"In 1846, a mining engineer named Johann Georg Ramsauer began looking for pyrite deposits in the area of the Hallstatt salt mine near Hallein."

-- Salt, Mark Kurlansky

It's OK, but I'm getting a little worn out on "single subject" histories; while a single thing may take importance for a while, history is a little more interconnected that that.

"'Aye!"

Which is so lame that I'm going to cheat and add: "Then came I, and found Chicmec lying with his throat cut.'"

--REH, "Red Nails," as published in Conan the Warrior, sometime in the early '80s version

"'Open the gate,' snorted Conan." More cheating "'You see it's me, don't you?'"

--REH, "Beyond the Black River," as published in The Conquering Sword of Conan

"Digna nodded." (WTF?!?) "Slowly the man rose to his feet and invited them inside his dwelling."

--Isabel Allende, Of Love and Shadows

She got up from the table and walked to their solar-powered refrigerator.

- Tony Vigorito, Just A Couple of Days

"She moved to open the door, but Tina threw her arms frantically about her neck, and Belesa felt the wild beating of her heart."

--Don't open the door, it's Thulsa-Doom!, REH, "The Treasure of Tranicos" i.e., "The Black Stranger" as printed in Conan the Usurper

"Content to accumulate earnings slowly, scorning advertisement, they waited for clients to approach them, sold little and at high prices, and did not seek to stimulate circulation of capital."

--For bourgeois revolution to smash unproductive economic forces!, Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution: From Its Origins to 1793

"Naysmith nodded." - Ian Rankin, The Impossible Dead

Naysmith is a pretty badass name.

"Content to accumulate earnings slowly, scorning advertisement, they waited for clients to approach them, sold little and at high prices, and did not seek to stimulate circulation of capital."

--For bourgeois revolution to smash unproductive economic forces!, Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution: From Its Origins to 1793

At first, I thought this quote was about Starbucks.

Hee hee!

Down with Starbucks!

"As he was to tell me later, the six was the final digit before the decimal point of the total odds of the first three races of the day according to the pari-mutuel machines at the Tropical Park in Miami Florida."

--The eponymous hero gets a lesson in the fine art of bookmaking in E.L. Doctorow's Billy Bathgate. Also, I have no idea what a pari-mutuel machine is.

Which is a pretty short sentence for this book. For example:

Or

Verbose dude, this Billy.

But wikipedia does.

Gambling is one of the few vices I haven't experimented with. Much.

"Like a field of dry grass, ready to burst into flame at the slightest spark."
— Last Argument of Kings, Joe Abercrombie

But wikipedia does.

Gambling is one of the few vices I haven't experimented with. Much.

"It's a song about the one vice no-one in the band have tried yet."

"More's the pity."

George RR Martin, A Games of Thrones

Bump.

"Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere."

whew, sure am glad this thread doesn't ask for the first sentence on page 738. That one is fifteen pages long.

"At the time, he thought the end had justified the means, but -- a final, bitter irony on top of a year full of them -- the end had made him question those means, making his small victory seem petty and ignoble."

Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal, the Detective

That was kind of a downer to read, honestly. Cabal made perfect sense last book and clearly had noble motives. The epilogue went and made it obvious to even the least perceptive reader. If this series ends with him giving up his quest, I'm going to be really annoyed.

Then again, the joke is wearing on me already this time around and I'm less than a hundred pages in so this might be my last of it regardless.

"Nature is not unnatural"
~The Farthest Shore, by Ursula K. Le Guin

"Though obviously fake, the flowers still seemed wilted." -An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green.

"Above all, there was hasty discussion of the Constitution of 1793, which was concluded on June 24."
--Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution: From 1793 to 1799.

Right in the middle of the Reign of Terror and it's still a boring sentence!

"Oh, how would I know what they should have done?"

--Orestes to Zeus in my awesome 1948 play, Les Mouches as collected in No Exit and Three Other Plays.

