I'm therefore constantly looking for books on narrow topics like "mantra".
— from The Online World by Odd De Presno

We returned to St. Petersburg by the way we had come, but Zaira would have liked me never to leave Moscow.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Miremur te non tua —Let me have something to admire in yourself, not in what belongs to you.
— 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.

In the midst of this placid natural setting, sky and ocean competed with each other in tranquility, and the sea offered the orb of night the loveliest mirror ever to reflect its image.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

As soon as it was laid down, they clapped it into the press, and there was not a bit of it out of which each of them did not squeeze some oil of gold; insomuch that the poor grape was tried with a witness, and brought off so drained and picked, and so dry, that there was not the least moisture, juice, or substance left in it; for they had pressed out its very quintessence.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

The entire mourning is not to last more than six weeks, and my opera will not be given before the 20th of January.
— from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The diary relates: At Olean, not a church or schoolhouse could be obtained for the lecture and it would have had to be abandoned had not the landlord, Mr. Comstock, given the use of his dining-room....
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

After the death of Constantine the Ninth, the last male of the royal race, a new and broken scene presents itself, and the accumulated years of twelve emperors do not equal the space of his single reign.
— 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

Whatever powers the Board exercises beyond this limit, were right and necessary in that peculiar case, for the cure of rooted habits of maladministration in matters deeply affecting not the localities merely, but the whole community; since no locality has a moral right to make itself by mismanagement a nest of pauperism, necessarily overflowing into other localities, and impairing the moral and physical condition of the whole labouring community.
— from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

“No, John, dear,” she would unselfishly reply, “you need the lessons more than I do.
— from The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

[28] 'Now, then, little Morrison, speak up.
— from That Scholarship Boy by Emma Leslie

"'Twas mean of Rodney not to let me go," Leander repeate
— from Friendship and Folly: A Novel by Maria Louise Pool

I know not: here he is, and here I yield him: and I beseech your grace, let it be booked with the rest of this day's deeds; or, by the Lord, I will have it in a particular ballad else, with mine own picture on the top on't, Colevile kissing my foot: to the which course if I be enforced, if you do not all show like gilt twopences to me, and I in the clear sky of fame o'ershine you as much as the full moon doth the cinders of the element, which show like pins' heads to her, believe not the word of the noble: therefore let me have right, and let desert mount.
— from King Henry IV, Second Part by William Shakespeare

And when He purposed to manifest His beauty in the kingdom of names and to reveal His glory in the realm of attributes, He brought forth His Prophets from the invisible plane to the visible, that His name “the Manifest” might be distinguished from “the Hidden” and His name “the Last” might be discerned from “the First”, and that there may be fulfilled the words: “He is the First and the Last; the Seen and the Hidden; and He knoweth all things!”
— from Gems of Divine Mysteries by Bahá'u'lláh

He was in the wrong not to let me see her sooner.
— from Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights by E. Dixon

I suffered almost death while kept in this confinement; and he had ordered the overseer never to let me loose again; saying that I thought of getting free by running off, but no negro should ever get away from him alive.
— from Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself by Henry Bibb

It is no harm now to let my young readers know what Repeal meant when I was a boy in Ireland.
— from Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898 Childhood, boyhood, manhood; customs, habits and manners of the Irish people; Erinach and Sassenach; Catholic and protestant; Englishman and Irishman; English religion; Irish plunder; social life and prison life; the Fenian movement; Travels in Ireland, England, Scotland and America by Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

I immediately conceived the folly of this conclusion, however, when I found myself armed with a boat-hook, and dragging behind me a long strip of rope; well knowing that neither of these were needful to land me in Paradise, and that the celestial citizens would scarcely approve of these accessories, with which I appeared, in the manner of the giants of old, likely to attack heaven and eject the gods therefrom.
— from Niels Klim's journey under the ground being a narrative of his wonderful descent to the subterranean lands; together with an account of the sensible animals and trees inhabiting the planet Nazar and the firmament. by Ludvig Holberg