I should therefore rather condole than be angry with the mind, which could attribute to no worthier feelings than those of vanity or self-love, the satisfaction which I acknowledged myself to have enjoyed from the republication of my political essays (either whole or as extracts) not only in many of our own provincial papers, but in the federal journals throughout America.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This inexplicable incident, this reversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence.
— from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Whatever, therefore, raises the rate of mercantile profit, either lessens the superiority, or increases the inferiority of the profit of improvement: and, in the one case, hinders capital from going to improvement, and in the other draws capital from it; but by discouraging improvement, the monopoly necessarily retards the natural increase of another great original source of revenue, the rent of land.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

In comparison with the reality of my present experience and of my ideas of the limits of engineering, of the low temperature of interstellar space, and so on, that thought of a journey in a shell immediately makes me conscious of the vivid idea of unreality.
— from Psychology: an elementary text-book by Hermann Ebbinghaus

PREFACE Not long ago, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether, the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my previous experience.
— from Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I by Herman Melville

Ask for their commander, and deliver him this message from me, Helen MacGregor;—that if they injure a hair of MacGregor's head, and if they do not set him at liberty within the space of twelve hours, there is not a lady in the Lennox but shall before Christmas cry the coronach for them she will be loath to lose,—there is not a farmer but shall sing well-a-wa over a burnt barnyard and an empty byre,—there is not a laird nor heritor shall lay his head on the pillow at night with the assurance of being a live man in the morning,—and, to begin as we are to end, so soon as the term is expired, I will send them this Glasgow Bailie, and this Saxon Captain, and all the rest of my prisoners, each bundled in a plaid, and chopped into as many pieces as there are checks in the tartan.
— from Rob Roy — Volume 02 by Walter Scott

And this, and the rest of my property, except what I have just conveyed, and except, also, bequests of small farms to Dunning and Piper, for their friendship to you, and faithfulness to the cause, you will find, by my will here on the table, to be equally divided between you, my son and nephew.
— from The Rangers; or, The Tory's Daughter A Tale Illustrative of the Revolutionary History of Vermont and the Northern Campaign of 1777 by Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce) Thompson

Of course, in preparing the work for publication, many things were added or [Pg iv] enlarged on, particularly in the parts relating to cooking and gardening, and in the suggestions for altering and furnishing the house; but nearly all the housekeeping and farm-yard details were the result of my personal experience.
— from The Lady's Country Companion; Or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally by Mrs. (Jane) Loudon

And I direct my said executors, as soon as conveniently may be after my decease, to invest the said sum of five thousand pounds upon government or real security, and to pay and apply the annual income thereof in or towards the maintenance and education of the said Allegra Biron until she attains her said age of twenty-one years, or shall be married as aforesaid; but in case she shall die before attaining the said age and without having been married, then I direct the said sum of five thousand pounds to become part of the residue of my personal estate, and in all other respects I do confirm my said will, and declare this to be a codicil thereto.
— from Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 With His Letters and Journals by Thomas Moore

As I confine myself to indicating the results of my personal experience, it is perhaps enough to say once more that the methods I recommend seem good to me.
— from Metapsychical Phenomena: Methods and Observations by J. (Joseph) Maxwell

It was only as the result of much painstaking effort, and only at some sacrifice of literary fastidiousness, that the Committee was enabled to report a book of which it could be said that, while it added much of possible enrichment, it took away almost nothing that had been in actual possession.[39] There could be no better illustration of this point than is afforded by certain of the alterations proposed to be made in the Order for Evening Prayer.
— from A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer by William Reed Huntington

Dupin declared it was a colossal monument worthy of Sesostris or the Cæsars; and what most struck Canova in England was that the foolish Chinese Bridge then in St. James’s Park should be the production of the Government, while Waterloo Bridge was the result of mere private enterprise.
— from Haunted London by Walter Thornbury