"In Washington, Sec. of State Seward unofficially informed the Confederate commissioners in the capital that the United States had a peaceful policy and would defend its possessions only when attacked." -The Civil War Day By Day, by EB Long.

"'Nevertheless, it is done.'"

--Jerann, Elder of the Irnanese, to Eric John Stark in Leigh Brackett's The Ginger Star

"According to the reply filed August 16, 2011, by Guerrero to the government's response to his habeas motion, journalist Ariel Remos received at least $11,750 during the trial, publishing at least fifteen articles both before and during the proceedings in Diario las Americas, a Spanish-language daily with a circulation of more than forty-five thousand in southern Florida."

--"Government-Paid Journalists Stoked Bias in Cuban Five Trial" by Michel Poitras in The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free.

Vive le Galt!

"There remain'd now no Competitor with me at Philadelphia, but the old one, Bradford, who was rich and easy, did a little Printing now and then by straggling Hands, but was not very anxious about the Business."

--After demolishing the houses of Keimer and Harry, venture capitalist Ben Franklin sets his sights on crushing the last standing obstacle to his plutocratic monopoly in his Autobiography.

"'I'll follow in a moment.'"

--Jafr, kidnapped scion of the Hooded Men, planning death by deceit and guile verses Eric John Stark, the Dark Man of prophecy, in Leigh Brackett's The Hounds of Skaith.

I havent posted here in awhile, so here are my last 3:

A considered dissent by General Myers or General Franks could have postponed or stopped the Iraq invasion.
- "Your Government Has Failed You" by Richard A Clarke

From her bed of leaves she watched the immobile figure, indistinct in the soft darkness.
- "Conan the Barbarian (anthology)"-- "Shadows in the Moonlight" by Robert E Howard

I know I've complained about the pain in my eye and shoulder more than once but I want to point out that the bite on my leg was also starting to hurt like a son of a b%^ch.
- "This Book is Full of Spiders" by David Wong

"But most of them are."

--Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary

And there are only three complete sentences on page 55 of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., so you get the last one:

"One of these he seized and made off with, but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, when a great stream gushed forth, which washed him away and swept him down precipices, where he was dashed to pieces, and the stream made its way to the Hudson and continues to flow to the present day; being the identical stream known by the name of the Kaaters-kill."

--Washington Irving

Still kinda-sorta reading Foner but I've been spending a lot of time with Battle Cry of Freedom lately:

"For some members of the two outer circles [of free-soil sentiment] these propositions did not spring from a "squeamish sensitiveness ... nor morbid sympathy for the slave," as David Wilmont put it." -James McPhereson, Battle Cry of Freedom.

And since the next sentences are dynamite, continuing Wilmont's quote: "The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent. ... I would preserve for free white labor a fair country ... where the sons of toil, of my own race and own color, can live without the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free labor."

I'm sorry about the language. It's a direct quote from a period source. Not a lot can be done.

"When using an internal map is not possible, the attribute access interface can be implemented generically using the Java Reflection API."

-- EJB™ Design Patterns by Floyd Marinescu

"He saw that most of them, in common with their castoff priestcraft, could not escape from the delusion that life has a meaning apart from that which men dream into it; and could not lay aside the crude notion of ethics and obligations beyond those of beauty, even when all Nature shrieked of its unconsciousness and impersonal unmorality in the light of their scientific discoveries."

- "The Silver Key" in "Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre" by H.P. Lovecraft.

Also...

"Perhaps the chief will think of something."

- "Day Watch" by Sergei Lukyanenko

"But the FAI, together with the 'Trotskyites', had denounced the government as counterrevolutionary, and called for an insurrection to overthrow it."

--E.H. Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War

Vive le Galt!

"And a kugar council rules golden Khor this night!"

- The Quest of Kadji, by Lin Carter.

Not cougar council, unfortunately. Not that sort of a book.

