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More "Insecure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speaks hastily and heedlessly, for the earth can show itself as unstable as the air, and our solid footing become as insecure as the deck of a ship laboring in a storm at sea. The powers of the atmosphere, great as they are and mighty for destruction as they may become, are at times surpassed by those which abide within the earth, deep laid in the so-called ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... without any aim or object but to sacrifice all for what was right. He yearned with utter simplicity that this might be her way out. Let her do it for herself. Let her do it of herself, thought Mark—not because she is afraid, not because her vast possessions appear the least insecure. And the action would be far more noble just because, at the moment of renunciation, the world would, for the first time, suspect her guilt. To Mark it seemed now the crowning touch of mercy that the criminal should be allowed to drink deep of the chalice. "Her own affair"—that was what ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... latter, however, were on the forward slope, freely exposed to the continual fire with which the Huns replied to the provocation of the Warwicks. It was therefore necessary to lie at the bottom of a narrow and stinking trench on a 9-inch board. You had hardly fallen into an insecure doze when you were awakened and had to move out, for these breastworks, being barely shoulder high, were always evacuated at dawn, and dawn comes very early in June. The men naturally preferred the regular hours and the clean and comfortable shelters of the fire ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... himself on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and, cigarette in mouth, dictated to the self-effacing young woman. She took down his words with anxious humility, for she looked upon him as a god sphered on Olympian heights—and what socially insecure young woman of lower-middle-class England could do otherwise in the presence of a torturingly beautiful youth, immaculately raimented, who commanded in the great house with a smile more royal and debonair than that of the master thereof, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of Hong-Kong ceded for ever to the British government. By the cession of this island, all future attempts of the Chinese government to prevent the introduction of opium are frustrated. Previously, those who dealt in this article were confined to the insecure depot of a receiving vessel, liable to attack, fire, and wreck. Now they possess an island capable of a strong defence, where the opium can be imported in any quantity, under the protection of the English flag, and from ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... themselves. They retreated to a mountain, and, notwithstanding all the signs of peace and friendship we could make, we could not bring them to parley with us; so, as the night was coming on and the ships were anchored in an insecure place, we agreed to leave there and go in search of some port or bay where we could place our ships ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... vengeance for his brother, and of the execution and banishment of a large number of persons, Hippias became a distrusted and an embittered man. About three years after the death of Hipparchus, finding his position in the city insecure, he set about fortifying Munichia, with the intention of establishing himself there. While he was still engaged on this work, however, he was expelled by Cleomenes, king of Lacedaemon, in consequence of the Spartans being continually incited by oracles ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... same time, the caution with which the elephant is supposed to approach insecure ground and places of doubtful[1] solidity, appears to me, so far as my own observation and experience extend, to be exaggerated, and the number of temporary bridges which are annually broken down by elephants in all parts of Ceylon, is sufficient to show that, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the captive. "I shall only pretend to be hung, of course. See here!" and he fastened together several pieces strong string which had tied some of the other boys' books, piled the latter together, and standing on tiptoe on this very insecure basis, fastened one end of the cord to a horizontal bough, and put his neck into a running knot at the other end, endeavouring to imitate the contortions of an actual sufferer. Shouts of laughter greeted him, and the victim laughed loudest of all. Three ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nations, in their military expeditions against each other. In consequence of the almost continued hostilities between the northern and southern Indians, these expeditions were very frequent, and tended somewhat to retard the settlement of the valley, and render a residence in it, for some time, insecure and unpleasant. Between the Alleghany mountains and the Ohio river, within the present limits of Virginia, there were some villages interspersed, inhabited by small numbers of Indians; the most [40] of whom retired north west ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... that deep pit which divides the secure from the insecure—when they see themselves creeping closer and closer to its dread edge—they are apt, however loquacious by nature, to fall into long silences. Bunting had always been a talker, but now he talked no more. Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but then she had always been a silent woman, and that was ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... uncle. Who her mother was, no one seems to know, and there lies the mystery. Mr. Stanton's immense works of charity have succeeded to some extent in getting him a foothold in New York, but the foundation of his social position is very insecure. I need scarcely tell you, Beverly, that although money is a lever that can do much to help a man along in society, it is almost utterly valueless in the diplomatic world. In that smallest of small worlds ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... of the background of his daily life that he felt too sure of her continual and abiding presence to need deliberate thought of her. But this morning he wanted to get up quickly and find her. Perhaps her absence had made him feel more insecure, but there had also been something that night, something in her face, something in the touch of ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... barbarism and refinement, without their virtues. Other kings before him (such as Richard III) were tyrants and murderers out of ambition or necessity: they gained or established unjust power by violent means: they destroyed their or made its tenure insecure. But Henry VIII's power is most fatal to those whom he loves: he is cruel and remorseless to pamper his luxurious appetites: bloody and voluptuous; an amorous murderer; an uxorious debauchee. His hardened insensibility to the feelings of ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... glanced at herself in the glass, mocked her own radiant beauty of face and form and dress. Not really a full human being; merely a decoration. No more; and no worse off than most of the women everywhere, the favorites licensed or unlicensed of law and religion. But just as badly off, and just as insecure. Free! No rest, no full breath until freedom had been won! At any cost, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of the workmanship. It is a kind of fear, which causes this sentiment of disapprobation; but the passion is not the same with that which we feel, when obliged to stand under a wall, that we really think tottering and insecure. The seeming tendencies of objects affect the mind: And the emotions they excite are of a like species with those, which proceed from the real consequences of objects, but their feeling is different. Nay, these emotions are so different in their feeling, that they may often be contrary, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... but the harbour is insecure, so that ships remain here at anchor only so long as is absolutely necessary; there are frequently only two or three ships ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up - very crooked and insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched - ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... overplus had become systematised as a means of paying authors, that it occurred to anyone that actors might also be remunerated in a similar way. In olden days the actor's profession was not favourably regarded by the general public; his social position was particularly insecure; he was looked upon as of close kin to the rogue and the vagabond, and with degrading possibilities in connection with the stocks and whipping-post never wholly remote from his professional career. An Elizabethan player, presuming to submit his personal claims and merits to ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the start, when the 'cellist, who was restless, discovered that the stand which had been placed for him was insecure; rising from his scat, he went to fetch another from the back of the platform. In the delay that ensued, Maurice looked round at the audience. He saw innumerable heads and faces, all turned expectantly towards him, like lines of globular fruits. His eye ranged indifferently ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the edge of the forest; but these, not considering their houses safe as hiding-places, took him into the forest, where he lay hidden for three days under a great fallen fir tree, they bringing him food and drink. Finding even this place insecure, he went deeper into the woods and sought shelter under a lofty fir tree which stood on a hill in the midst of a marsh. The place has ever since been called ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... exuberance, physical strength, a convenient geographical position, a good climate, considerable mineral and some agricultural resources, are all to be found in Persia. All that is wanted at present is the development of the country on a solid, reliable basis, instead of the insecure, unsteady intrigues upon which business, whether political or commercial, is unfortunately carried on in the present state ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... he might be tempted to do her some injury. Her husband had been her only protector among the Trojans, and now, since he was no more, and another, who was in some sense her rival, had risen to power, she naturally felt insecure. She accordingly took the first opportunity to retire from Lavinium. She went away into the forests in the interior of the country, with a very few attendants and friends, and concealed herself there in a safe retreat. The family that received and sheltered her was that of Tyrrheus, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... inquiring? Pleasure (for example). Subject it to the rule, throw it into the balance. Ought the good to be such a thing that it is fit that we have confidence in it? Yes. And in which we ought to confide? It ought to be. Is it fit to trust to anything which is insecure? No. Is then pleasure anything secure? No. Take it then and throw it out of the scale, and drive it far away from the place of good things. But if you are not sharp-sighted, and one balance is not enough for you, bring another. Is it fit to be elated ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... for me to inform you what is the very insecure status of an American woman here, particularly in view of the Court's well known state of mind ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... not, however, the direct oppression of the monarch that causes most suffering among his subjects. It is rather that of the inferior officers of government whose rapacity and extortion renders property, liberty, and life itself insecure. Deceit, fraud and lying are the natural, if not necessary consequences of a system which leaves the people entirely at the mercy of those who bear rule ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... days in the world, he turned the big kitchen scale at 13 lb. 7-1/2 oz. In point of size and weight his thirty-fourth day found him pretty much on a level with a fully grown fox-terrier; though he was, of course, still quite unshapen, and somewhat insecure upon his ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... eject a person from his estate on the ground of some injustice committed in the time of the Tudors would produce all the evils which result from arbitrary confiscation, and would make all property insecure. It concerns the commonwealth—so runs the legal maxim—that there be an end of litigation. And surely this maxim is at least equally applicable to the great commonwealth of states; for in that commonwealth litigation means the devastation of provinces, the suspension ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Austrian-Germans from ever entering the Republic as a federated state. In a word, the Allied governments need only command, and the Teutons would hasten to obey. It is hardly credible that men of experience in foreign politics should build upon such insecure foundations as these. It is but fair to say the Conference rejected this singular program in theory while ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... made the path of faith a steep one to tread is partly that it has got terribly encumbered with ecclesiastical traditions; it has been mended, like the Slough of Despond, with cartloads of texts and insecure definitions. And partly too the old simple undisturbed faith in the absolute truth and authority of the Bible has given way. It is admitted that the Bible contains a considerable admixture of the legendary element; and it requires a strong intellectual and moral grip to build one's faith ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to survive. The frauds of trusted men, high in power and high in supposed religion; the whole-sale poisonings; the robberies; the adulteration of food —nay, of almost everything exposed for sale—the cruel usage of women—children murdered for the burial fees —life and property insecure in open day in the open streets—splendour such as the world never saw before upon earth, with vice and squalor crouching under its walls—let all this be written down by an enemy, or let it be ascertained hereafter by the investigation of a posterity which desires ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... and insecure state of affairs throughout the Kingdom when the chief of Mackenzie was peaceably and quietly enjoying himself in his Highland home. He died in 1375. [Murdo became a great favourite latterly with all those with whom he came in contact. "He fell in company with the Earl of Sutherland, who became his ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... when he turned about to look for the doorway by which he had entered, it was closed and the wooden crate was being taken away. Man had again outwitted him, but the manner in which he was now confined seemed very insecure to Black Bruin. He would soon either find a way out, or else make one. With this in view, he went about the cage several times, sniffing and poking his nose between the bars. He put his powerful arms between two of the bars and strained upon them with all his enormous ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... Halberstadt lands, at our expense!" Which was the idea in London, too: "Don't we, by Apocalyptic Newswriters and eyesight of our own, understand the man?" Pitt is by this time in Office, who perhaps might have judged a little otherwise. But Pitt's seat is altogether temporary, insecure; the ruling deities Newcastle and Royal Highness, who withal are in standing quarrel. So that Friedrich, Schmettau, Mitchell pleaded to the deaf. Nothing but "Defend the Weser," and ignorant Fatuity ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... to the procession they were with Betty, walking fast and walking slowly, and leading the way by short cuts across-country with great spirit. They called a halt to pick huckleberries, and they dared the club to cross a wide brook on insecure stepping-stones. Everybody made fun for everybody else whenever they saw an opportunity, and when they reached the Picknell farm, quite warm and excited, they were announced politely by George Max as "the Out-of-Breath Club." The shy Picknells wore their best white Sunday dresses, and ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of the homesteaders' cause, and the sincerity of their leader, neither of which she doubted or questioned, the weight of numbers and resources would be on the side of the cattlemen. It could result only in the homesteaders being driven from their insecure holdings after the sacrifice of many lives. If she could see Macdonald, and appeal to him to put down this foolish, even though ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... what he sees, he sees with his whole soul: what he paints, he paints with his whole might. Sir Joshua sees partially, slightly, tenderly—catches the flying lights of things, the momentary glooms: paints also partially, tenderly, never with half his strength; content with uncertain visions, insecure delights; the truth not precious nor significant to him, only pleasing; falsehood also pleasurable, even useful on occasion—must, however, be discreetly touched, just enough to make all men noble, all women lovely: "we do not need this flattery often, most of those ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a curious attitude that she found difficult to explain, but it seemed to her that to tackle Mrs. Considine in her husband's house was dangerous, that it would give to Gabrielle an unreasonable but inevitable advantage. At Lapton Mrs. Payne felt she was a stranger, insecure of her ground, and therefore in an inferior position; and this struck her more forcibly when she reflected that, though she was confident of the rightness of her conclusions, the actual evidence that she possessed was extremely small. She admitted to herself that it would be difficult ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Gabriel, overlooking the lowland vines and fruit groves, Mother Nature is most ruggedly, thornily savage. Not even in the Sierra have I ever made the acquaintance of mountains more rigidly inaccessible. The slopes are exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot of the explorer, however great his strength or skill may be, but thorny chaparral constitutes their chief defense. With the exception of little park and garden spots not visible in comprehensive views, the entire ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... unambitious and devoid of energy. The attempt failed at the time, and Seneca was able triumphantly to refute the charge of any treasonable design. But the fact of such a charge being made showed how insecure was the position of any man of eminence under the deepening tyranny of Nero, and it precipitated the conspiracy which two ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... to show that there had been any struggle previous to his fall. Had such a struggle taken place, the doctors would have expected to find certain signs and traces of it on the body: there were none. Everything seemed to point to the theory that he had leaned over the insecure fencing of the old shaft to look into its depths; probably to drop stones into them; that the loose, unmortared parapet had given way with his weight, and that he had plunged headlong to the bottom. He might have been pushed in—from behind—of course, but that was conjecture. Under ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... cakes of ice the buffalo who were tempted over by the appearance of green, growing grass on the other side. The Indians were very expert in their pursuit of the animals, which finally slipped from their insecure footing on the drifting ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... was, at twenty-two, unmarried, her background insecure, the very ground on which she walked treacherous. Braxmar knew, and Beales Chadsey, and Cowperwood. At least three or four of her acquaintances must have been at the Waldorf on that fatal night. How long would it be before others became aware? She tried ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... VIII the differential diagnosis between perplexity and stupor has already been touched upon. Here again the affect is a point of contrast. The patient has not too little emotion but too much. The feeling of intangible, puzzling ideas and of an insecure environment causes the subject distress, of which complaint is made and which can be witnessed in the furrowed brow and constrained expression. There is also, as we have seen, a rich ideational content in ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... all the morning, across a broken stretch of country, where the roads were exceedingly insecure, and, as he removed the troublesome spur and laid it on the mantelpiece, he folded up the strip of muslin and put ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... been dancing in the great hall;—there was dancing that night also. The population of the hotel had been augmented by the advent of families from other parts of the island, who found their summer cottages insecure places of shelter: there were nearly four hundred guests assembled. Perhaps it was for this reason that the entertainment had been prepared upon a grander plan than usual, that it assumed the form of a fashionable ball. And all those pleasure seekers,—representing the wealth and ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... When the regent was informed of these occurrences he sent Law a strong detachment of Swiss guards, who were stationed night and day in the court of his residence. The public indignation at last increased so much, that Law, finding his own house, even with this guard, insecure, took refuge in the Palais Royal, in the apartments ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... old people deeply shaken; they feel insecure. One confirmed drunkard has come to me, and is, I believe, now a saved man. Some little children are evidently saved. All that I have yet seen are related to converts of my own. One, eleven years old, is a singular instance of divine grace. When ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... time, serious accidents have taken place, and the progress of work stopped, by the sudden snapping of driving belts in machinery, and, as a general rule, it is found that the collapse is attributable either to faulty leather or insecure joining. A great improvement of the leather intended for belts has been brought about during the last few years, by the introduction of improved processes for currying and the subsequent treatment. Paterson ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... deep reverie. I do not know how long I had been sitting there, when I was suddenly roused by a cry of pain, or terror, and the noise of falling stones. I sprang to my feet and, looking over, saw a young and beautiful woman lying fearfully near the edge of one of the most insecure of the projecting ledges on the tier below me—the very one from which I had myself nearly fallen, only a few days before, in stretching over after some asphodels which were ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Utgard-Loke on his lofty throne; For evil is itself a power, and will not yield,—- And piety not joined with power is children's play: 'Tis like the sunbeams on the breast of AEger thrown,— An image faint, which falls and rises with the wave, Foundationless and insecure, devoid of trust. But power not joined with virtue eats itself away, As rust the buried sword. 