Her large dark eyes gazed through space at some melancholy vision.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet by Louis Guimbaud

An altar is in each man's cot, / A church in every grove that spreads / Its living roof above our heads.
— 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.

After this they shall assign twelve lots to twelve Gods, and call them by their names, and dedicate to each God their several portions, and call the tribes after them.
— from Laws by Plato

It is an old and almost universal belief, founded on a considerable body of evidence, which I have elsewhere given, that slight changes in the conditions of life are beneficial to all living things.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

She plunged her golden hair into this water, and then stood for a few moments in the center of the room looking about her, with a white, earnest face, and an eager gaze that seemed to take in every object in the poorly furnished chamber.
— from Lady Audley's Secret by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

The true measure of Mr. Washington's success is, then, not his teaching the pupils of Tuskegee, nor even gaining the support of philanthropic persons at a distance, but this—that every Southern white man of character and of wisdom has been won to a cordial recognition of the value of the work, even men who held and still hold to the conviction that a mere book education for the Southern blacks under present conditions is a positive evil.
— from Up from Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington

Now the reason why those of the Egyptians whom I have mentioned do not sacrifice goats, female or male, is this:—the Mendesians count Pan to be one of the eight gods (now these eight gods they say came into being before the twelve gods), and the painters and image-makers represent in painting and in sculpture the figure of Pan, just as the Hellenes do, with goat's face and legs, not supposing him to be really like this but to resemble the other gods; the cause however why they represent him in this form I prefer not to say.
— from An Account of Egypt by Herodotus

Every privilege that could raise the proselyte from earth to heaven, that could exalt his devotion, secure his happiness, or even gratify that secret pride which, under the semblance of devotion, insinuates itself into the human heart, was still reserved for the members of the Christian church; but at the same time all mankind was permitted, and even solicited, to accept the glorious distinction, which was not only proffered as a favor, but imposed as an obligation.
— 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

Every gondola that swam by us, with its crescents and pyramids and circles of colored lamps hung aloft, and lighting up the faces of the young and the sweet-scented and lovely below, was a picture; and the reflections of those lights, so long, so slender, so numberless, so many-colored and so distorted and wrinkled by the waves, was a picture likewise, and one that was enchantingly beautiful.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Sometimes they sit by the highway side, to give men falls, and make their horses stumble and start as they ride (if you will believe the relation of that holy man Ketellus in [1215] Nubrigensis), that had an especial grace to see devils, Gratiam divinitus collatam , and talk with them, Et impavidus cum spiritibus sermonem miscere , without offence, and if a man curse or spur his horse for stumbling, they do heartily rejoice at it; with many such pretty feats.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

For as the two bearers--it needed but two for that bier--shuffled at sunset-tide with their light burden through the crowded bazaar, more than one careless eye grew to sudden interest.
— from A Prince of Dreamers by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"Some say, That euer 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's Birth is celebrated, The Bird of Dawning singeth all night long;
— from The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

"Lawns and gravel walks," says a writer in the Quarterly Review , "are the pride of English Gardens," "The smoothness and verdure of our lawns," continues the same writer, "is the first thing in our gardens that catches the eye of a foreigner; the next is the fineness and firmness of our gravel walks.
— from Flowers and Flower-Gardens With an Appendix of Practical Instructions and Useful Information Respecting the Anglo-Indian Flower-Garden by David Lester Richardson

In the earlier days, this fashionable excess grew to such an alarming extent that Solon was obliged to interfere by a law, to cut down these demonstrations.
— from The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks by Frank Pierrepont Graves

*Take, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this spotless host which I, Your unworthy servant, offer to You for my many sins and for all who serve You, living and dead.
— from A Catechism of Christian Doctrine by Anonymous