Since preserving paragraphs is more important than exact linecount; this is about what you want: keep reading paragraphs, until they exceed a predefined number of lines. 

use Fatal qw(open);
use constant MAXLINES => 2;
open my $i, 'data.txt';

(local $/, my ($sum, $buf)) = ( '', 0 , undef); 

while (<>) {
        $buf .= $_;
        $sum +=  tr /\n/\n/;
        next  if $sum < MAXLINES ;

        print "$buf----------";; 
        ($sum, $buf) = (0, undef );
}

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In reply to Re: splitting up a long text at regular intervals by ioannis
in thread splitting up a long text at regular intervals by Anonymous Monk

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