'Tis life's unchecked carouse; The heron of oblivion hovers o'er the cup, And when the drinker wakes, he blushes for his deed. All power is from the earth of Ymer's body formed; Wild waves and flowing ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... exceed the number of dwellings, which is not unusual. The former are as splendid as gilding can make them, and the latter as humble as can be conceived from the frail materials of which they are constructed—bamboos, palm leaves, and grass. The wealth of a Burman, always insecure, is very generally expended on the luxury of temple-building. Religious merit, indeed, consists mainly in the construction of one of these huge, costly, and showy edifices; and is not considered as increased by building a durable one. No one ever thinks of repairing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... town and in the schools was insecure. Out of her silent, independent way of life had sprung a misunderstanding that, at least once, had taken definite form and had come near driving her from the town and schools. That she did not succumb to the storm of criticism that for some weeks beat about ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Commissioners, "has been that of requiring the very best evidence which the nature and circumstances of the case would admit. We have in no instance hitherto thought fit to dispense with the personal appearance and examination of the claimant, conceiving the inquiry would be extremely imperfect and insecure against fraud and misrepresentation if we had not the advantage of cross-examining the party himself, as well as his witnesses; nor have we, for the same reason, allowed much weight to any testimony that has not been delivered on oath before ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... lives to render the holding of slaves possible to her, coolly proposes to withdraw herself from the Union and take with her one of the keys of the Mexican Gulf, on the plea that her slave-property is rendered insecure by the Union. Louisiana, which we bought and paid for to secure the mouth of the Mississippi, claims the right to make her soil French or Spanish, and to cork up the river again, whenever the whim may take her. The United States are not a German Confederation, but a unitary ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... for counting the money came round, it was found that the walls were so insecure that there was danger of their giving way and crushing some of the clerks under the weight ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and her counsellors did not wish to go so far. They remarked that to declare a Parliament invalid for some errors of form was a step of such consequence as to make the whole government of the nation insecure. But even without this it was not the Queen's purpose merely to revert to the forms which had been adopted under her brother. She did not share all the opinions and doctrines which had then obtained the upper hand: ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... did much to drag down her rival. Already was America restless under control from Europe. There was now no danger to the English in America from the French peril which had made insecure the borders of Massachusetts, of New York, of Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and had brought widespread desolation and sorrow. With the removal of the menace went the need of help and defenses for the colonies from the motherland. The French belief that there was ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... reduced. These difficult iron estimations stand out very sharply from the results of other authors and could only be accepted after the most careful confirmation. But the above analysis shews, that in any case the far-reaching conclusions which Biernacki has attached to his results are insecure. For these questions especially, complete estimations with the aid of the ferrometer of A. Jolles are ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... capable of satisfactory settlement for the moment, or they might have proved as insoluble as Lincoln thought they were. But, at the best, if the States which adhered to the old Union had admitted the claim of the first seceding States to go, they could only have retained for themselves an insecure existence as a nation, threatened at each fresh conflict of interest or sentiment with a further disruption which could not upon any principle have been resisted. The preceding chapters have dwelt with iteration upon the sentiments which had operated ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Scoodrach to Kenneth; but the latter could not pull for laughing. And besides, he had the whole of the young gillie's weight to bear, while his foothold was exceedingly insecure. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... livelong night the foes, throughout their tents, As insecure and with their scathe deprest, Poured tears, and uttered murmurs and laments; But, as they could, their sounds of woe supprest. One grief for slaughtered friends or kindred vents; Some are by sorrows of their own distrest, As wounded or as ill at ease; ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... feet. There was no review for her in those visions of happy days and tender memories, over which a woman half closes her eyes and smiles, or over the incense of which a man's heart softens. Behind her stretched a wake of turbulence and strife; ahead of her lay the banked clouds of an unsettled and insecure future. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Pisa. Outside the walls of Lucca, Charles knighted this astute tradesman. Agnello ran back to Pisa and conferred knighthood on his nephews. Then he built a platform and awaited the Emperor. His end was in keeping with his life. As he stood on the insecure "hustings" which he had built, that in sight of all the people Charles might declare him Imperial Vicar of Pisa, the platform collapsed and Agnello's leg was broken. Now, whether the comic spirit, so helpful to justice, be strong in our Pisans still, I know not, but on learning of the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... of civil war and by the rancorous passions which the contest has engendered. But that these people are maintaining local governments for themselves which habitually defeat the object of all government and render their own lives and property insecure is in itself utterly improbable, and the averment of the bill to that effect is not supported by any evidence which has come to my knowledge. All the information I have on the subject convinces me ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... head was more insecure on his shoulders than his Grand Vizier's. A mistake, a failure, ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... deceased-from Washington to commit it. All this would be proved by unimpeachable witnesses. The attorney added that the duty of the jury, however painful it might be, would be plain and simple. They were citizens, husbands, perhaps fathers. They knew how insecure life had become in the metropolis. Tomorrow our own wives might be widows, their own children orphans, like the bereaved family in yonder hotel, deprived of husband and father by the jealous hand ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... very speedy bird, much faster than our bob white, dwelling in the rounded sagebrush hills, travelling in flocks of from twenty to several thousand, exceedingly given to rapid leg work. We had to climb hard after him, and shoot like lightning from insecure footing. His idiosyncrasies were as strongly impressed on me as the fact that human beings walk upright. Here, however, I had to ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... coasts, ravaged the monasteries, burnt the books— after stripping the beautiful bindings of the gold, silver, and precious stones which decorated them— killed or drove away the monks, and made life, property, and thought insecure all along that once peaceful and industrious coast. Literature, then, was forced to desert the monasteries of Northumbria, and to seek for a home in the south— in Wessex, the kingdom over which Alfred the Great reigned for more than thirty years. The capital of Wessex ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... obtain this advantage at their country's expense; and so it is with all the other monopolists, they naturally unite together, and it requires their mutual aid and all their combined power and influence to preserve a system which they know stands upon rather an insecure foundation, and if once broken in upon would soon fall to pieces; and thus it is that we are subjected to the sugar monopoly, and though it is manifestly our interest to buy this important necessary of life (as well as every other) in any quarter of the globe where we ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... in error is the human mind, And human bliss is ever insecure; Know we what fortune yet remains behind? Know we how ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... peppermints, dusted their fingers, folded their hands, composed their lower thoughts, and invited the naked muse of poetry to deliver her most improving message. They had greeted Carol affectionately, and she tried to be a daughter to them. But she felt insecure. Her chair was out in the open, exposed to their gaze, and it was a hard-slatted, quivery, slippery church-parlor chair, likely to collapse publicly and without warning. It was impossible to sit on it without folding the hands and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... together. Chattanooga was in the valley between, near the centre of which, behind the town, was an elevation, Orchard Knob, held by the enemy. Bragg commanded the river and the railroads. The route for supplies was circuitous, inadequate, and insecure, over mountain roads that had become horrible. Horses and mules had perished by thousands. The soldiers were on half rations. Word came to Grant in Louisville, that Rosecrans was contemplating a retreat. He at once issued an order assuming his new command, notified Rosecrans ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... is the public good and the popular will, as in democracies, and in constitutional monarchies after the French pattern, majority takes the place of authority; an irresistible power is substituted for an idolatrous principle, and all private rights are equally insecure. The true theory of freedom excludes all absolute power and arbitrary action, and requires that a tyrannical or revolutionary government shall be coerced by the people; but it teaches that insurrection is criminal, except as a corrective