And the king appointed a tribute to be laid on all the people, of thirty thousand laborers, whose work he rendered easy to them by prudently dividing it among them; for he made ten thousand cut timber in Mount Lebanon for one month; and then to come home, and rest two months, until the time when the other twenty thousand had finished their task at the appointed time; and so afterward it came to pass that the first ten thousand returned to their work every fourth month: and it was Adoram who was over this tribute.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

’Tis very true, said I——but ’twere better to get all these things out of our heads, and return to my uncle Toby.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

'Tis very true, said I—but 'twere better to get all these things out of our heads, and return to my uncle Toby.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

To such a wonderful degree were the antient Spartans , as brave and as free a people as ever existed, inspired by this happy temperature of soul, that rejecting even in their battles the use of trumpets, and other instruments for exciting heat and rage, they marched up to scenes of havock and horror, with the sound of flutes, to the tunes of which their steps kept p
— from Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies by John Dickinson

He was surprised, he said; as well he might be, for the arrangement was that having done his work he was to return to Holland and report to Monmouth upon the feeling of the gentry.
— from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini

Adhering to his own construction of the existing treaty, he affected to consider the measures of the American government as infractions of it, which no power in the nation had a right to make, unless the United States in congress assembled should determine that their solemn engagements should no longer be performed.
— from The Life of George Washington: A Linked Index to the Project Gutenberg Editions by John Marshall

All the while he is founding on data from the Egypt of the third century for a Palestinian environment of the first; and he is obliged to stress the point that Matthew the tax-gatherer was a “professional scribe,” while his argument runs that Matthew used the detached jottings of other people, not his own.
— from The Historical Jesus: A Survey of Positions by J. M. (John Mackinnon) Robertson

’Tis very true, said I——but ’twere better to get all these things out of our heads, and return to my uncle Toby .
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne