One of the most singular gifts, or, if abused, most singular weaknesses, of the human mind, is its power of persuading itself to see whatever it chooses; a great gift if directed to the discernment of the things needful and pertinent to its own work and being; a great weakness if directed to the discovery of things profitless or discouraging.
— 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.

‘Jupiter!’ quoth she ‘which of these hairs is Paris my husband?’
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

This great island lay over against the Pillars of Heracles, in extent greater than Libya and Asia put together, and was the passage to other islands and to a great ocean of which the Mediterranean sea was only the harbour; and within the Pillars the empire of Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia and in Libya to Egypt.
— from Timaeus by Plato

she went on to herself.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy

There was a tradition that it had been put up some fifty years before by a retired colonel called von Schmidt, who owned the house at that time.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ang íyang pahíyum mudani bísan kinsa nga baghud ug balatían, Her smile wins over the hardest of hearts.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

There was a paddock behind the house where a cow was feeding, and a gate led through a yard to the back door, and thither the boy was turning when he noticed a little girl in homespun frock and sun-bonnet leaning over the garden gate, looking up rather wistfully at the shuttered windows of the house.
— from Two Maiden Aunts by Mary H. Debenham

It looked now as if she were on the high road to that end.
— from When Knighthood Was in Flower or, the Love Story of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor the King's Sister, and Happening in the Reign of His August Majesty King Henry the Eighth by Charles Major

He added that she was as great a favourite in society as on the boards, that M. le Duc de La ——— had made her the fashion and that she was on the highroad to eclipse Mademoiselle Lecouvreur.
— from The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche by Anatole France

And immediately Madame Delphine commenced savagely drawing a thread in the fabric of her skirt with one trembling hand, while she drove the fan with the other.
— from Old Creole Days: A Story of Creole Life by George Washington Cable

he said, with a sweeping wave of the hand.
— from The Panchronicon by Harold Steele MacKaye

When legislators keep the law, When banks dispense with bolts and locks, When berries, whortle—rasp—and straw— Grow bigger downwards through the box,— When he that selleth house or land Shows leak in roof or flaw in right,— When haberdashers choose the stand Whose window hath the broadest light,— When preachers tell us all they think, And party leaders all they mean,— When what we pay for, that we drink, From real grape and coffee-bean,— When lawyers take what they would give, And doctors give what they would take,— When city fathers eat to live, Save when they fast for conscience' sake,— When one that hath a horse on sale Shall bring his merit to the proof, Without a lie for every nail That holds the iron on the hoof,— When in the usual place for rips Our gloves are stitched with special care, And guarded well the whalebone tips Where first umbrellas need repair,— When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

If ever I meet the scoundrel who ought to have seen—” He stuck his head out between the ropes abruptly, and said, in a note of earnest expostulation: “Get some brandy!—some neat brandy!”
— from The War in the Air by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Doth the earth press, or the black stone weigh on thee heavily?
— from Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886) by Martinengo-Cesaresco, Evelyn Lilian Hazeldine Carrington, contessa