of revolution and tyranny. In order to understand ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... calculate strictly, when it games. One thing is certain,—that in this political game the great lottery of power is that into which men will purchase with millions of chances against them. In Turkey, where the place, where the fortune, where the head itself are so insecure that scarcely any have died in their beds for ages, so that the bowstring is the natural death of bashaws, yet in no country is power and distinction (precarious enough, God knows, in all) sought for with such boundless avidity,—as if the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... how different was the life of the merchants of that period from what it is to-day. A great portion of their time was spent in extensive journeys for the purchase of goods. Such tours were little short of expeditions. The roads being insecure, a strong escort was needed for the journey to those famous fairs where, for long weeks at a time, merchants from the most remote parts of Europe were gathered together. In certain cities, Montpellier for example, the fair was perpetual. Benjamin of Tudela shows us that city frequented ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... its operation, and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had become so powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that year, in his message to Congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." A Joint Select Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in 1872, to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary States, so far as regards the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... freed slaves relapse into barbarism, &c. These things have been speculated about, and gloomy predictions have had their day; the time has now come for the proof. People do not buy land and houses, and rent property for long terms of years, in countries where life is insecure, or where labor cannot be had, and the tendency of things is to ruin and decay. In short, men, in their senses, do not embark on board a sinking ship. Confidence is the very soul of prosperity; of the existence of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... hidden from sight. These also have their counterparts in the Reef, where numbers of boring Shells and marine Worms work their way into the solid substance of the wall, piercing it, with holes in every direction, till large portions become insecure, and the next storm suffices to break off the fragments so loosened. Once detached, they are tossed about in the water, crumbled into Coral sand, crushed, often ground to powder by the friction of the rocks and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... helpless, hopeless, or bewildered, but dumb and clinging on; like a man who holds an insecure footing against ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... says Mr. Chesterton, "is intrinsically insecure because it is based on the notion that all men will do the same thing for different reasons.... And as within the head of any convict may be the hell of a quite solitary crime, so in the house or under the hat of any suburban ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Bursley, which has been the home of the potter for ten centuries, is the most ancient of the Five Towns in Staffordshire. The boys, dressed for the most part in shirt, trousers, and boots, all equally ragged and insecure, were playing ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... lawless Mexicans from passing the border and committing depredations on our remote settlers. A state of anarchy and violence prevails throughout that distant frontier. The laws are a dead letter and life and property wholly insecure. For this reason the settlement of Arizona is arrested, whilst it is of great importance that a chain of inhabitants should extend all along its southern border sufficient for their own protection and that of the United States ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... means of peat. Of course he looks to the raising of the blockade as the only radical cure; but he was not very hopeful of this being achieved thoroughly or permanently except through revolutions in other countries. Peace between Bolshevik Russia and capitalist countries, he said, must always be insecure; the Entente might be led by weariness and mutual dissensions to conclude peace, but he felt convinced that the peace would be of brief duration. I found in him, as in almost all leading Communists, much less eagerness than existed in our delegation for peace ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... culpable, but in his own interests rashness was good policy. Unless he could succeed in desperate enterprises against tremendous odds and so make himself a military hero and a favorite of the multitude, his throne was insecure. He succeeded; but it was only by staking everything upon the venture—his own safety and that of his army, which, if the French had exercised but a little more discretion, would inevitably have been cut to pieces or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... that the differences exhibited in the moral judgments of individuals or of peoples are of minor significance. They are facts to be dealt with in the light of some theory. An ethical theory which ignores them must rest upon a narrow and insecure foundation. It is exposed to assault from many quarters. It may, in default of better means of defence, be compelled to take refuge behind the blind wall of dogmatic assertion. On the other hand, a theory which gives them frank recognition, and ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... heart that had hitherto been closed, and learning a largeness of view and sympathy in the process. Her fault had ever been, no doubt, to estimate slow and accurate methods too highly, and to believe that all was insecure and untrustworthy that was not painfully accumulated. Now she saw that genius could accomplish without effort or trouble what no amount of homely energy could effect, and a new horizon was unveiled to her. ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Why should one so faint-heartedly persist in making choice of experiences, in welcoming what is pleasant, what feeds our vanity and self-satisfaction, what gives one, like the rich fool, the sense of false security of goods stored up for the years? We are set in life to feel insecure, or at all events to gain stability and security of soul, not to prop up our failing and timid senses upon the pillows of wealth and ease and circumstance. The man whom I entirely envy is the man who walks into the dark valley of misfortune or sickness or ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to the awful chasms and precipices among the mountains, and saw the turbid torrents descending from them, their fears revived. It was, however, now too late to retreat. They pressed forward, ascending continually, till their road grew extremely precipitous and insecure, threading its way through almost impassable defiles, with rugged cliffs overhanging them, and snowy summits towering ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the fair-haired boy of seventeen, sauntering into his sister's room and taking a somewhat insecure seat upon a fancy table, where, with hands in pockets, he regarded her quizzically. "Great Scott, what a turn out! You look like a magician in the midst of a magic circle. Are you going to witch the lot into newts and toads? Whence this thusness? You won't persuade me that it's ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... escape without a drop of twenty feet to a most uncertain foothold. Rather than risk it, he ran in upon his nearest assailant at the base of the branch, thrusting at the blue-faced beast with his spear. But his position being so insecure, his thrust lacked force and precision. The great ape caught it deftly; and Grom, to preserve his balance, had to let the spear be wrenched from his hand. At the same moment another ape dropped ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Sanitaetsrat, of Germany, who has conducted some highly technical experiments in the blood reactions of various animals and man, on which he bases his conclusions, says: "Since Darwin we have been accustomed to consider the concept 'species' as something insecure and unstable. The whole organic world must be thought of as fluid if the evolution theory is to find room for action. It required, indeed, all the great investigator's keenness to fence his theory against the difficulty which the lack of transitional forms occasioned, and against the fact ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... James, by which the army could be easily supplied, which required no guards, and by which heavy ordnance could be brought up to bombard the fortifications of Richmond. But it had one flaw. It left Washington, in the opinion of the President and of the nation, insecure; and this flaw, which would have escaped the notice of an ordinary enemy, was at once detected by Lee and Jackson. Moreover, had McClellan been left in control of the whole theatre of war, Jackson's manoeuvres ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the development of which is in reality the peculiar duty and dignity of philosophy, and confine ourselves for the present to the more humble but not less useful task of preparing a firm foundation for those majestic edifices of moral science. For this foundation has been hitherto insecure from the many subterranean passages which reason in its confident but vain search for treasures has made in all directions. Our present duty is to make ourselves perfectly acquainted with the transcendental use made of pure reason, its principles and ideas, that we may be able properly ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... have abandoned several projects which were devised in order to give them a hold over this State. In Kelantan, internal troubles have aided Siamese intrigues, the present Raja and his late brother both having so insecure a seat upon their thrones that they readily made concessions to the Siamese in order to purchase their support. Thus, at the present time, the flag of the White Elephant floats at the mouth of the Kelantan river on ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... shelves, and as I turn the crackling, stained, irregular pages—it may be a volume of controversial divinity or outworn philosophy—it seems impossible to imagine that it can ever have been woven out of the live brain of man, or that any one can ever have been found to follow those old, vehement, insecure arguments, starting from unproved data, and leading to erroneous and fanciful conclusions. The whole thing seems so faded, so dreary, so remote from reality, that one cannot even dimly imagine the frame of mind which originated it, and still less the mood ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... coast of the Mediterranean were the hives of pirates, whose small rapid vessels were the terror of every unarmed ship that sailed in those waters, and whose descents upon the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy rendered life and property constantly insecure. A regular system of kidnapping prevailed; prisoners had their fixed price, and were carried off to labour in the African dockyards, or to be chained to the benches of the Moorish ships which their oars propelled, until either ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure—no, not