It is the first word that our mother taught our infant lips to lisp, when, pointing to heaven, she told us that there was God our Father, and bade us look above this base, contagious earth.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872 A Monthly Magazine by Various

They fizz and froth and blaze up like a rocket, then pass away.
— from Glories of Spain by Charles W. (Charles William) Wood

And, at a turn of the way, the sun-god suddenly shines through the great dark branches of the giants of the forest, and before us lies a patch of exquisite blue, as though a god had robbed the sky and torn from it a precious fragment that seems alive and moving, between the sun and the shadow.
— from A Book of Myths by Jean Lang

It was from Helena, and it was written in her bold, upright hand, with the gay raillery, the passionate tenderness, and the fierce earnestness which he recognised as her chief characteristics:— "MISTER, most glorious and respected, the illustrious Colonel Lord, owner of Serenity and Virtue, otherwise dear old Gordon— "It was wrong of you not to come to dinner, for though Father over-excited himself at Ghezirah to-day and I have had to pack him off to bed, I made every preparation to receive you, and here I am in my best bib and tucker, wearing the crown of pink blossom which my own particular Sultan says suits my gipsy hair, and nobody to admire it but my poor little black boy Mosie—who is falling in love with me, I may tell you, and is looking at me now with his scrubby face all blubbered up like a sentimental hippopotamus.
— from The White Prophet, Volume 1 (of 2) by Caine, Hall, Sir

It was as if someone had lit a lamp behind her alabaster mask, and in the effort to conceal any embarrassment, or preoccupation, she flushed and became unusually lively and talked to Anikin with a gaiety and an uninterrupted ease, that seemed not to belong to her usual self.
— from Overlooked by Maurice Baring

He drew in his breath sharply through his teeth, leaped forward, all bunched up like an animal, and the next thing that anybody knew, the two boys were struggling together in the center of the schoolroom.
— from Azalea at Sunset Gap by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

I hardly think Keats had more lasting enjoyment of his Grecian urn with 'brede of marble men and maidens overwrought' than I of those pictures, where, not less than in the more classic example, I saw perpetually preserved what I took to be the most thrilling and desirable of moments, death forever arrested by unending loyalty and undying affection.
— from Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories; Second Series by James Edmund Dunning

A little further, and before us lay a long, level road, a true Roman highway, straight for mile after mile.
— from By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy by George Gissing

Possibly the fishwives, sorting out sea food and bait under little awnings, might strike him as more or less familiar.
— from The Car That Went Abroad: Motoring Through the Golden Age by Albert Bigelow Paine