Since everything then is cause and effect, dependent and supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though imperceptible chain, which binds together things most distant and most different, I hold it equally impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, and to know the whole without knowing the parts in detail.
— from Pascal's Pensées by Blaise Pascal

Going into the drawing-room they found Princess Varvara already there, and the gentlemen of the party in black frock-coats.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

the helplessness of a thing urges me on to plunge into it so deeply that I end by penetrating to its deepest depths, and perceive that in reality it is not worth so very much.
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Before proceeding to legislate, then, we must prove that they are two, and what is the difference between them, that when we impose the penalty upon either, every one may understand our proposal, and be able in some way to judge whether the penalty is fitly or unfitly inflicted.
— from Laws by Plato

While pondering this problem, I sat in the dormitory window-seat.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

I pity men who occupy themselves exclusively with the transitory in things and lose themselves in the study of what is perishable, since we are here for this very end that we may make the perishable imperishable, which we can do only after we have learned how to appreciate both.
— 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.

But though he is struck dumb by their prescience, it does not even cross his mind that he is going to lose his glorious 'freedom'—not though journeys and marriages imply much more agency on his part than anything foretold to Macbeth.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. (Andrew Cecil) Bradley

No wonder that the lover of the princely Idris should fail to recognize himself in the miserable object there pourtrayed.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The plantain is made edible by roasting with the skin on, or by peeling and splitting it in halves and frying it in lard or butter.
— from A Journey in Southeastern Mexico by Henry Howard Harper

[127] It seems probable, from many considerations, that at a certain depth within us—in the region of what has been called the cosmic consciousness—memory does in nowise fade, and the past is always present, but, as Bergson says, the ordinary conscious intellect tends to only select from this mass what is needed for impending action, and has consequently become limited by this tendency.
— from The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and Transfiguration by Edward Carpenter

When we try to penetrate into the mind of Jesus, as shown in "the Lord's Prayer," and ascertain what he regarded as the fittest objects for orison, we find that they are almost exclusively worldly.
— from Ancient Faiths And Modern A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist. by Thomas Inman

That evening was the turning point in my life.—The next day, and Monday, and once or twice besides, I went again to the house of this brother, where I read the Scriptures with him and another brother; for it was too long for me to wait till Saturday came again.
— from A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller. Part 1 by George Müller

At the corner of the farmyard was a gigantic stone, of which I wonder to this day how it got there, which Grandpapa always told me to put in my pocket.
— from The Story of My Life, volumes 1-3 by Augustus J. C. (Augustus John Cuthbert) Hare

After speaking of the importance of introducing the new and liberal sentiments into places that have never heard them proclaimed, in a manner that shall make the best impression, that is, through the agency of able and efficient speakers, he proceeds to say:— "I am decidedly opposed to the hasty constitution of churches.
— from Memoir of Rev. Joseph Badger Fourth Edition by E. G. (Elihu Goodwin) Holland

The place is Christian (Nestorian), but its inhabitants have a name for quarrelsomeness and love of intrigue that makes them a proverb among their not very peaceful nation.
— from The Cradle of Mankind; Life in Eastern Kurdistan by Edgar Thomas Ainger Wigram

However, all is well and safe; and so safe that I have resolved to proceed in person to Singapore.
— from The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido For the Suppression of Piracy by Rajah of Sarawak James

His country would be ready, as far as armaments were concerned, to take part in the conflict by October 1 of this year.”—Signed
— from Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, Volume 3 by Various