A speaker, especially a dramatic speaker, pivots from his audience when he becomes subjective, and suggests an imaginary listener, or represents a conversation between two or more in a story.
— from Browning and the Dramatic Monologue by S. S. (Samuel Silas) Curry

Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east.
— from Stones of Venice [introductions] by John Ruskin

It seems as if water had had more power at some former period than now, to hew and tear its passage through such an immense ledge of rock as here withstood it.
— from Passages from the American Notebooks, Volume 1 by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Forgive me for saying it, but I mean that it seems as if love only rightly begins when one has a high-minded, excellent son."
— from Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine by Berthold Auerbach

Mr. Borrow, in evident allusion to the very lowest, and most ignorant, class of the Spanish Gipsies, says: “They seem to hunt for their bread, as if they were not of the human, but rather of the animal, species, and, in lieu of reason, were endowed with a kind of instinct, which assists them to a very limited extent, and no further.”
— from A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the Gipsy Language by Walter Simson

Between the vessel and this waste of water, and within three hundred feet of the first, stretched an irregular line of ripple, dotted here and there with the heads of low naked rocks, marking the presence and direction of the reef.
— from Homeward Bound; Or, the Chase: A Tale of the Sea by James Fenimore Cooper

The general commanding directs that you keep your whole command in 'position' for a rapid movement down the old Richmond road; and you will send out at once a division at least, to pass below Smithfield, to seize, if possible, the heights near Captain Hamilton's, on this side of the Massaponax, taking care to keep it well supported and its line of retreat open.
— from The Boys of '61 or, Four Years of Fighting, Personal Observations with the Army and Navy by Charles Carleton Coffin