The great powers that will be yours should be exercised for worthy ends; never employ them selfishly!
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

The red fire-light glowed on their two bonny heads, and revealed their faces animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to feel and learn, that neither experienced nor evinced the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

It not only proves he was not miraculously endowed, but proves he was not even naturally endowed to such an extraordinary degree as to make him an object of general attention.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves

Contemplation, sense, and association are none of them the essence nor even the seed of love; but any of them may be its soil and supply it with a propitious background.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

Intelligence and elegance naturally exist together, since they both spring from a subtle sense for absent and eventual processes.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

But, because you do not conceive that nature is able to produce such effects without some rational aid, you are forced, like the tragic poets, when you cannot wind up your argument in any other way, to have recourse to a Deity, whose assistance you would not seek, if you could view that vast and unbounded magnitude of regions in all parts; where the mind, extending and spreading itself, travels so far and wide that it can find no end, no extremity to stop at.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Elizabeth now expected that she would produce a letter for her from Charlotte, as it seemed the only probable motive for her calling.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Old-fashioned eyes, Not easy to surprise!
— from Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete by Emily Dickinson

Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn developed.
— from The Poetics of Aristotle by Aristotle

Even the regulations by which each nation endeavours to secure to itself the exclusive trade of its own colonies, are frequently more hurtful to the countries in favour of which they are established, than to those against which they are established.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Here, close by the spot where your fathers signed that Covenant, in an hour when Scotland's cause was equally poor and depressed—here, by the spot where holy martyrs sealed it with their blood, it will neither seem extravagance nor enthusiasm to say to the children of such parents, that for the support of this cause, we look, not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are not seen; to that God, who, in the face of all worldly power, gave liberty to Scotland, in answer to your fathers' prayers.
— from Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 by Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Oh! tell me, chevalier," said Buckingham, "all that affair of the diamonds, which nobody knows in England, not even the son of him who was the hero of it.
— from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas

The proportion of Alders which get on the water is probably very small if compared with those which do not; but as the fly is in some places extremely numerous, even this small proportion becomes in those places a large number.
— from Old Flies in New Dresses How to Dress Dry Flies with the Wings in the Natural Position and Some New Wet Flies by Charles Edward Walker

How long the body remained in this resting-place, and how many transfers it was subsequently subjected [Pg 125] to, there exists no evidence to show; but after being exposed to many vicissitudes, the mummy of Rameses, together with those of his royal relatives, and many of his illustrious predecessors, was brought in as a refugee into the family vault of the Her-Hor dynasty.
— from Cleopatra's Needle A History of the London Obelisk, with an Exposition of the Hieroglyphics by King, James, Vicar of St. Mary's, Berwick-upon-Tweed

The WINDSOR'S recent and present Contributors Include:— Rudyard Kipling Hall Caine Anthony Hope Mrs. F. A. Steel E. Nesbit Ethel Turner S. R. Crockett Guy Boothby
— from The Kidnapped President by Guy Boothby

she exclaimed as she conned John Pooledoune's hand, "By making rich, made poor; By making happy, miserable; By amending, hurt; by curing, slain; never Lost on earth, alive or dead, yet Found by numbers; bodiless corpse; The Victim of Improvement , for ever to improve;— "No hand to close thy eyes, No eye to see thy grave, No grave to give thee rest,— Strange Being!
— from Bentley's Miscellany, Volume I by Various

The few blades of grass which had struggled into existence, not enough to support a goat, was all there was to look at on the island except the lighthouse, and the sand and themselves.
— from Voyage of the Liberdade by Joshua Slocum

He had worried a good deal over Orissa, during her first attempts to fly, but was now convinced of the girl's capability and, although he exhibited nervousness every time she gave one of her exhibitions, he had by degrees acquired supreme confidence in her skill.
— from The Flying Girl and Her Chum by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

to form, the noble work of chance; } Or this great All was from eternity,— } Not even the Stagyrite himself could see, }
— from The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 10 by John Dryden