Middlemarch is full of delicious sentences.
“Souls have complexions too. What suits one may not suit another.”
“This hope was not unmixed with the glow of proud delight – the joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen by the man whom her admiration had chosen.”
Also, no-one can sum up a character quite as dismissively as the 19th-century Victorian writers.
“It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a man of nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote.”
Coffee and Irony 