Whereunto he answered me, Well, well; for money one day I shall have but too much, for I have a philosopher’s stone which attracts money out of men’s purses as the adamant doth iron.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Had it been matter of duration, I should have put it into firmer language.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

But at the period when I was in love with Gilberte, I still believed that Love did really exist, apart from ourselves; that, allowing us, at the most, to surmount the obstacles in our way, it offered us its blessings in an order in which we were not free to make the least alteration; it seemed to me that if I had, on my own initiative, substituted for the sweetness of a confession a pretence of indifference, I should not only have been depriving myself of one of the joys of which I had most often dreamed, I should have been fabricating, of my own free will, a love that was artificial and without value, that bore no relation to the truth, whose mysterious and foreordained ways I should thus have been declining to follow.
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

No estimate of the losses has been released, but will certainly run into millions of dollars, including some highly secret defense items which were being developed at the plant.
— from Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X by Appleton, Victor, II

I do not believe in her theory that love will transform a fellow of my mould into a hero, not to say that I have my own doubt if she herself believes it.
— from Lord Kilgobbin by Charles James Lever

She said to me one day: “I speak Hindustani as the Duke of Wellington used to talk French.”
— from A Lady of England: The Life and Letters of Charlotte Maria Tucker by Agnes Giberne

“I too long to see your dear mamma; and had it not been for you, my own darling, I should have missed her even more than I have done; but you have ever been a good, obedient, loving child, and my greatest comfort during her absence.”
— from Norman Vallery; or, How to Overcome Evil with Good by William Henry Giles Kingston

Had it been matter of duration , I should have put it into a better language .
— from The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded by Delia Salter Bacon

Does this letter prove that he was in favor of killing all the Indians but the ones mentioned, or does it show his anxiety lest the innocent should perish with the guilty, which led him to give those names to Major Magone, an officer in the provisional army?
— from A History of Oregon, 1792-1849 Drawn From Personal Observation and Authentic Information by W. H. (William Henry) Gray

I have spoken to you, as I might have spoken to one of my own daughters, if she had been of your age.
— from Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time by Wilkie Collins