even from so mild a one as this. We should rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... that within the limits of my official observation crime is rampant; that life is insecure as well as property; that the country is filled with desperadoes and banditti who rob and plunder on every side, and that the county is emphatically in a condition ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... there watching, it annoyed him to feel that he could not let himself go like the others. But it was so long since he had mixed with his own countrymen, that he felt insecure of his footing and almost like a foreigner among them. Besides, in a few hours now they should sight the skerries on the Norwegian coast; and the thought awoke in him a strange excitement—it was a moment he had dreamed of many and many ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... a tremendous lurch, that sent two or three of us into the lee corners of the cabin; a sea broke over us, bursting in the companion-hatch, and half filling our small and insecure retreat; the swinging lamp was thrown from its socket and extinguished; we were enveloped in pitch-darkness, up to our knees in salt water. There was a moment of awful silence: we could not tell whether the light of day would ever visit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... routes, by junks, by strange Oriental craft, by river-boats, by caravans of camels, trains of mules, in wagons, on horses, or on human shoulders, the products of the East were brought within reach of the merchants of the West. These routes were insecure, the transportation over them difficult and expensive. They led over mountains and deserts, through alternate snow and heat. Mongol conquerors destroyed, from time to time, the cities which lay along the lines of trade, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... self-interest were softened by their surroundings; which shows, like many another chapter in history, that in the mighty impulses which guide the destinies of nations, the heart is above the head. The advocates of slavery felt insecure because they knew that even if legally right they were divinely and humanly wrong. They were not satisfied to have the Free States acquiescent and even submissive; they were determined, in their fever of unrest, to drive freedom to the wall, and to make the ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... be able to annihilate the army in detail. Chang Yu's note may be worth quoting here: "If we do not know the place where our opponents mean to concentrate or the day on which they will join battle, our unity will be forfeited through our preparations for defense, and the positions we hold will be insecure. Suddenly happening upon a powerful foe, we shall be brought to battle in a flurried condition, and no mutual support will be possible between wings, vanguard or rear, especially if there is any great distance between the foremost and hindmost ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... La Baudraye added several plots to his vineyards, and devoted himself to the culture of the vine. The Restoration seemed to him at first so insecure that he dared not go to Paris to claim his debts; but after Napoleon's death he tried to turn his father's collection of autographs into money, though not understanding the deep philosophy which had thus mixed up I O U's and copies of verses. But the winegrower ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... was amiable enough to cry 'Garde!' with every step he took, it will be found by experiment that it is not much use to the lower man to have 'Garde!' shouted in his ears, when his footing is insecure to begin with, and a large stone comes full at his head, at the precise moment when two others are taking him in the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... 25s. a bottle. By the time they returned, we had struck our tents, intending to cross a muddy-banked creek that lay in our road that evening, as we were told that the waters might be too swollen to do it next day. The water reached above their waists, and as my usual post was very insecure, I was obliged to be carried over on their shoulders, which did not prevent my feet from being thoroughly soaked before reaching the other side, where we remained ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... she lit a small lamp, which proved insufficient, and Mr. Ottinger brought a second from his quarters. Gordon found himself in a long, narrow chamber furnished with two wooden beds, two identical, insecure bureaus, stands with wash basins and pitchers, and a table. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, were resinous yellow pine, and gave out a hot, dry smell from which there was no escape but the door, for the room ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hers should not be. However, Nero or not, the principle is the same. I do not deny that a National Church may be immensely powerful, may convert thousands, may number zealous and holy men among her ministers and adherents—but yet her foundation is insecure. What when the tempest of God's searching ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... of unliving solidity. Only clarity was admitted to Nuwell, and the only living clarity was man and beast and vegetation, spotted in the dome cities and dome farms of the lowlands. He and Maya scurried, transiting sparks of the only life, insecure and hastening in the absence of the net of roads which eventually would bind the Martian surface to human reality from the toeholds of the ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... her to occupy are disused Snail-shells, especially the house of the Common Snail (Helix aspersa). Let us go to the slope of the hills thick with olive-trees and inspect the little supporting-walls which are built of dry stones and face the south. In the crevices of this insecure masonry, we shall reap a harvest of old Snail-shells, plugged with earth right up to the orifice. The family of the Three-horned Osmia is settled in the spiral of those shells, which is subdivided into chambers ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... particular argument before us. He positively affirms that, unless the freedom of the human will be a matter of experience, Atheism is the sole alternative. Doubtless most well-informed readers will feel that the solitary basis thus provided for Theism is a very insecure one, while many such readers will at once conclude that if this is the only basis which reason can provide for Theism to stand upon, Theism is without any rational basis to stand upon at all. I have no hesitation in saying that the last-mentioned ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... distinguish the successive stages or periods of the system. The first relates to the time when a band of regulators was the only reliable legal power, and when, consequently, the vigilance of the citizens kept it comparatively pure. The second indicates a later period, when the people no longer felt insecure, and there was in fact no necessity for the system; and when, not having been disused, it could not but be abused. We derive both from an old citizen of the country, who was an actor in each. One of them, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... first been a weak one. A return of the king's madness made it necessary in the beginning of 1811 to confer the Regency on the Prince of Wales; and the Whig sympathies of the Prince threatened for a while the Cabinet with dismissal. Though this difficulty was surmounted their hold of power remained insecure, and the insecurity of the ministry told on the conduct of the war; for the apparent inactivity of Wellington during 1811 was really due to the hesitation and timidity of the Cabinet at home. But in May 1812 the assassination of Perceval by a madman named ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... diversified by a future Lind practicing her scales unweariedly; water-pipes bursting in the frost, walls streaming in the thaw, the lower offices reeking and green with damp, and the upper rooms too insecure for unrestricted movement—all these, and more miseries of the same kind, she willingly encounters rather than shift into a locality relatively unfashionable to her sphere, but where she could have substantiality ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... same mode of development to be applicable in all cases and to all characteristics, even to diseases. So far the facts bore us out, but when we assumed that the adult differences were the result of the accelerated mode of development, we were perhaps upon rather insecure ground. It is evidently this assumption which has led you to misunderstand the theory. Cope founded his belief, that the adult characteristics were also the result of acceleration, if I rightly remember it, mainly upon the class of facts spoken of above in man where ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... tact of Mr. Wade, we believe is largely due the fact of the existence of one great company to-day with its thousand arms, grasping the extremities of the continent, instead of a series of weak, unreliable lines, unsuited to public wants, and, as property, precarious and insecure. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... accurate is in danger of littleness. He adds, "and may not this also be necessary, that those of an abject and moderate genius, because they never encounter danger, nor aspire after the summit of excellence, are for the most part without error and remain in security; but that great things become insecure through their magnitude?" Indeed it appears to me, that whenever this exuberance, this Bacchic fury, occurs in the diction of Plato, it is owing to the magnitude of the inspiring influence of deity with which he is then replete. For that ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... the arrival of the soldiers, and the sight of Rio Fro was very reviving. We got a very tolerable dinner from the Bordelaise in the forest-valley; and although the next part of the road is reckoned very insecure, we had no longer any apprehension, as besides having an escort, the fact that some of the robbers had been taken a few hours before, made it very unlikely that they would renew ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... was based on those "wooden walls" which the Delphic oracle had declared to be her hope in the Persian invasion. The victory at Salamis had confirmed the wisdom of the prediction, and given to Athens an imperishable glory. Themistocles persuaded his countrymen that the open roadstead of Phalerum was insecure, and induced them to inclose the more spacious harbors of Peireus and Munychia, by a wall as long as that which encircled Athens itself,—so thick and high that all assault should be hopeless, while within its fortifications the combined fleets of Greece could safely he anchored, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... a mortal Measure himself. If he soar upwards And if he touch With his forehead the stars, Nowhere will rest then His insecure feet, And with him sport ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... suspended on long iron rods besides the usual hinges, each screw had a bolt at the end, and on proceeding inside, the ceiling was supported on very neat but most insecure-looking wooden bars no thicker than three inches. A most ingenious theory of angles kept up the heavy roof—why it did, Heaven only knows! In contrast to the other bungalows, where we had no glass at all, here we had glass everywhere. One's bedroom door was two-thirds made of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... monarchs, extinguished all emulation, debased the generous spirits of men, and depressed that noble flame by which all the refined arts must be cherished and enlivened. The military government, which soon succeeded, rendered even the lives and properties of men insecure and precarious; and proved destructive to those vulgar and more necessary arts of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; and, in the end, to the military art and genius itself, by which alone the immense fabric of the empire could be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... the guardhouse and stables; receives, by count, from his predecessor, the animals, horse equipments, and all property (both private and public) pertaining thereto; examines, before relieving his predecessor, all locks, windows, and doors, and should any be found insecure he will report the fact to his troop commander when he reports for orders. He will personally post and relieve each sentinel, taking care to verify the property responsibility of the sentinel who comes off post, and see that the sentinel who goes on post is aware of the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the earth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. This heap said 'What's that?' in the muffled accents of profound ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him—in which, in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing conditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be— often is—at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his ship may go down, ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... mutual respect and self-respect as its dedicated corner-stone. This does not mean that one cannot see any faults in the friend, or know that one's own are seen, without losing affection. There is always something flimsy and insecure about a friendship that simply idealizes. Any relation should be all the stronger for a frank acknowledgment of its imperfections. If a girl cares enough she will be willing to admit her own faults and wish to make herself more worthy ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... said the young midshipman, as he sat on the bulwarks in a very insecure position. "I wish I was filling the buckets and holding up the fish for ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... security is the first and highest essential—not the life of him who takes life, but the life which is exposed defenceless to his hateful hand. In no country in the world, civilized or savage, is life so insecure as in this. In no country in the world is murder held in so light reprobation. In no battle of modern times have so many lives been taken as are lost annually in the United States through public indifference ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... always to be met with in the doings of the man of effrontery, who only achieves by accident the goal he aims at, and then only in the most insecure way. ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... and about fourteen inches at the other. Be sure that the logs are straight. It is a good plan to flatten the surface slightly on one side with the axe to furnish a better resting place for the pots and pans. If the logs roll or seem insecure, make a shallow trench to hold them or wedge them with flat stones. The surest way to hold them in place is to drive stakes at each end. Build your fire between the logs and build up a cob house of firewood. Split wood will burn much more quickly than round sticks. As the blazing ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... from his perilous condition was indeed a serious question. The "Flying Cloud," it was obvious, with her great size and spreading pinions, could not venture among those ticklish quicksands, whose insecure foundations had just been so strikingly illustrated before us. Indeed, the slightest jar might precipitate another fall of snow, and bury the object of our solicitude five hundred feet deep in its bosom. The sagacity of Mr. Bonflon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid may run their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous "uh-ah, uh-ah" which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... gone over and over the same reasoning, trying to get at why we were arrested. To write it all out may help the restlessness and anxiety and—yes—the panicky fear that rises in my throat like nausea. Life is so terribly insecure. I feel as though I had been stripped naked and turned out into the streets, with no person or ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... with. It is practically certain that the plateau is not caused entirely by necessity for rest or unconscious learning. It frequently is due, we must regretfully admit, to poor early preparation. If at the beginning of a period of learning an insecure foundation is laid, it cannot be expected to support the burden of more ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... which are apt to be overlooked: first, that a great portion of the railways in the United States are single lines; and secondly, that the labour performed is of a far less solid and enduring character. A most competent civil engineer told me that the slovenly and insecure nature of many of the railway works in the United States was perfectly inconceivable, and most unquestionably would not stand the inspection required in England. A friend of mine has travelled upon a railway in America, between Washington and ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Chirry chose the spot, without consulting me; Such a very public place, and insecure for it, I can scarcely sleep at night for nervousness; but he Says I am a silly thing and ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... Cross creek, (now Fayetteville,) and on to the immediate vicinity of Wilmington. Here Gen. Rutherford created a belief before his arrival that his forces were much larger than they really were. In consequence of this belief Major Craig, in command of the post, deeming his situation then insecure, immediately evacuated Wilmington and fled to Charleston. This was the only post in North Carolina held by the British, and with the flight of Craig all military operations ceased within her borders. This campaign closed the Revolutionary services of a gallant soldier and faithful patriot in ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... right to make this cession to France without our consent? Gentlemen have taken it for granted that she had. But I deny the position. No nation has a right to give to another a dangerous neighbor without her consent. He who renders me insecure, he who hazards my peace and exposes me to imminent danger, commits an act of hostility against me and gives me the rights consequent on that act. Suppose Great Britain should give to Algiers one of the Bahamas, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Philistines. To complete the subjection of the Israelites, their conquerors made captive all the smiths of the land, and carried them away. The Philistines felt that their hold of the country was insecure so long as the inhabitants possessed the means of forging weapons. Hence "there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel; for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... only destroyed after they had got away; and so the destruction of this bridge proved of great hindrance to us, but caused no inconvenience whatever to the enemy. The other bridge across the wadi was a timber bridge, which carried the road. As this bridge was insecure and required strengthening, a party of military police were posted upon it to stop all traffic from crossing it through the night. Seized with a brain wave, they lit a fire upon the centre of the bridge. This expedient ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... part, has been given. But do not suppose that in that direction at least he may not change his purpose. Superstitiously mad as he now is, a mere plaything too in the bloody hands of Fronto—and nothing can well be esteemed as more insecure than even my life, privileged and secure as it may seem. If it should occur to him, in his day or his night visions and dreams, that I, more than others, should be an acceptable offering to his god, my life would be to him but that of an insect ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... open, straggling village of Calemri, amid which, divided into two distinct groups by a wide, open space, were numerous herds of cattle just being watered. How melancholy came afterwards the recollection of that busy scene, when on his return, three and a half years later, he found it an insecure wilderness, infested by robbers, the whole of the inhabitants having been ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... system modeled as yet upon nature's cruel law of the survival of the fittest. A falling man is first of all a warning to all other men high enough up to be able to fall—a warning to them to take care lest they fall also where footing is so insecure and precipices ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... a jangling at the janitor's bell. Our opportunity for talk was slipping away. And we were both still undecided, both blunderingly nervous and insecure. We were hurried into clumsy phrases that afterwards we would have ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... some people have compared to Naples?" Violet asked her conductor, with a contemptuous curl of her mobile lip, as she and Captain Winstanley took their seats in a roomy old fly, upon which the luggage was being piled in the usual mountainous and insecure-looking style. ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... decree of the Bundesrat at Frankfurt, voted December 10, 1835, and impotently forbidding the circulation in Germany of the writings of the Young Germans: Heine, Gutzkow, Laube, Wienbarg, and Mundt—in that order. But the occupants of insecure thrones have a fine scent for the odor of sedition, and Heine was an untiring sapper and miner in the modern army moving against the strongholds of aristocrats and priests. A keen observer in Hamburg who was resolved, though not in the manner of the Young Germans, to do his part in furthering social ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... egoism might have got fresh books somehow from somewhere, had she really believed in the virtue of books. Thus far, however, books had not furnished her with what she wanted, and her faith in their promise was insecure. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... forfeiture of their Charter, more especially being conjoyned with this of a great many of that Colony, their keeping a continued Correspondence with the Pirates, which renders the fair Traders very uneasy, and insecure. All which I humbly submit to their Lordships Consideration, and pray for redress, suitable encouragement, and support ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... Douay, Bethune, St Venant and Aine fell, one after the other, the French army keeping watch behind its strongly fortified lines. This was a very meagre result, but Marlborough now felt his position to be so insecure that he dared not take any risks. His wife, so long omnipotent at court, had been supplanted in the queen's favour; Godolphin and the Whig party had been swept from power; and a Tory ministry bent upon peace had taken their place. Marlborough knew that ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... annihilated. "As soon as we demand to pass beyond mere awareness to a genuine knowledge, we discover our deplorable poverty, and must confess that what is termed certain seems on clearer investigation to rest upon a totally insecure foundation."