"If you really show your devotion and inwardly kneel before him, your life will be spared!" I gazed at his photograph and saw there a blinding light, enveloping my body and the entire room.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

And perhaps there is one reason why a comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.
— from Joseph Andrews, Vol. 1 by Henry Fielding

Death is better than a bitter life, Eccl.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

This we remark in the case of the artisan, but, ludicrously enough, do not apply the same rule to people of the richer sort.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

It is as well that the young student should know this, and be led early to take great care of that most valuable of studio properties, vigorous health.
— from The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed

The roots thereof are by long experience found to be very available against the plague and pestilential fevers by provoking sweat; if the powder thereof be taken in wine, it also resists the force of any other poison.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

I mean to govern this island without giving up a right or taking a bribe; let everyone keep his eye open, and look out for the arrow; for I can tell them 'the devil's in Cantillana,' and if they drive me to it they'll see something that will astonish them.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I had rather see a wren hawke at a fly Then this decision; ev'ry blow that falls Threats a brave life, each stroake laments The place whereon it fals, and sounds more like A Bell then blade: I will stay here; It is enough my hearing shall be punishd With what shall happen—gainst the which there is No deaffing, but to heare—not taint mine eye With dread sights, it may shun.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

These are but legendary enlargements of the real adventures of a traveller passing from one patch of peasantry to another, and finding women wearing strange head-dresses and men singing new songs.
— from What I Saw in America by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

The latter route, though three times as far, is most frequently adopted by travellers as being less expensive and troublesome.
— from Foot-prints of Travel; Or, Journeyings in Many Lands by Maturin Murray Ballou

How fearful must have been the terror of their owners when they could flee while leaving behind them all their treasures and belongings, leaving even their doors open behind them to the midnight prowlers or thieves who must surely be about after dark.
— from Servants of Sin: A Romance by John Bloundelle-Burton

“Won’t the afternoons be long enough for that, dear?” “I’ve never found the whole day really long enough for it, Grandmother.
— from A Texas Blue Bonnet by Caroline Emilia Jacobs

It was erected as nearly as possible in the middle of the town, the beam projecting over a stagnant pool; at the end of the beam was a pulley, over which ran a rope fastened to a basket large enough to hold a man.
— from England in the Days of Old by William Andrews

The grading of the benefit is accordingly a crude but fairly effective device against a danger which presents itself as soon as the amount becomes large enough to be attractive to "bad risks."
— from Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions by James Boyd Kennedy

I trust that the explanation will prove satisfactory to you, and I have only to say, with respect to the appointment of Mr. Goulburn, that upon the principle upon which the Government is acting I can never consider the opinion of any individual, whether in support or in opposition to the Roman Catholic claims, to be in itself a bar to his appointment to office in Ireland, provided he is in all other respects duly qualified, it being understood that the existing laws, whatever they may be, are to be equally administered with respect to all classes of his Majesty's subjects, and that the Roman Catholics are in any case to enjoy their fair share of the privileges and advantages to which they are by law entitled.
— from Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) From the Original Family Documents by Buckingham and Chandos, Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, Duke of

72 The Laws of Ḫammurabi, the ancient Babylonian legislator, enjoin that “if a man weave a spell and put a ban upon a man, and has not justified himself, he that wove the spell upon him shall be put to death.”
— from The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas by Edward Westermarck

All true subjection to the kingdom begins with that accurate, because lowly, estimate of ourselves.
— from Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke by Alexander Maclaren