But if they will reflect a moment, they will see that amid the confusion and noise of battle, there is little chance of martial music being either heard or heeded.
— from The Recollections of a Drummer-Boy by Henry Martyn Kieffer

Perhaps five months each year is as long a school term as the conditions and needs of the laboring classes in these States will allow.
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, December 1883 by Chautauqua Institution

It cannot be that all past efforts, all struggles and self-sacrifices, to attain this coveted and natural knowledge, were useless, vain mockeries.
— from Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing by T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur

- 93 - Being naturally supposed to be caused by the Indians, it was answered, and scouts were at last sent to ascertain the cause, as no messengers appeared.
— from At Home with the Patagonians A Year's Wanderings over Untrodden Ground from the Straits of Magellan to the Rio Negro by George C. Musters

And to stand at the very top of your calling in a great city is something in itself,—that is, if you like money, and influence, and a seat on the platform at public lectures, and gratuitous tickets to all sorts of places where you don't want to go, and, what is a good deal better than any of these things, a sense of power, limited, it may be, but absolute in its range, so that all the Caesars and Napoleons would have to stand aside, if they came between you and the exercise of your special vocation.
— from The Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes: An Index of the Project Gutenberg Editions by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back.
— from Contagion by Katherine MacLean

And aviation shows what you can do if you stick to a thing, Carl, and not just wander around like you used to do.
— from The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life by Sinclair Lewis

For the greater part of the time that I have resided in it, I have lived almost unknowing and unknown; seeking no favours, and receiving none: “a stranger and a sojourner in the land,” and subject to all the chills and neglects that are the common lot of the stranger.
— from Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists by Washington Irving