"I had lain down on my bed, a book in my hand, in my room which tremulously protected its frail transparent coolness from the afternoon sun behind its nearly closed shutters, through which a gleam of daylight had nonetheless contrived to pass its yellow wings, remaining motionless between the wood and the windowpane in a corner, like a poised butterfly."

-Swann's Way, Marcel Proust

"Silk-sheathed women with plucked eyebrows brushed past the marble-topped table, nearly sweeping off the cloth and my supper with their hips, trailing the fringes of Spanish shawls and mingled perfumes of Coty and femininity, or lolled, smoking, on the red plush seats."

-Europa, Robert Briffault

"Deep in the heart of the Caucasus mountains a wild storm was gathering. Drear shadows drooped and thickened above the Pass of Dariel, –that terrific gorge which like a mere thread seems to hang between the toppling frost-bound heights above and the black abysmal depths below, -clouds, fringed ominously with lurid green and white, drifted heavily yet swiftly across the jagged peaks where, looming largely out of the mist, the snowcapped crest of Mount Kazbek rose coldly white against the darkness of the threatening sky. Night was approaching, though away to the west a broad gash of crimson, a seeming wound in the breast of heaven, showed where the sun had set an hour since."

-Ardath, Marie Corelli

A Sicilian Romance

"A melancholy stillness reigned through the halls, and the silence of the courts, which were shaded by high turrets, was for many
hours together undisturbed by the sound of any foot-step. Julia, who discovered an early taste for books, loved to retire in an evening to a small closet in which she had collected her favorite authors. This room formed the western angle of the castle: one of its windows looked upon the sea, beyond which was faintly seen, skirting the horizon, the dark rocky coast of Calabria; the other opened towards a part of the castle, and afforded a prospect of the neighbouring woods."

-Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance

"Like the swarms of clustering bees that issue forever
in fresh bursts from the hollow in the stone, and hang like
bunched grapes as they hover beneath the flowers in springtime
fluttering in swarms together this way and that way,
so the many nations of men from the ships and the shelters
along the front of the deep sea beach marched in order
by companies to the assembly, and Rumour walked blazing among them,
Zeus' messenger, to hasten them along."

-The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore