What great writers have used coordinating conjunctions at the start of sentences?

I had a discussion today with a friend over the validity of using (coordinating, correlative) conjunctions like but or and at the start of sentences.

His position was that it breaks a rule of grammar. However, I remembered a post on this site saying that conjunctions at the start of sentences is fine, and that lots of great writers have done that exact thing.

I mentioned this to him, and he challenged me to name an author who did this, and to provide him with examples of such. I found that to my shame I couldn’t name even one.

So what famous authors actually have used conjunctions at the start of sentences, and how did they do it?

Answer

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, third edition (1979), has a number of instances, as well.

Hans Christian Andersen, "The Emperor's New Clothes":

'But the Emperor has nothing on at all!' cried a little child.

Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1869):

But that vast portion, lastly, of the working-class which, raw and half-developed, has long lain half-hidden amidst its poverty and squalor, and is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman's heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes, and is beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, bawling what it likes, breaking what it likes—to this vast residuum we may with great propriety give the name of Populace.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey:

'And what are you reading, Miss —?' 'Oh! it is only a novel!' replies the young lady: while she lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame.

Francis Bacon, "Of Death":

And therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him.

Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867):

But of all the nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.

Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on on Liberty:

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance—these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils.

The Bible (King James version):

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus (1658):

But the quincunx of heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (1678):

Yet my great-grandfather was but a water-man, looking one way, and rowing another: and I got most of my estate by the same occupation.

Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770):

I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy:

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all their panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases ... But, as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.

Bishop Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1756):

But to us, probability is the very guide of life.

Samuel Butler, Note Books:

I believe that more unhappiness comes from this source than from any other—I mean from the attempt to prolong family connection unduly and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so. The mischief among the lower classes is not so great, but among the middle and upper classes it is killing a large number daily. And the old people do not really like it much better than the young.

And that takes us through the letters A and B.