Thy mouth is like a band of scarlet on a tower of ivory.
— from Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act by Oscar Wilde

Mr. Blatchford, with colossal simplicity, explained to millions of clerks and workingmen that the mother is like a bottle of blue beads and the father is like a bottle of yellow beads; and so the child is like a bottle of mixed blue beads and yellow.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Matter is limited at both extremes.
— from Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer by Jesse Henry Jones

And these are wishes: gentle dialogues Of the poor hours with eternity." With Das Buch der Bilder the dream is ended, the veil of mist is lifted and before us are revealed pictures and images that rise before our eyes in clear colourful contours.
— from Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke

It strikes me now I have never in my life been so near a beating—I mean it literally; a beating with fists.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

The variation is more evident as we approach the poles; all bodies expand with heat and contract with cold; this is best measured in liquids and best of all in spirits; hence the thermometer.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Having done at Woolwich, we to Deptford (it being very cold upon the water), and there did also a little more business, and so home, I reading all the why to make end of the “Bondman” (which the oftener I read the more I like), and begun “The Duchesse of Malfy;” which seems a good play.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

It is a presentation of her problem, because reason is not a faculty of dreams but a method in living; and by facing the flux of sensations and impulses that constitute mortal life with the gift of ideal construction and the aspiration toward eternal goods, she is only doing her duty and manifesting what she is.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

But unfortunately all that he had to do, being strictly in the way of administration , such as the restraining over-loyal governors, the amelioration of harsh legislation, and universal moderation in language and behavior, could avail comparatively little so long as Townshend, whom Pitt used to call "the incurable," could threaten and bring in obnoxious revenue measures.
— from Benjamin Franklin by John Torrey Morse

Both were very dear to me in life, and both are very dear to me in death; and, in God's good time, I trust that I shall meet them again, not subject to the ills and changes of my present abode."
— from Extracts from the Diary and Correspondence of the Late Amos Lawrence; with a brief account of some incidents of his life by Amos Lawrence

He ran wildly, blindly, making incredible leaps and bounds over obstacles.
— from At Pinney's Ranch 1898 by Edward Bellamy

Should it happen to be abroad in daylight the crows make its life a burden.
— from Birds of the Plains by Douglas Dewar

As no thought came to me I looked at Bes and saw that he was rolling his eyes towards the six doomed hunters who were being led away, also in pretence of driving off a fly, pointing to them with one of the lion tails.
— from The Ancient Allan by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

It was inevitable that, in process of time, diversities should spring up in a sect so widely scattered, and accordingly we find among the Italian Cathari two minor divisions known as Concorrezenses (from Concorrezo, near Monza, in Lombardy) and Bajolenses (from Bagnolo in Piedmont), who held a modified form of Dualism in which Satan was inferior to God, by whose permission he created and ruled the world, and formed man.
— from A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume I by Henry Charles Lea

It moves in leaps and bounds, passing over some portions
— from Popular Scientific Recreations in Natural Philosphy, Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, etc., etc., etc. by Gaston Tissandier

In the time of the Aztecs it was planted with beautiful trees, a glowing vegetation and pleasant groves clad the borders of the lake, over which glided a thousand light skiffs and floating chinampas; but now the waters which penetrated the city everywhere have receded so far as to be hardly visible, and the bright towns and hamlets, once washed by them, have been removed miles inland, leaving a barren strip of land with incrustations of salt on the surface.
— from The Ancient Cities of the New World Being Travels and Explorations in Mexico and Central America From 1857-1882 by Désiré Charnay

Thrown out of commission—as Lunsford and others after their return from the North—he had lived for some months in London as best he could; often at his wits’ end.
— from No Quarter! by Mayne Reid