You cannot make velvet of a sow's ear. [ Proverb ]

Love is as warm in fustian as in velvet. [ Proverb ]

Her cap of velvet could not hold
The tresses of her hair of gold.
That flowed and floated like the stream.
And fell in masses down her neck. [ Longfellow ]

So work the honey-bees;
Creatures, that by a rule in nature teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home.
To the tent royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum.
Delivering over to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. [ William Shakespeare ]

My dear, your everlasting blue velvet quite tires me. [ Thackeray ]

A countryman may be as warm in kersey as a king in velvet. [ Proverb ]

All things thrive with him; he eats silk, and voids velvet. [ Proverb ]

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

Lavater told Goethe that, on a certain occasion when he held the velvet bag in the church as collector of the offerings, he tried to observe only the hands; and he satisfied himself that in every individual the shape of the hand and of the fingers, the action and sentiment in dropping the gift into the bag, were distinctly different and individually characteristic. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

Mother! How many delightful associations cluster around that word! The innocent smiles of infancy, the gambols of boyhood, and the happiest hours of riper years! When my heart aches and my limbs are weary travelling the thorny path of life, I sit down on some mossy stone, and closing my eyes on real scenes, send my spirit back to the days of early life; I feel afresh my infant joys and sorrows, till my spirit recovers its tone, and is willing to pursue its journey. But in all these reminiscences my mother rises; if I seat myself upon my cushion, it is at her side; if I sing, it is to her ear; if I walk the walls or the meadows, my little hand is in my mother's, and my little feet keep company with hers; when my heart bounds with its best joy, it is because at the performance of some task, or the recitation of some verses, I receive a present from her hand. There is no velvet so soft as a mother's lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps. [ Bishop Thomson ]