"A young aristocrat's wild oats, unlike those sowed with more difficulty elsewhere, matured on the family estate and sometimes in the family home." The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay 1776-1854 by William W. Freehling

"Before he climbed up the steps into the interior, he glanced down at the numberplate."

On Her Majesty's Secret Service, by Ian Fleming.
((I just finished it; it's the Kindle edition which doesn't have page numbers so I did the 5th sentence of location 555))

We never stopped running till we got home.

The Woman in Black

Spooky South by S.E. Schlosser

I only have four sentences on this page, so you will get the last:

"And the father grieves
in flophouse
complexities of memory
a thousand miles
away, unknowing
of the unexpected
youthful stranger
bumming toward his door."

-from the poem "Wild Orphan" by Allen Ginsburg, taken from the volume Howl and Other Poems

And now for something lighter:

"It was a hard path and a dangerous path, a crooked way and a lonely and a long."

-from The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein

"Predators don't like to pick fair fights."

Cold Days by Jim Butcher

"Using military force against tax havens would be "too costly" precisely because of the damage done in violating such an important regulative norm."

Havens in a Storm - J.C. Sharman.

"He spoke in a voice that held awe but his hands slipped under my dress-"

WHOOPS. Wrong book.

"Ebenezar himself never moved his eyes from the Merlin."

-Summer Knight, the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (taken from the collection Wizard by Trade)

"Cethlin stood beside it."

--Leigh Brackett, The Reavers of Skaith

I bet if I had read Paizo's editions of the Skaith books, I would have had much cooler sentences.

"The fascist system was a regime of extreme social, economic and political crisis, of extreme tensions in class relationships, which, in the final analysis, was determined by a long period of economic stagnation, in which the margin for discussion and negotiation between the working class and the bourgeoisie was virtually reduced to zero."

--Ernest Mandel, An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory

"There may be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible."

--Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself

"Radical feminists, however, have often drawn the conclusion that women's movements should remain separate from all organizations involving men."

--Christine Thomas, It Doesn't Have To Be Like This: Women and the Struggle for Socialism

"'Go, and go swiftly.'"

--Robert E. Howard, The Hour of the Dragon as published in Conan the Conqueror

"I pulled open my eyes." -- David Wong, This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It.

"He later remarked that 'Banks and Mrs Wells parted on very good terms.'" -- Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder

"Queen Ileosa has announced that the assassin is to be executed at sunset and has invited many of Korvosa's nobles, military officers, and anyone of any real import to Castle Korvosa's public courtyard to witness the event."

Curse of the Crimson Throne: Edge of Anarchy by Nicholas Logue

"And by observing the spaces of time betwixt the several stages, he easily guessed how long the man was to live who wore the shroud, for when it approached his head, he told that such a person was ripe for the grave."

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies -Robert Kirk

"The far bank was steep and slippery."

--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

"As practiced warriors, the Turanians used the pause to let their hawklike eyes sweep the horizon and the surface of the sands."

--Bjorn Nyberg, Conan the Avenger

"Whites saw the sexual activity of the manumitted female slave as further evidence to support their claim that black women were sexually loose and innately morally depraved."

--bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

"The fact that the guerrillas had penetrated into the very heart of US power, the US embassy in Saigon, had an electrifying effect throughout the world and particularly in the US itself."

--Peter Taafe, Empire Defeated: The Vietnam War: The Lessons for Today

"Only the Cuban guerrillas knew his true identity."

--Stuart A. Kallen, Che Guevara: You Win Or You Die

and, finally,

"I'd need to shoot a second turkey to trade for an orange."

--Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

"Only the lower buildings existed, and instead of the uniform black of the towers in Param's own time, these had been brightly painted, though many were faded and weathered."

-- Orson Scott Card, Ruins

"Autodocs and expert systems deal with the easy cases, the routine matters that happen every day; broken bones, burns, Planetary Adaption Syndrome, coughs and colds." - 2300AD: Tools for Frontier Living

but the 9th sentence on page 18 is better