From Love Lyrics and Valentine Verses by Charles Maurice Davies, 1875.

Fortune-telling by means of words, from China: A History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the People by John Henry Gray, 1878.

There was a time before the Internet axiom, "What has been seen cannot be unseen."  We find proof in Seen & Unseen, or Monologues of a Homeless Snail by Yone Noguchi, 1897.

The phrase "Love is self-devouring" delivers but a single Google result!  Here's the uroboros encircling Cupid, from Sir Walter Ralegh: A Tragedy by William John Dixon and illustrated by N. C. Bishop-Culpeper, 1897.

"A sentence should be so constructed that the writer's thought shall produce the strongest impression of which it is capable." —Practical English Grammar and Correspondence, 1889

"O hold your tongue, my pretty parrot, lay not the blame upon me."  From Illustrated British Ballads, Old and New, 1894.

Here's a precursor to Wenceslao Moreno's "Señor Wences" act, from A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times by Henry Sampson, 1874.

"This nonsense must be stopped, he said."  From An African Millionaire by Grant Allen, 1897.

The great transformation from Belle and the Dragon by Arthur Edward Waite, 1894.

"Scores of strange beasts hurried out from under them," from Fifteen Hundred Miles an Hour by Charles Dixon, 1895.

Here's a precursor to the song "The Man in the Moon (is a Lady)," in the musical Mame (1966).  From Astronomy for Amateurs by Camille Flammarion, 1904.  See our previous proof that the craters of the moon line up exactly with the Mona Lisa's facial features.

"I fell at the foot of one of the large trees," from Phantastes by George MacDonald, 1894.

"The perfected discovery," from Crooked Places by Edward Garrett, 1894.

From Goddelycke Wenschen, 1629.

We found what sounds like the perfect summation of what magicians are ultimately striving to do.  All a magician wants is for someone to come "Face to face with the crowning wonder of his series of mysteries."  Put that way, it sounds so simple, so reasonable.  From The Mystery of Hall-in-the-Wood by Rosa Mulholland, 1893.