We parted from dear aunt and uncle, Mrs. Dale and Ellen, after luncheon, and posted down to Dover; slept at Birmingham’s Hotel, where we had our real first night’s fucking all to ourselves, enjoyed it in moderation but in every endearment that two lovers could devise.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

After a little while, Tom, who had wandered to a window and become interested in the life and movement of the great highway beyond the palace gates—and not idly interested, but longing with all his heart to take part in person in its stir and freedom—saw the van of a hooting and shouting mob of disorderly men, women, and children of the lowest and poorest degree approaching from up the road.
— from The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

The lady as she retired curtseyed like a Prima Donna; but the host continued on his legs for some time, throwing open his coat and bowing to his guests, who expressed by their applause how much they approved his enterprise.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

But betray too eager curiosity she would not. “Isn’t this evening just like a purple dream, Diana?
— from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

There was no young man of his age in London more willing and docile than Stephen, she affirmed; none more affectionate and ready to please, and even useful, as long as people did not upset his poor head.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad

When she got home, she tried to assuage the pangs of remorse by spreading forth the lovely silk; but it looked less silvery now, didn't become her, after all, and the words "fifty dollars" seemed stamped like a pattern down each breadth.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

We preserve the image of Christ, and it will shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Her mother, who had bristled with pretensions to elegant learning and published descriptive poems and corresponded on Italian subjects with the English weekly journals, her mother had died three years after the Countess’s marriage, the father, lost in the grey American dawn of the situation, but reputed originally rich and wild, having died much earlier.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James

If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible, darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to take it just as it is.”
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

I felt like a plant dried up for want of water, suddenly set in a spring shower.
— from Daisy by Susan Warner

But he talked to them only as long as politeness demanded, and then, with all sincerity, he congratulated Mrs. Grayson on her husband's triumph.
— from The Candidate: A Political Romance by Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler

Riders drew their mounts by lot, and Pasquale drew a cinnamon-colored coyote from the ranch of "Uncle Nate" Wilson of Ramirena.
— from A Texas Matchmaker by Andy Adams

“Hooray for the Rooster!” shouted young Ireland, encamped on the sidewalk to see the show, as Mephistopheles' red cock's feather skimmed up the stairs, and he left a pink domino at the ladies' dressing-room door, with the brief warning, “Now cut your own capers and leave me to mine,” adding, as he paused a moment at the great door,— “By Jove!
— from On Picket Duty, and Other Tales by Louisa May Alcott

Some thirty or forty year later this mirror became part of the sideboard, and in some large and pretentious designs which we have seen, the sideboard itself was little better than a support for a huge glass in a heavily carved frame.
— from Illustrated History of Furniture: From the Earliest to the Present Time by Frederick Litchfield

It was like a political demonstration.
— from Leon Roch: A Romance, vol. 2 (of 2) by Benito Pérez Galdós