2. Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

But I will rise there with so full a glory That I will dazzle all the eyes of France, Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

At the end of four years, some youths, climbing by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests, detected the fatal secret; and, as Andronicus felt himself touched and bound by the excommunication, he trembled on the brink of the abyss which had been so treacherously dug under his feet.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

The children of Boethius and Symmachus were restored to their paternal inheritance; her extreme lenity never consented to inflict any corporal or pecuniary penalties on her Roman subjects; and she generously despised the clamors of the Goths, who, at the end of forty years, still considered the people of Italy as their slaves or their enemies.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

Men who had not seen each other for years, some from the Crimea, some from Petersburg, some from abroad, met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Prison, he adds, is a kind of nirvana, and he tells of an old convict who possessed in a high degree this air vénérable , closely resembling Thiers, who, at the end of five years’ sentence passed at Clairvaux, wrote as follows to the director:—“Sir, you know me.
— from The Criminal by Havelock Ellis

In the light of this definition, founded upon the experience of forty years' successful practice in treating this form of disease with creosote, the writer is prepared to indorse the heading of this article.
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 by Various

As a cold matter of meteorological fact it does rain sometimes; I accidentally started an acrimonious discussion by a merely polite remark on the weather as to whether it had been nine, eleven, or fourteen years since the last rain.
— from Across the Andes A Tale of Wandering Days Among the Mountains of Bolivia and the Jungles of the Upper Amazon by Charles Johnson Post

child, evidently of few years, screaming in downright terror.
— from The People of the Abyss by Jack London

I really care nothing for custom, law, or folk-way, or dogma, excepting only for your sake.
— from Athalie by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

“An enmity of fifteen years’ standing,” Appleby said, slowly, “is not apt to break out in sudden flame of crime.
— from The Mystery of the Sycamore by Carolyn Wells

I wish to be allowed to defray the expenses of finishing your son’s education.”
— from Mr. Marx's Secret by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim