Furthermore, I would perform but this one miracle at this time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, I would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them useful.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Tu Mu adds that they are now called "wooden donkeys."
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

It is very sure, however, that a boy who has once done this has a larger idea of the world and its geography, and it is likely to help him in realizing that there is some meaning to the lines and figures on the border of his school maps, and that they are not put there merely to add to his perplexities.
— from Boy Scouts Handbook The First Edition, 1911 by Boy Scouts of America

"'Please, Father, think of me as tiger tamer and never as tiger killer.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery could be faintly heard.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

The Volatility of Mercury argues that they are not much bigger, nor may they be much less, lest they lose their Opacity, and become either transparent as they do when attenuated by Vitrification, or by Solution in Menstruums, or black as they do when ground smaller, by rubbing Silver, or Tin, or Lead, upon other Substances to draw black Lines.
— from Opticks Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton

The words struck me at the time, and now they have suddenly come back to me here, gentlemen.”
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I tell you, Holmes, I have had to keep a tight hold upon myself all this time; and now I am asking myself whether, if I had let myself go a little more, I might not have been a wiser man.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

They make experiments upon themselves without considering that what suits one person will not suit everyone, that there is no universal rule for taste or manners, and that there are no good copies.
— from Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld

Thus those songs will be sung in honour of other women which you designed only for me? and those tender and natural expressions which spoke your love will help others to explain their passion, with much more advantage than what they themselves are capable of.
— from Letters of Abelard and Heloise To which is prefix'd a particular account of their lives, amours, and misfortunes by Héloïse

When I am alone with one of them they cannot pretend not to know me, and then they are not so light-hearted.'
— from Little Johannes by Frederik van Eeden

Ten minutes at the tables, and Nancy had won enough to pay everything for a month.
— from The Devourers by Annie Vivanti

“Bertha, suppose it is a mistake, and that they are not meant for us,” objected Grace.
— from The Youngest Sister: A Tale of Manitoba by Bessie Marchant

He bore himself with a supreme indifference that was maddening, and that took (apparently) no notice of the fact that every girl in school was a willing slave to the mere nodding of his head or the beckoning of his hand.
— from Mary Marie by Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

I had not heard of or from him for some weeks; until, one morning, about this time, a near relative of his sent to my house all that remained of this indefatigable searcher after truth; an accurate drawing of which I instantly caused to be made—and here it is!
— from The History of the Hen Fever. A Humorous Record by Geo. P. (George Pickering) Burnham

In 1698 the old Mint House, which stood in the Place de la Monnaie, at that time a narrow thoroughfare blocked up by wooden buildings, was bought by an architect, Jean Paul Bombarda.
— from Belgium by George W. T. (George William Thomson) Omond

During the last summer, while amusing myself with verifying a statement of Sir D. Brewster respecting the light of the rainbow, viz. that it is polarised in particular planes, I observed a phenomenon which startled me exceedingly, inasmuch as it was quite new to me at the time; and, notwithstanding subsequent inquiries, I cannot find that it has been observed by any other person.
— from Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various

A few years ago I made a trip to a neighboring state to visit a friend who was engaged in farming.
— from Learning to Be a Schoolmaster by Thomas R. (Thomas Raymond) Cole