Now all these become causes of disease when the blood is not replenished in a natural manner by food and drink but gains bulk from opposite sources in violation of the laws of nature.
— from Timaeus by Plato

The imposture consists in not reading it aloud.
— from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Odette de Crécy came again to see Swann; her visits grew more frequent, and doubtless each visit revived the sense of disappointment which he felt at the sight of a face whose details he had somewhat forgotten in the interval, not remembering it as either so expressive or, in spite of her youth, so faded; he used to regret, while she was talking to him, that her really considerable beauty was not of the kind which he spontaneously admired.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

It was worth while to controvert the positions of Ephorus, Apollodorus however disregards all this, and adds a seventeenth to the sixteen nations, namely, the Galatians; although it is well to mention this, yet it is not required in a discussion of what Ephorus relates or omits; Apollodorus has assigned as the reason of the omission, that all these nations settled in the peninsula subsequently to the time of Ephorus.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) Literally Translated, with Notes by Strabo

And am I not right in asserting that there are two goddesses?
— from Symposium by Plato

Yet rather than give further occasion to it by this word, I now retract it, and desire this idealism of mine to be called critical.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant

There is no remedy: I am in the same case that Alcibiades was, that I will never, if I can help it, put myself into the hands of a man who may determine as to my head, where my life and honour shall more depend upon the skill and diligence of my attorney than on my own innocence.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

I AM a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody's way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

It has been noticed that the institution of marriage is not regarded in a very favourable light by the majority of folk-poets, but Venetian rhymers as a rule take an encouraging view of it.
— from Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886) by Martinengo-Cesaresco, Evelyn Lilian Hazeldine Carrington, contessa

Instead of being forced to beg for its meager subsistence, it now received in abundance the money that was poured out voluntarily.
— from Daybreak; A Romance of an Old World by James Cowan

The world is marching onward; I have met parties of my own townsmen while walking in the silent galleries of the Coliseum; I have seen Americans drinking Champagne in an excavated dwelling of the ancient Pompeii, 91 and I have dined with Englishmen among the ruins of Thebes, but, blessed be my fortune, I never rode in an omnibus from the Piræus to Athens.
— from Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 1 (of 2) by John L. Stephens

He is no revolutionist if arrested by personal ties.
— from Anarchy and Anarchists A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe; Communism, Socialism, and Nihilism in Doctrine and in Deed; The Chicago Haymarket Conspiracy and the Detection and Trial of the Conspirators by Michael J. Schaack

To starve for want of power to work is bad; to starve for want of work is worse; but to work and yet starve, to work a long, long day without obtaining the bread that should be its natural reward, is a third and worst degree of misfortune, for it mocks the fitness and equity of things, and seizes the mind like a wrong.
— from Contemporary Socialism by John Rae

But where there are four independent registers, and these all concurring to supply, in the fullest detail, the necessary evidence as to all other charters, [of which various instances were proved at the trial,] and when you find that this charter is not recorded in any one of them, it is quite impossible to believe—it would really be asking too much of credulity itself to believe—that such a document could ever have existed."
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 427, May, 1851 by Various

'Ah, my friend!' replied the Marshal, 'there is no remedy; I am undone!'
— from Queens of the French Stage by H. Noel (Hugh Noel) Williams

This blast had struck her, and she had been blind in not recognizing it at once.
— from Beyond The Rocks: A Love Story by Elinor Glyn

If not, read it, and then copy it in your book of recipes." " THE KING'S DAUGHTERS."
— from Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit among the "Pennsylvania Germans" by Edith May Bertels Thomas