Let this, then, be our invocation of the Gods, to which I add an exhortation of myself to speak in such manner as will be most intelligible to you, and will most accord with my own intent.
— from Timaeus by Plato

I have followed these principles in orchestrating my own works, and, wishing to impart some of my ideas to young composers, I have quoted examples from my own compositions, or given references to them, endeavouring to show, in all sincerity, what is successful and what is not.
— from Principles of Orchestration, with Musical Examples Drawn from His Own Works by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

Might I trouble you for a match?”
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

It seemeth this last bridge to be made or repaired at the charges of John Wels, mayor, in the year 1431, for on the coping is engraven Wels embraced by angels, like as on the standard in Cheape, which he also built.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

I wasn't sure what to think, when a voice said to me: "Is that you, Professor?"
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne

Good taste forbids saying that Constantine the Great speculated as audaciously as a modern stock-broker on values of which he knew at the utmost only the volume; or that he merged all uncertain forces into a single trust, which he enormously overcapitalized, and forced on the market; but this is the substance of what Constantine himself said in his Edict of Milan in the year 313, which admitted Christianity into the Trust of State Religions.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

"I recollect, sir, there was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and afterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at me in the year '4—at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you before dinner—a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney—he's a magistrate at Budgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

doan’ talk to me —signs is signs , mine I tell you; en I knowed jis’ ’s well ’at I ’uz gwineter be rich agin as I’s a-stannin’
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Listen a while to its voice of mystery, and Fancy will magnify it till you start and smile at the illusion.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

All I wish to impress upon your mind is, that you are not in any way picked out by Providence to be specially unhappy—that there is no perversion of nature on your account."
— from Varney the Vampire; Or, the Feast of Blood by Thomas Preskett Prest

"I have, sir," he continued, "laid before you all the information in my power relative to the subject of the most importance to you.
— from The Marvellous History of the Shadowless Man, and The Cold Heart by Adelbert von Chamisso

It would be quite unreasonable to expect the Spirit's full maturity in the young."
— from Garman and Worse: A Norwegian Novel by Alexander Lange Kielland

“God has gone mad, I tell you—mad—mad—mad!”
— from Ravished Armenia The Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl Who Lived Through the Great Massacres by Aurora Mardiganian

“What's come over you, at all at all, you unsignified shingawn you, to affront the gintleman in this way, and he kind enough to go for to give you an examination?—come now, you had betther not vex me, I tell you, but hould up your head, and spake out loud, that we can all hear you: now, Father Con, achora, you'll not be too hard upon him in the beginning, till he gets into it, for he's aisy dashed.”
— from The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of William Carleton, Volume Three by William Carleton

Sloane, 1741, f. 106 (b)), makes mention in that year of "eyewater made at the Pinner of Wakefield by my dear wife and my Sister Vaughan, who are both now with God."
— from Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II by Henry Vaughan

he cause of this sudden rupture, anger, grief, and wounded pride, all struggled for the mastery in the young man's heart, and he murmured: "She need not insist so strongly upon my making no attempt to see her again!
— from Avarice--Anger: Two of the Seven Cardinal Sins by Eugène Sue

"I will give her own account of her receiving the Gospel, from a portion of her manuscripts: "'In the year 1842, I was living in the city of Boston, State of Massachusetts.
— from Representative Women of Deseret: A Book of Biographical Sketches by Augusta Joyce Crocheron

[104] Given at Our Palace of Westminster the 9th day of March, in the year of Our Lord, 1657.
— from British Royal Proclamations Relating to America, 1603-1783 by Great Britain. Sovereign