I not one hundred and twenty pounds a year, besides my half pay?
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

In Trinidad and Tobago, exports have reached as high as 1,000,000 pounds a year; but in recent times they have fallen off heavily.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

También iba a la 15 casa el conductor de la correspondencia, llamado Cristóbal Ramos, y por apodo Caballuco, personaje a quien ya conocimos, y a éste solía dirigir doña Perfecta amonestaciones y reprimendas tan enérgicas como la siguiente: —¡Bonito servicio de correos tenéis!...
— from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós

1. 3. 38 Foure pound a yeere.
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson

When he plays the legislator he borrows a magisterial and positive style, and boldly there foists in his most fantastic inventions, as fit to persuade the vulgar, as impossible to be believed by himself; knowing very well how fit we are to receive all sorts of impressions, especially the most immoderate and preposterous; and yet, in his Laws , he takes singular care that nothing be sung in public but poetry, of which the fiction and fabulous relations tend to some advantageous end; it being so easy to imprint all sorts of phantasms in human minds, that it were injustice not to feed them rather with profitable untruths than with untruths that are unprofitable and hurtful.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Every one likes and respects him, and I'm proud to think he cares for me, though I'm so poor and young and silly," said Meg, looking prettier than ever in her earnestness.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

One would have thought that, followed as she was, all her letters read, and all her acquaintances strictly watched by me, living in a remote part of Ireland away from her family, Lady Lyndon could have had no chance of communicating with her allies, or of making her wrongs, as she was pleased to call them, public; and yet, for a while, she carried on a correspondence under my very nose, and acutely organised a conspiracy for flying from me; as shall be told.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

You will find that just in proportion as you increase your confidence in yourself by the affirmation of what you wish to be and to do, your ability will increase.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

“Now,” continued Pandulfo, “turn your gaze to the right of the picture, and you will behold the cause of the tempest,—you will see why the fifth vessel is thus perilled, and her sisters are thus wrecked.
— from Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

It was a most awful Speech made by the Devil, Possessing a young Woman, at a Village in Germany, By the command of God, I am come to Torment the Body of this young Woman, tho I cannot hurt her Soul; and it is that I may warn Men, to take heed of sinning against God.
— from The Witchcraft Delusion in New England: Its Rise, Progress, and Termination, (Vol. 1 of 3) by Robert Calef

He buy up property of four thousand pounds a year!
— from Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope

The bird in his song has no moral purpose, and yet the influence is humanizing.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll

We should simply admire the purity, the absence of cruel and degrading accessories, with which this most perilous and yet humbling and admonitory doctrine was held in Israel.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Exodus by G. A. (George Alexander) Chadwick

I was just marrying the princess, and you've spoiled it all.
— from The Puppet Crown by Harold MacGrath

You girls never have a cent left out of your princely wages, for you spend it all on glad rags in the hope of capturing a husband who will consider it an honor to pay all your bills, furnish you with a fine house, an auto to ride about in, and other et ceteras too numerous to mention."
— from Fame and Fortune Weekly, No. 801, February 4, 1921 Stories of boys that make money by Various

‘Cap’n,’ says I, ‘you have again collided with the blue-coated guardians of the peace, and you are pinched.’
— from Frank Merriwell's Triumph; Or, The Disappearance of Felicia by Burt L. Standish

Dear reader, examine the spirit of this preface, and you will at once guess at my purpose.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 01: Childhood by Giacomo Casanova