[75] "It is not natural science itself which leads to naturalism, for, indeed, no natural science could arise if reality exhausted itself in the measurements of naturalism; but it is rather ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... segar mow, reap. seguida f. continuation; en —— forthwith, immediately. seguir follow, succeed, pursue, go on, continue. segn prep. according to. segundo, -a second. seguro, -a secure, safe, confident, certain, unfailing, stanch; mal —— unsafe, insecure. seis card. six. sellar seal, cover. sello m. seal, stamp, mark. semblante m. countenance, face. semejante adj. similar, like, resembling. semejar resemble, be like. sempiterno, -a eternal. Sena pr. n. f. Siena. seno m. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... national feeling, and many minor acts of violence, extortion and cruelty, the Jews held against the procurator. He realized that his tenure was insecure, and he dreaded exposure. Such wrongs had he wrought that when he would have done good, he was deterred through cowardly fear of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... collectively, to set up for independence; but this you may at the same time rely on, that none of them will ever submit to the loss of those valuable rights and privileges which are essential to the happiness of every free state, and without which life, liberty, and property are rendered totally insecure.... Again give me leave to add as my opinion that more blood will be spilled on this occasion, if the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, than history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of North America, and such a vital wound will be ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... exchanged words during the entire night, but now she accepted my proffered hand gladly, and with a smile, springing lightly from the deck to the insecure footing of ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... weather would have tempted me to spend the evening-time of study and recreation where I had spent it yesterday. My alley, and, indeed, all the walks and shrubs in the garden, had acquired a new, but not a pleasant interest; their seclusion was now become precarious; their calm—insecure. That casement which rained billets, had vulgarized the once dear nook it overlooked; and elsewhere, the eyes of the flowers had gained vision, and the knots in the tree-boles listened like secret ears. Some plants there were, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... tragic; but Louise gathered herself up anew and turned to the right, only to plunge in deeper than before; to the left, to meet with the same fate. Desperately she tried one spot after another. Now painfully scrambling to an insecure footing on top of the crust, now violently descending into the depths again, until the snow about her was marked thick with deep, round holes, and her feet were drenched and well-nigh frozen with the icy water which trickled up and down inside her shoes, as she lifted ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... house furniture was, at the least, insecure; the legs parted from the chairs, and the tops from the tables, on the slightest provocation. But such as it was, it was to be paid for, and Ephraim, agent and collector for the local auctioneer, waited in the verandah with the receipt. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... ice began to move to the southward, and soon after came in towards the shore, pressing the Fury over on her side to so alarming a degree, as to warn us that it would not be safe to lighten her much more in her present insecure situation. One of our bergs also shifted its position by this pressure, so as to weaken our confidence in the pier-heads of our intended basin; and a long "tongue" of one of them forcing itself under the Hecla's forefoot, while the drifting ice was also pressing her ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... which was no doubt chiefly caused by the facility of the previous marches, but to which the knowledge of the negotiations going forward between King and Emperor may partly have contributed. In any case, security was certainly insecure with such a fort as Lychnidus untaken in their rear. The garrison of that fort had been reinforced by many cohorts of the regular army who had flocked thither at the general's signal, and with these Sabinianus prepared a formidable ambuscade. He sent ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... to feel again her fear of Greatorex, which was the most intolerable of all her fears. It was as if Nature itself were aware that, if Ally were not dispossessed of that terror before Greatorex's child was born her own purpose would be insecure; as if the unborn child, the flesh and blood of the Greatorexes that had entered into her, protested against ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... lit a small lamp, which proved insufficient, and Mr. Ottinger brought a second from his quarters. Gordon found himself in a long, narrow chamber furnished with two wooden beds, two identical, insecure bureaus, stands with wash basins and pitchers, and a table. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, were resinous yellow pine, and gave out a hot, dry smell from which there was no escape but the door, for the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... wandering along the City Front, as the business part of San Francisco was then known. Here the lights were burning all night, the first streaks of dawn finding the merchants still at their counting-house desks. I remember the dim lines of warehouses lining the insecure wharves of rotten piles, half filled in—that had ceased to be wharves, but had not yet become streets,—their treacherous yawning depths, with the uncertain gleam of tarlike mud below, at times still vocal ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... spiritual truth. Science cannot overthrow Faith; but it shakes it. Its own doctrines, grounded in Nature, are so certain, that the truths of Religion, resting to most men on Authority, are felt to be strangely insecure. The difficulty, therefore, which men of Science feel about Religion is real and inevitable, and in so far as Doubt is a conscientious tribute to the inviolability of Nature ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... therefore waited to see whether Guarionex might bring affairs to such a pass, that by joining with him they might be able to destroy the lieutenant. But perceiving that it failed of success, they considered themselves insecure in the province where they then were, and therefore went away to Xaragua, still proclaiming themselves the protectors of the Indians, whereas they were thieves in their actions and inclinations, having no regard to God or the opinion of the world, but following their own inordinate ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the depression when the stone came back to its proper resting place, he strapped us carefully to the support with pieces of ramie fibre, so that we could not move an inch. With faces turned upward we stared at the carved figure above us, and the insecure tenure we had upon life at that moment was impressed upon our minds by the extreme caution which the officiating wizard exercised in keeping his own body clear of the slab lest his brethren, who were evidently operating the clumsy mechanism from some place nearby, should let the stone centipede ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... sport chasing across the floating cakes of ice the buffalo who were tempted over by the appearance of green, growing grass on the other side. The Indians were very expert in their pursuit of the animals, which finally slipped from their insecure footing on the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... him to feel his foothold made insecure by the round dry gravel of the path rolling under the hard soles of his boots. This was most unsuitable ground, he thought, keeping a watchful, narrowed gaze shaded by long eyelashes upon the fiery ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... girls and in whispers directed them to gather all the mattresses and pile them on the platform under the somewhat insecure plank. Amelia, her eyes sparkling through the holes in the pillow-slip, held Nan and ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... ready for the start, when the 'cellist, who was restless, discovered that the stand which had been placed for him was insecure; rising from his scat, he went to fetch another from the back of the platform. In the delay that ensued, Maurice looked round at the audience. He saw innumerable heads and faces, all turned expectantly towards him, like lines of globular fruits. His eye ranged indifferently over the occupants ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... during a south-east wind: the anchorage at Number 2, inside the Pine Islets, is bad, since the bottom is rocky; the ground is, however, clearer more to the southward; on the whole this anchorage is not insecure, since there is a safe passage out either on the north or south sides of the Pine Islets. Wood may be procured with facility, and water also, unless the streams fail in the dry season. Captain Flinders ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... no one wrote about because every one understood and every one had taken up an attitude. There were in England and America, and indeed throughout the world, two great informal divisions of human beings—the Secure and the Insecure. There was not and never had been in either country a nobility—it was and remains a common error that the British peers were noble—neither in law nor custom were there noble families, and we altogether lacked the edification one found in ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... them to persevere. They were standing on when they found themselves close to a shore trending to the westward, and, compelled by a contrary wind, they put into a bay, where they brought up; but the anchorage appearing very insecure, they sailed out again. The Admiral would have continued on his course again in search of a passage, but a northerly wind springing up, drove the Golden Hind once more ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... a man who does not think firmly in the midst of ambiguous and adverse cheering, and I did my work most imperfectly, but I do think honestly. Sir R. Peel's manner, by negative signs, showed that he thought either my ground insecure or my expressions dangerous. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... between two ranges of mountains, one flanking the eastern shore, the other about three miles more inland, and parallel to it: these are covered thickly with trees, and are of loosely-coherent granite: many villages are in the space enclosed by these ranges, but all insecure. