For divination is the peacemaker of gods and men, and works by a knowledge of the tendencies of merely human loves to piety and impiety.
— from Symposium by Plato

My intention then in displaying so carefully the arguments of that fantastic sect, is only to make the reader sensible of the truth of my hypothesis, that all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom; and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive, than of the cogitative part of our natures.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

There is a curious legend regarding three stones which once stood on the top of Moelfre Hill, in Carnarvonshire, but which were long ago rolled to the bottom of the hill by ‘some idle-headed youths’ who dug them up.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in other guise.
— from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

Observing this, Sæmund says: "The astrologer is again after us, and again we must look to ourselves; take my shoe off again, and with your knife stab me in the thigh; fill the shoe with blood, and place it on the top of my head."
— from The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson by Snorri Sturluson

I seemed to fancy that something fell on the top of my hat!”
— from The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

But the evidence of his destructive rage is doubtful and recent: the Temple of Peace, or the theatre of Marcellus, have been demolished by the slow operation of ages, and a formal proscription would have multiplied the copies of Virgil and Livy in the countries which were not subject to the ecclesiastical dictator.
— 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

The woman who shewing little succeeds in making a man want to see more, has accomplished three-fourths of the task of making him fall in love with her; for is love anything else than a kind of curiosity?
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

My Lord bade them take away that fool from the table, and so gave over the thoughts of making him his heir, from this piece of folly.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

When, half an hour after midnight of the third of March, he rose before [Pg 92] a full Senate and crowded galleries to close the debate, he was at his best.
— from Stephen Arnold Douglas by William Garrott Brown

There was an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust; and, as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I thought what a number of blue-bottle flies from the butchers', and earwigs from the market, and grubs from the country, must be holding on up there, lying by for next summer.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Very soon I heard a strange noise among the highest branches of the tree over my head.
— from The Pearl Box Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People by Anonymous

Half-a-dozen times she was nearly over backwards on the top of me; half-a-dozen times, from sheer weariness of spirit, I was nearly giving it up, and leading her down again to follow the road.
— from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

They are lovely pets and run all over me; they eat corn off the top of my head and nibble my ears.
— from Bolax, Imp or Angel—Which? by Josephine Culpeper

In fair weather the sun serves as an important guide; and in cloudy weather the close observation of an experienced woodman will enable him to steer a tolerably correct course by the moss which grows on the trunks of most hardwood trees, the north sides of which are covered with a much larger share than the other portions of the trunk.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851 by Various

When Gov. Mason, appointed by President Jackson as administrator of the territory of Michigan heard about this, he dispatched a division of militia to occupy Toledo.
— from The Greatest Highway in the World Historical, Industrial and Descriptive Information of the Towns, Cities and Country Passed Through Between New York and Chicago Via the New York Central Lines. Based on the Encyclopaedia Britannica. by New York Central Railroad Company

Eventually my companion was the first to get clear, but it took a good quarter of an hour’s work to accomplish this, and it was brought about by my placing my right arm (my left was pinned underneath me) round his neck and endeavouring to draw him over on the top of me, he at the same time pressing with both his hands against the opposite wall of the drain, and the two of us pulling and pressing in jerks, until finally he succeeded in rolling over on top.
— from My German Prisons Being the Experiences of an Officer During Two and a Half Years as a Prisoner of War by Horace Gray Gilliland

Ferodia, selecting his warriors, out of which he again selected a chosen hundred—men of mettle and might, unscrupulous, and quick with their spears—proceeded the next morning for Katalambula’s village, the Kwikuru of Ututa, while the discontented of the tribe of Meroeni hastened, by day and by night, to make ready their men for the great and momentous struggle.
— from My Kalulu, Prince, King and Slave: A Story of Central Africa by Henry M. (Henry Morton) Stanley