In writing THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, as in my other plays, I have used one or two words only that I have not heard among the country people of Ireland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could read the newspapers.
— from The Playboy of the Western World: A Comedy in Three Acts by J. M. (John Millington) Synge

Give me your advice, billy, and tell me your opinion freely, Should I marry or no?
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Give me thy advice freely, I beseech thee, Should I marry or no?
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

"By my soul," exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, "that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but a walking-stick's!
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Therefore I beseech you, my good Master Rondibilis, should I marry or not?
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

But howsoever tell me, Should I marry or no?
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

So it must of necessity be divided and distributed among them.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

And thus I understand that man's Soul is made of nought: that is to say, it is made, but of nought that is [Pg 129] made.
— from Revelations of Divine Love by of Norwich Julian

At first I must have done this from something in my own nature, for I was not aware of it, and yet was doing it without any plan, when one day, sixty years ago, a friend whom I loved and respected said this to me, 'Ah, James, I see that you are destined to succeed in the world, and to make friends, because you are so ready to see the good point in the characters of those you meet.'"
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works by Oliver Wendell Holmes

In a volume of this size it must of necessity be but a brief outline, sufficient, however, to convey a clear impression of what the Red Cross really means to every individual in this great country of ours.
— from A Story of the Red Cross; Glimpses of Field Work by Clara Barton

"If he who is descended from a sinful ancestor," said I, "must of necessity sin again, it follows from this doctrine, that there is no sin!"
— from The Devil's Elixir, Vol. 2 (of 2) by E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus) Hoffmann

The letter is in the safe in my office next door.
— from The Yellow Streak by Valentine Williams

“I do not know, madam, what you think a young lady should be,” retorted Mr. Churchill; “but I think when a girl leaves her father’s house, and carries on an intrigue with a young man, that it is her father’s duty to learn whether she is married or not, and if she is not, to see that she is.”
— from A Country Sweetheart by Dora Russell

All that, my dear General, was said in my own name, and therefore in a less delicate way than when I am your interpreter.
— from Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette by Lafayette, Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier, marquis de

The work was addressed to a female friend (now no more), who was a distinguished ornament of her sex, and whose superior intellect and refined taste required that the work should be free from every thing superficial in matter or negligent in style; and it was deemed by the writer no ordinary privilege that, in the composition of the work, an image at once so exalted and so pure was continually present to his mental vision.
— from Letters on Astronomy in which the Elements of the Science are Familiarly Explained in Connection with Biographical Sketches of the Most Eminent Astronomers by Denison Olmsted