrician would have had any difficulty in doing what is required in five pieces: the whole point of the discovery lay in performing the little feat in four pieces only.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

If it may be doubted whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree; this, I think, I may be positive in,—that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2 by John Locke

"You will be offered cigarettes at every turn in Java."
— from Sweet Clover: A Romance of the White City by Clara Louise Burnham

You see, this is a far longer swim and a far bigger crossing than we had to face at the creek, and even there I am bound to admit that I [Pg 136] felt done.
— from With the Dyaks of Borneo: A Tale of the Head Hunters by F. S. (Frederick Sadleir) Brereton

His head-dress was made of wood, much resembling in its shape a crown, adorned with bright copper and brass plates, from whence hung a number of tails or streamers, composed of wool and fur, wrought together, dyed of various colors, and each terminating in a whole ermine skin.
— from The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 1, Wild Tribes The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 1 by Hubert Howe Bancroft

The Medium: No; but sometimes it causes an exhaustion, that is, under circumstances when the raps do not come freely.
— from Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism In Accordance with the Request of the Late Henry Seybert by University of Pennsylvania. Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism

They were perpetuated in customs, and expressed themselves in the most trivial details.
— from Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) The Age of the Despots by John Addington Symonds

little did my family suspect what a place was Eton; or, at least, if a suspicion comes across parents' minds of what their children are exposed to in public schools, they generally persuade themselves that this must be endured for a necessary good, which is, to make them learn to know the world.
— from Life of Father Ignatius of St. Paul, Passionist (The Hon. & Rev. George Spencer). by Pius a Sp. Sancto (Pius a Spiritu Sancto)

The facts were circulated in every newspaper, were matter of conversation at every teatable in the country; rewards were offered, researches made, but not the smallest trace of the boy or his stealer was to be found.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844 by Various

The Savior, the Apostles, Joseph Smith and the latter day Elders, when offering this great system of salvation to the people, told them clearly and emphatically that it required sacrifices of the most serious and trying nature—that it would bring persecutions, change our warmest friends into bitter and relentless enemies, and that instances would occur when people, in their confused notions of right and wrong, would even conceive they were doing God service in taking our lives.
— from Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Eliza R. (Eliza Roxey) Snow