He invented a new and perfect method.
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

Money is a needful and precious thing, and when well used, a noble thing, but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

O Polus, I am not a public man, and only last year, when my tribe were serving as Prytanes, and it became my duty as their president to take the votes, there was a laugh at me, because I was unable to take them.
— from Gorgias by Plato

"No, I am not a prince, sir, I am an independent gentleman....
— from Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I cannot easily resolve on anything so serious as marriage; especially as I am not at present in want of money, and might perhaps, till the old gentleman's death, be very little benefited by the match.
— from Lady Susan by Jane Austen

I am not a priest.”
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

There is also another sacred bird called the phoenix which I did not myself see except in painting, for in truth he comes to them very rarely, at intervals, as the people of Heliopolis say, of five hundred years; and these say that he comes regularly when his father dies; and if he be like the painting, he is of this size and nature, that is to say, some of his feathers are of gold colour and others red, and in outline and size he is as nearly as possible like an eagle.
— from The History of Herodotus — Volume 1 by Herodotus

"I am not a physician.
— from The Pursuit by Frank (Frank Mackenzie) Savile

But men at the North, and men at the South, understand the language used in its true and proper sense; and Abolitionists have been using these terms in a new and peculiar sense, which is inevitably and universally misunderstood, and this is an occasion of much of the strife and alarm which has prevailed both at the South and at the North.
— from An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism With reference to the duty of American females by Catharine Esther Beecher

London, 1830, in a note at p. 23., alludes to London and Westminster improved, by John Gywnn, London , 1766, 4to., and has this remark: "It is a singular fact, that in this work John Gwynn pointed out almost all the designs for the improvement of London, which have been devised by the civil and military architects of the present day."
— from Notes and Queries, Number 49, October 5, 1850 by Various

I am not a prig, and, whatever I am or am not, priggishness had no part in my feelings then.
— from Kent Knowles: Quahaug by Joseph Crosby Lincoln

'Miss Gillespie is as nice as possible,' she wrote.
— from Uncle Max by Rosa Nouchette Carey

Mrs. Shamrock, who is a natural apologist, pleads that the Irish gentry have the most beautiful gardens in the world and the greatest natural taste in gardening, and there must be some reason why the lower classes are so different in this respect.
— from Penelope's Irish Experiences by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

I am not a punctual man of business, no prim knight in buckram.”
— from Roger Kyffin's Ward by William Henry Giles Kingston

I am not a poor man—in fact I should be called rich.
— from Robert Coverdale's Struggle; Or, on the Wave of Success by Alger, Horatio, Jr.

But nearly all the Indians now speak Spanish, and the ancient language is, as nearly as possible, extinct.
— from The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Léon, A.D. 1532-50, contained in the first part of his Chronicle of Peru by Pedro de Cieza de León