If you go on being an ordinary deacon, who is only obliged to hold a service on holidays, and on the other days can rest from work, you will be exactly the same as you are now in ten years’ time, and will have gained nothing but a beard and moustache; while on returning from this expedition in ten years’ time you will be a different man, you will be enriched by the consciousness that something has been done by you.”
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

This man outlived every one of his captains, and died about four years ago: namely, in the year 1841.
— from The History of Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl by Richard Cobbold

What you are charged with is just contrary to what appeared to me just now, and therefore you and I must come to a new understanding about it, for I thought I was too cunning for you, and now I think you have been too cunning for me.
— from The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly Called Colonel Jack by Daniel Defoe

"I been waitin' all these years, an' now—" "I tell you he hasn't a chance in a thousand, Jim.
— from A Man Four-Square by William MacLeod Raine

But I, living and dying, when I do die, with much praise, my friend, will extol you when I am in company with Theseus; and telling this, I will delight him, saying how well you received and aided the children of Hercules; and, being noble, you preserve through Greece your ancestral glory; and being born of noble parents, you are nowise inferior to your father, with but few others; for among many you may find perhaps but one who is not inferior to his father.
— from The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. by Euripides

"I know it, Count," replied I; "but you are not ignorant that you lie under the imputation of having adopted revolutionary ideas."
— from Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete by Various

Warren Brett-James said softly, "Mr. Prantera, you are no longer in the year 1960, you are now in the year 2133."
— from Gun for Hire by Mack Reynolds

It has been decided against you, and now I tell you upon the faith of a true man, that all further looking to the North for security for your constitutional rights in the Union, ought to be instantly abandoned.
— from Robert Toombs Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage by Pleasant A. Stovall