Diana

“There is a great deal in choosing colours that go well with one's complexion. People think of that for their dresses, but not for their rooms., which are of so much more importance. I should have liked blue, but blue gets so soon tawdry. I think, (...) that I have enough complexion at present to venture upon a pale spring green.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Marjoribanks

“So the ghostly figure which has haunted these pages, as it haunted my life, goes down into the impenetrable gloom. Like a shadow she first came to me in the loneliness of the night. Like a shadow she passes away in the loneliness of the dead”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“Sure never two people were more strongly contrasted than the Baron and the Colonel. The one seems the kindly sun, cherishing the tender herbage of the field; the other, the blasting mildew, breathing its pestiferous venom over every beautiful plant and flower. However, do you, my love, only regard them as virtue and vice personified; look on them as patterns and examples; view them in no other light; for in no other can they be of any advantage to you.”
― Georgiana Cavendish, The Sylph: Volume I and II

“But who are they? (opium-eaters) Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago, by computing, at that time, the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talents, or of eminent station), who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent ___, the late dean of ___; Lord ___; Mr ___, the philosopher; a late under-secretary of state … Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference, that the entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number.”
― Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater