The scene, in spite of natural suavity and grace, had become like Dante's first glimpse of the City of Dis—like Sodom and Gomorrah when fire from heaven descended on their towers before they crumbled into dust.
— from Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete Series I, II, and III by John Addington Symonds

Sitting on stone benches in the sunshine, they subside into slumber, or nearly so, and start at the approach of footsteps echoing under the colonnades, ashamed to be caught napping, and rousing themselves in a hurry, as formerly on the midnight watch at sea.
— from Our Old Home, Vol. 2 Annotated with Passages from the Author's Notebook by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Long after midnight Tessa fell asleep; her last thought shaping itself thus: “I can not reason myself into loving or not loving, any more than I can reason the sun into shining or not shining.”
— from Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline: A Story of the Development of a Young Girl's Life by Conklin, Nathaniel, Mrs.

THE VOORTREKKER The gull shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break in fire, He shall fulfill God's utmost will unknowing His desire; And he shall see old planets pass and alien stars arise, And give the gale his seaworn sail in shadow of new skies.
— from The Home Book of Verse — Volume 3 by Burton Egbert Stevenson

A family of the Nautilidœ , in which the shell is straight, or nearly so.
— from The Ancient Life History of the Earth A Comprehensive Outline of the Principles and Leading Facts of Palæontological Science by Henry Alleyne Nicholson

‘It’s a sperrit,’ says I. ‘Sperrit or no sperrit,’ he says, snatchin’ the gun, ‘I lay him out!’
— from Tales from the Veld by Ernest Glanville

'Tell her papa sent me up,' faltered Johnnie; 'or stay, say——' 'I say 'oo naughty,' said Georgie, whose infantine mind had already jumped to the right conclusion.
— from Holiday Tales by Florence Wilford

[93] in each township, especially in the new States, for common schools, and from various other sources, several of the States accumulated a school fund, the income of which, in some instances, sufficed, or nearly sufficed, for the support of free public schools for all the children in the State.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870 by Various