The Island is reckoned nigh a Square, each Side 18 Leagues long, hilly, and lays under the Æquinoctial , a wooden Bridge just without the Town, being said not to deviate the least Part of a Minute, either to the Southward or Northward; and notwithstanding this warm Scituation, and continual vertical Suns, the Islanders are very healthy, imputed by those who are disposed to be merry, in a great Measure to the Want of even so much as one Surgeon or Physician amongst them.
— from A General History of the Pyrates: from their first rise and settlement in the island of Providence, to the present time by Daniel Defoe

In the midst of so many prejudices and feigned passions, the real sentiments of nature are not to be distinguished from others, unless we well know to analyze the human heart.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is well understood here, that by the words Venice, England, we designate not the peoples, but social structures; the oligarchies superposed on nations, and not the nations themselves.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

At Negapatam, some Hindus make vows to the Mīrān (Muhammadan saint) of Nāgur, and name their child after him.
— from Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

At my answer that I had never seen one, nor anything nearer to one than people going out with a gun and coming back with nothing else, he laughed and said, "I must tell that to the Empress."
— from In the Courts of Memory, 1858-1875; from Contemporary Letters by L. de (Lillie de) Hegermann-Lindencrone

But I have said that the mass is more or less spongy or nodular, and, notwithstanding the high heat, these nodules do not perfectly incorporate with their neighbours: what then? You would say that the process of rolling must draw the nodules into fibres—it does so; and here is a mass acted upon by dilute sulphuric acid, which exhibits in a striking manner this fibrous structure.
— from The Glaciers of the Alps Being a narrative of excursions and ascents, an account of the origin and phenomena of glaciers and an exposition of the physical principles to which they are related by John Tyndall

But the little remnant still sped on, nearer and nearer to their destination at the end of the promontory.
— from The Story of a Hare by J. C. (John Coulson) Tregarthen

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which the mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific.
— from School Reading by Grades: Sixth Year by James Baldwin