Women are from their very Infancy debarred those advantages, with the want of which they are afterwards reproached, and nursed up in those vices which will hereafter be upbraided to them. So partial are men as to expect brick where theyafford no straw.

-Astell, Mary
  A Serious Proposal to the Ladies For the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest,'By a Lover of Her Sex', pt.1.

   It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black as the painted face of a savage.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
  Of Coketown. Hard Times, bk.1, ch.5.

I acted so tragic the house rose like magic, The audience yelled,'You're sublime'. They made me a present of Mornington Crescent, They threw it a brick at a time.

-Hargreaves,W F
'The Night I Appeared as Macbeth' (song).

He that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered hishousetosale, carried a brick inhis pocket as a specimen.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Of Shakespeare. Plays of  William Shakespeare, preface.

In a Lancashire cotton-town you could probably go for months on end without once hearing an'educated' accent, whereas there can hardly be a town in the South of England where youcould throwa brick without hitting the niece of a bishop.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
  The Road to Wigan Pier, ch.7.

Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone, A Page, a Grave, that they can call their own; But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick, On passive paper, or on solid brick.

-Pope, Alexander
  The Dunciad, bk.4, l.127^30.

A stately palace built of square'  d brick, Which cunningly was without mortar laid, Whose walls were high, but nothing strong, nor thick, And golden foil all over them displayed, That purest sky with brightness they dismayed.

-Spenser, Edmund
  Of the palace of pride. The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto 4, stanza 4.

I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he shewed as a pattern to encourage purchasers.

-Swift,Jonathan
  Drapier's Letters, no.2.