When we proceed to inquire how far the minor social duties and virtues recognised by Common Sense appear on examination to be anything more than special applications of the Benevolence—general or particular—discussed in chap.
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

A silken doublet, a velvet hose, a scarlet cloak, and a copatain hat!
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

He now sat down again very much out of breath, gasping at his pipe as if it contained a supply of that necessary, without which he must perish.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

" Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much.
— from Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Then the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the Chiverses') one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or), seeing from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Dionysius the son did a very handsome act upon this subject; he was informed that one of the Syracusans had hid a treasure in the earth, and thereupon sent to the man to bring it to him, which he accordingly did, privately reserving a small part of it only to himself, with which he went to another city, where being cured of his appetite of hoarding, he began to live at a more liberal rate; which Dionysius hearing, caused the rest of his treasure to be restored to him, saying, that since he had learned to use it, he very willingly returned it back to him.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Twenty years ago, every maid in a lady's house wore a cap except the personal maid, who wore (and still does) a velvet bow, or nothing.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

Now I tell the with paper pen and ink and type the Anemels to be the founders of it with a Lye & Lyes upon Lyes wose then beasts or Snaks or wouls or bars tigers Divils and ten times wose with all Lyes untrouths the world allways was and is Look out for trouth a men I TIMOTHY DEXTER fourder in six Days and verey good and harde Laber
— from A Pickle for the Knowing Ones by Timothy Dexter

"Back to land again, and—that's all the [128] first figure," said the Mock Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice; and the two creatures, who had been jumping about like mad things all this time, sat down again very sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice.
— from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson by Lewis Carroll

The eldest brother desires to marry the eldest of the rescued princesses; she demands a velvet greyhound pursuing a velvet hare, such as she has seen in the ogre’s castle.
— from The Three Days' Tournament: A Study in Romance and Folk-Lore Being an Appendix to the Author's 'Legend of Sir Lancelot' by Jessie L. (Jessie Laidlay) Weston

It is very easy for some dreaming and visionary theorist to say that it is most evidently unjust for the lion to devour the deer, and for the eagle to tear and eat the wren; but the trouble is, that we know of no other way, according to the frame, the constitution, and the organs which God has given them, in which the lion and the eagle could manage to live at all.
— from Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry by Albert Pike

They are a happy and orderly people, forming an honorable exception to the general Indian character, being more industrious, cleanly, sensible, dignified, and virtuous.
— from A History of Oregon, 1792-1849 Drawn From Personal Observation and Authentic Information by W. H. (William Henry) Gray

It is the part where the author redoubles his energy, his poetry, his invocations, his terrible and startling beauties, his invectives, his hideous pictures, his touching portraits of the youth and innocence of the King, and of the hopes he has, adjuring the nation to save so dear a victim from the barbarity of a murderer; in a word, all that is most delicate, most tender, stringent, and blackest, most pompous, and most moving, is there.
— from Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete by Various

To the neighb'ring township drove she In her chariot and pair, Splendid dreams and visions wove she While she braided up her hair.
— from Southerly Busters by George Herbert Gibson

She made no other response, but that night before she went to sleep she saw distinctly a vision of herself.
— from A Sweet Girl Graduate by L. T. Meade

The preceding test is sufficiently delicate and valuable, in all ordinary cases, for detecting chicory in coffee; but to those familiar with microscopic investigations, the microscope furnishes another mode of proceeding: fragments of dotted ducts being found in chicory, but not in pure coffee.
— from Coffee and Chicory: Their culture, chemical composition, preparation for market, and consumption, with simple tests for detecting adulteration, and practical hints for the producer and consumer by P. L. (Peter Lund) Simmonds

It is accidented by shallow depressions and valleys of varied outline, the irregularities of lava flows adding much to the diversity of surface forms and features.
— from American Big-Game Hunting: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club by Boone and Crockett Club

I have, of course, so far assumed the liberty accorded to writers of historic fiction as occasionally to deviate, to a small extent, from exact chronology, but such deviations are very trivial in comparison with those which have been permitted to others, and especially to the great masters of historic fiction.
— from Darkness and Dawn; Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale by F. W. (Frederic William) Farrar