When this had been done, and Mrs Jarley had waited upon the boarding-schools in person, with a handbill composed expressly for them, in which it was distinctly proved that wax-work refined the mind, cultivated the taste, and enlarged the sphere of the human understanding, that indefatigable lady sat down to dinner, and drank out of the suspicious bottle to a flourishing campaign.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

Yet, even for us, there is left some loveliness of environment, and the dulness of tutors and professors matters very little when one can loiter in the grey cloisters at Magdalen, and listen to some flute-like voice singing in Waynfleete’s chapel, or lie in the green meadow, among the strange snake-spotted fritillaries, and watch the sunburnt noon smite to a finer gold the tower’s gilded vanes, or wander up the Christ Church staircase beneath the vaulted ceiling’s shadowy fans, or pass through the sculptured gateway of Laud’s building in the College of St. John.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde

The children all scampered off to the awning, and they stood there in a line, gazing upon the intruding lovers, still exchanging their vows and sighs.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin

"Don't you understand that I love Strickland?
— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

Besides a few of these unprincipled traders in land, some of whom are found in most of the towns, there are a large number of land-speculators who own both wild and improved farms in all parts of the colony who do not descend to these discreditable arts, but wait quietly until their lands become valuable by the progress of improvement in their neighbourhood, when they readily find purchasers—or, rather, the purchasers find them out, and obtain their lands at reasonable prices.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

When an object, which some think beautiful, is denied to be so by others, the truth is usually that it lacks some beautiful quality or is deformed by [p. 201] some ugly one, which engage the exclusive attention of the critics.
— from Principia Ethica by G. E. (George Edward) Moore

No, Lona does not say, "You slew the love that was in me;" she tears up two incriminating letters, she declares that with Johan and Dina she will return to America; but—but Bernick must escape from the cage of lies in which, like a monstrous master-spider, he has been spinning a network of falsehoods for the world.
— from Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists Ibsen, Strindberg, Becque, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Hervieu, Gorky, Duse and D'Annunzio, Maeterlinck and Bernard Shaw by James Huneker

Brave and zealous in his military duties, animated by a strong feeling of piety to God, and distinguished by his ardent filial affection and duty towards a widowed mother, he has left to her the recollection of his rising virtues as her only consolation under the irreparable loss she has sustained by his death.
— from Historical Description of Westminster Abbey, Its Monuments and Curiosities by Anonymous

As we commenced operations upon the inevitable lobster salad, and the Fresher succeeded in inducing his scout, who had three other parties on the staircase, to attend to us for fully two consecutive minutes, St. Ronots remarked that the panto at the Suburban was not covered with dust to any appreciable extent, which for St. Ronots, and still more for the Suburban, is a great concession.
— from Red Paint at Oxford: Sketches by Tush

Wandering alone at night in the vestal solitude of her imprisoning grove, she has looked up through its "living summits" to the stars, which shed down into her aspect their own lofty melody.
— from Woman in the Nineteenth Century and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition and Duties, of Woman. by Margaret Fuller

That which has less to grow up to, naturally grows up to its limit sooner.
— from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell

“I am getting used to it,” Lute smiled down to him.
— from Moon-Face, and Other Stories by Jack London

“That sedgy or fishy taste is confined mainly to birds shot on the salt water, and is rarely found in any birds killed upon the inland lakes, so that many—for instance the bay-snipe—that are barely passable when shot along the coast, are excellent in the interior.”
— from The Game-Birds of the Coasts and Lakes of the Northern States of America A full account of the sporting along our sea-shores and inland waters, with a comparison of the merits of breech-loaders and muzzle-loaders by Robert Barnwell Roosevelt