If time present (if it is to be time) only cometh into existence, because it passeth into time past, how can we say that either this is, whose cause of being is, that it shall not be; so, namely, that we cannot truly say that time is, but because it is tending not to be?
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

This action settled matters in the city, but subsequently I had to remove some officials in the parishes—among them a justice of the peace and a sheriff in the parish of Rapides; the justice for refusing to permit negro witnesses to testify in a certain murder case, and for allowing the murderer, who had foully killed a colored man, to walk out of his court on bail in the insignificant sum of five hundred dollars; and the sheriff, for conniving at the escape from jail of another alleged murderer.
— from Project Gutenberg Edition of The Memoirs of Four Civil War Generals by John Alexander Logan

I failed to discover any rule about a cortège of bridesmaids, if there is such a rule it is probably elastic.
— from Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions by Henry Festing Jones