Poor Moreright was in agony, and Nama and Nama the Second (mother and sister of Mousa,) were on their faces begging and wailing, now embracing my knees and now Whitely’s, while the brother, outside, made the air ring with cries louder than Mousa’s.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

As it approached nearer and nearer to half past nine o’clock, our restless expectation of Mr. Micawber increased.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Non exercitus, neque thesauri, præsidia regni sunt, verum amici —Neither armies nor treasures are the safeguards of a state, but friends.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery, bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any day in the year but the fifth of November.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Now both parties are neck and neck to see who shall lead the army of in-coming negro voters.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

By which it is plain, that Moses who was alone called up to God, (and not Aaron, nor the other Priests, nor the Seventy Elders, nor the People who were forbidden to come up) was alone he, that represented to the Israelites the Person of God; that is to say, was their sole Soveraign under God.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

This pleasure, for being more gay, more sinewy, more robust and more manly, is only the more seriously voluptuous, and we ought give it the name of pleasure, as that which is more favourable, gentle, and natural, and not that from which we have denominated it.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Nearer and nearer to the water sank the airship, and nearer and nearer to the gas holder reached the flames.
— from Commander Lawless V.C. Being the Further Adventures of Frank H. Lawless, Until Recently a Lieutenant in His Majesty's Navy by Rolf Bennett

But I kep' my head right up in the air nobly, and never turned to the right or the left; and says I,— “I don't see no beauty in cuttin' up didos, nor never did.
— from Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a Politician by Marietta Holley

They approached nearer and nearer to the great bird, surrounding its red head with a black living ring, as if tightening a noose about its body.
— from The Spy: The Story of a Superfluous Man by Maksim Gorky

Venice once contained two hundred thousand inhabitants: there are now about ninety thousand; and THESE!!
— from The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 4 by Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron

It is as necessary and natural to play as to work, and we must have rest, recreation and rejoicing.
— from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 2, No. 21, June, 1921 America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy by Various

According to the legend, however, instead of going to some other country, they had all taken refuge in the subterranean caverns, whence they never came out but at night, and then seldom showed themselves in any numbers, and never to many people at once.
— from The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

{31} ” While she was speaking, the youth, absorbed in the contemplation of her fantastic beauty, drawn on as by an unknown force, approached nearer and nearer the edge of the rock.
— from Romantic legends of Spain by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

His line extended thence across the neck of the peninsula of Bermuda Hundred, and east and south of Petersburg, where it gradually stretched westward, approaching nearer and nearer to the railroads bringing the supplies for our army and for Richmond.
— from The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 2 by Jefferson Davis

But we are now, alas, nearing the point where the "rapid" of Dickens' life began to "shoot to its fall."
— from Life of Charles Dickens by Marzials, Frank T. (Frank Thomas), Sir

We owe to ourselves, and to our sex, you know, to be always neat; and never to be surprised in a way we should be pained to be seen in.
— from Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 2 by Samuel Richardson