Accordingly he went out and left me, when a minute or two after, before I could recover myself into any composure for thinking, the maid came in with her mistress's service, and a small silver orringer of what she called a bridal posset, and desired me to eat it as I went to bed, which consequently I did, and felt immediately a heat, a fire run like a hue-and-cry through every part of my body; I burnt, I glowed, and wanted even little of wishing for any man.
— from Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) by John Cleland

She then took up her fan which lay on the ground, and without even looking at Jones walked very majestically out of the room; there being a kind of dignity in the impudence of women of quality, which their inferiors vainly aspire to attain to in circumstances of this nature.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Annie was a fine, strapping girl, and was evidently labouring under intense excitement, mingled with a certain ghoulish enjoyment of the tragedy.
— from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

These have a great affinity with emolients, like to them in temperature, only emolients are somewhat hotter.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

He has congregations to reprove, privileges to grant, a whole ecclesiastical library to examine,—prayer-books, diocesan catechisms, books of hours, etc.,—charges to write, sermons to authorize, curés and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence; on one side the State, on the other the Holy See; and a thousand matters of business.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Suppose you should have Luck— Yet sitting up so late, as I am told, You’ll lose in Beauty what you win in Gold: And what each Lady of another says, Will make you new Lampoons, and us new Plays.
— from The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume II by Aphra Behn

Isabella Andreini, say her Italian biographers, [135] was one of the greatest actresses who ever lived.
— from A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 2 (of 2) by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

It was between the lights, and the great white globes aglow with electricity looked garish against the delicate opal of the sky, and cast strange reflections on the water.
— from Dinners and Diners: Where and How to Dine in London by Lieut.-Col. (Nathaniel) Newnham-Davis

No one had a better right to an opinion in the matter than he, for he was the greatest sculptor since the time of {158} the Greeks, one of the greatest architects who ever lived, perhaps the greatest decorative artist in all history, as the Sistine Chapel demonstrates, and he wrote sonnets of the highest quality.
— from Religion And Health by James J. (James Joseph) Walsh

It was work for a "sergeant-major" and a "drill-sergeant" rather than for a Napoleonic genius; and when England learned that "K.," as he is affectionately known in the army, was on the prodigious job, England took heart.
— from The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time by Frederic William Wile

I had a nice little brass bedstead, with a gold and white embroidered Liberty quilt trimmed round with ball fringe, and furniture, with gold, green, and blue and red tapestry covers on toilet, chest of drawers, and a new pincushion box covered with the same, and all trimmed with ball fringe.
— from From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders by J. E. (Jane Ellen) Panton

A large number of their own band were now in the hands of the government, and were equally liable with ourselves, under every rule of right, to be treated as criminals; for they had not only dressed in citizens' clothes, but had even assumed our uniform wherever it was their interest to do so.
— from Daring and Suffering: A History of the Great Railroad Adventure by William Pittenger