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... they are full also of good hiding-places, where large numbers of brave men could be concealed, and baffle and elude pursuit for a long time.... The true object to be sought is, first of all, to destroy the money-value of slave property; and that can only be done by rendering such property insecure. My plan, then, is to take at first about twenty-five picked men, and begin on a small scale; supply them arms and ammunition, and post them in squads of five on a line of twenty-five miles. The most persuasive and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... serious accidents have taken place, and the progress of work stopped, by the sudden snapping of driving belts in machinery, and, as a general rule, it is found that the collapse is attributable either to faulty leather or insecure joining. A great improvement of the leather intended for belts has been brought about during the last few years, by the introduction of improved processes for currying and the subsequent treatment. Paterson has worked successfully a patent for rendering belt leather more pliable, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... join Captain Brent. The captain was stationed there to impress Red Cloud, and had written to headquarters that this chief did not seem impressed very deeply, and that the lives of the settlers were insecure. Reinforcements were accordingly sent to him. On the evening before these soldiers left Laramie, news came from the south. Toussaint had escaped from jail. The country was full of roving, dubious Indians, and with the authentic ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... eyes would shift downstream to where Bland's stark, weather-beaten cabin lifted its outline against the green thickets, and he would think uneasily upon what insecure tenure, upon what deliberate violation of law and of current morality he held his dearest treasure. What would she think, if she knew, this dainty creature cuddling against his knee? He would wake in the night and lie on elbow staring at her face in the moonlight,—delicate-skinned as ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... myself. I seem to be a consciousness, vague and insecure, placed between two worlds. One of these worlds seems clearly "not me," the other is more closely identified with me and yet is still imperfectly me. The first I call the exterior world, and it presents itself to me as existing in Time and Space. In a certain way I seem able to interfere with ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... miserable and most precarious plight, indeed; and I could not help wondering how they had possibly managed to cling for so many hours to so insecure a refuge—assuming, of course, that the brig had capsized on the previous afternoon, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... endeavours have been of no avail, and the Siamese have abandoned several projects which were devised in order to give them a hold over this State. In Kelantan, internal troubles have aided Siamese intrigues, the present Raja and his late brother both having so insecure a seat upon their thrones that they readily made concessions to the Siamese in order to purchase their support. Thus, at the present time, the flag of the White Elephant floats at the mouth of the Kelantan river on State occasions, though the administration of the country ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... up your final doubt. Does not the admission of such an unguaranteed chance or freedom preclude utterly the notion of a Providence governing the world? Does it not leave the fate of the universe at the mercy of the chance-possibilities, and so far insecure? Does it not, in short, deny the craving of our nature for an ultimate peace behind all tempests, for a ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... or provincial wars may have affected or even temporarily suspended the passage to and from of caravans between the countries of the Tigris and those of the Nile; but as soon as peace was re-established, even though it were the insecure peace of those distant ages, the desert traffic was again resumed and carried on with renewed vigour. The Egyptian traders who penetrated into regions beyond the Euphrates, carried with them, and almost unconsciously disseminated along the whole extent ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... inches at the other. Be sure that the logs are straight. It is a good plan to flatten the surface slightly on one side with the axe to furnish a better resting place for the pots and pans. If the logs roll or seem insecure, make a shallow trench to hold them or wedge them with flat stones. The surest way to hold them in place is to drive stakes at each end. Build your fire between the logs and build up a cob house of firewood. Split wood will burn much more quickly than round sticks. As the blazing embers fall between ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... alternative in her case. She knew no other eligible man half as well. If Peter Coleman went out of her life, what remained? A somewhat insecure position in a wholesale drug- house, at forty dollars a month, and half a third-story bedroom ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up - very crooked and insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... complicity of Magyar officials whom the Serbs had not removed, they managed to escape to Hungary. But as a rule they thought it wiser to stay peacefully in the Banat than seek their fortunes in a land so insecure as Hungary was then. While Count Michael Karolyi's Government was doing its utmost to cultivate good relations with France, England and America—printing in the newspapers cordial articles in French and English, surrounding the Entente officers even in their despite with the old, barbaric hypnotizing ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... diligent work during the week. But from the moment that the law converted into an obligation, that which hitherto had been received as a favor, indifference usurped the place of gratitude. Thus, by consecutive innovations, the state of things became precarious, the relations insecure, impatience sprung up, and the seeds of the tumultuous scenes which ensued and served as a pretext for emancipation, were sown. Here we must observe, that though it were admitted that the pretended insurrection at St. Croix rendered emancipation ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... instantly made an answer, which raised her high in my estimation. She replied, that Mr. Barclay's being detached from Lady Angelica Headingham by your superior merit was to her the strongest argument in his favour. She must, she said, have felt insecure in the possession of a heart, which had been transferred directly from Lady Angelica to herself, because she was conscious that her own disposition was so different from her ladyship's; but in succeeding to the affection which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... alluvium, in which the stream swings from one side to the other, and even where it touches higher soil, touches nothing better than the continuation of this clay. In spite, therefore, of the shallowness and narrowness of the upper river there always existed this impediment which an insecure soil would present to the formation of any considerable settlements. The loneliness of the stretch below Kelmscott is due to an original difficulty of this kind, and the one considerable settlement upon the upper river at Lechlade stands upon the only place where firm ground ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... knowledge. In this new career, their conquests were not less rapid than they had been in the field; nor was the empire which they founded less extended. With a celerity equally surprising, it rose to a gigantic height, but it rested on a foundation no less insecure, and it was quite as transitory in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... it now appears (See Poulton, "Essays on Evolution", Oxford, 1908, pages xix-xxii.) that the far-reaching conclusions drawn by de Vries from his observations on the Evening Primrose, Oenothera lamarckiana, rest upon a very insecure foundation. The plant from which de Vries saw numerous "species"—his "mutations"—arise was not, as he assumed, a WILD SPECIES that had been introduced to Europe from America, but was probably a hybrid form which was first discovered in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... cannot learn from experience at all, because a new process, in his liquid brain, does not modify structure; while the fool uses what he has learned only inaptly and in frivolous fragments, because his stretches of linked experience are short and their connections insecure. But when the cerebral plasm is fresh and well disposed and when the paths are clear, attention is consecutive and learning easy; a multitude of details can be gathered into a single cycle of memory or of potential regard. Under such circumstances ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... use. The bishop was out of town, and I had to wait till his return; besides, my position was somewhat insecure. I have had at least two remarkable escapes since ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... leisure and a commanding preoccupation. He would have liked to discuss with some one else the network of perplexities in which he was entangling himself, and more particularly with Canon Bliss, but his own positions were becoming so insecure that he feared to betray them by argument. He had grown up with a kind of intellectual modesty. Some things he had never yet talked about; it made his mind blench to think of talking about them. And his great aching gaps of wakefulness ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... He no longer heard the shouts of encouragement from the cowpunchers. He was clinging desperately to his insecure seat, with legs pressed tightly against the pony's sides. As yet he had not seen fit to use ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... fully assured of the solidity of the workmanship. It is a kind of fear, which causes this sentiment of disapprobation; but the passion is not the same with that which we feel, when obliged to stand under a wall, that we really think tottering and insecure. The seeming tendencies of objects affect the mind: And the emotions they excite are of a like species with those, which proceed from the real consequences of objects, but their feeling is different. Nay, these emotions are so different in their feeling, that they may often be contrary, without ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the French family who formerly had lived in the chateau before the outbreak of the war, Sally walked up closer to the ruins. From a space between two walls, forming an insecure arch, a bird darted out into the daylight. Not ordinarily influenced by the beauties of nature or by unexpected expressions of her moods, nevertheless Sally uttered a cry ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... Commission appear to be highly punishable, if not a just ground for forfeiture of their Charter, more especially being conjoyned with this of a great many of that Colony, their keeping a continued Correspondence with the Pirates, which renders the fair Traders very uneasy, and insecure. All which I humbly submit to their Lordships Consideration, and pray for redress, suitable encouragement, and ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... happiness." In the very conquest for this baser type a man blights his sensibilities, minifies his present enjoyment, and destroys his prospect for a full measure of happiness by and by. With but one interest his happiness is insecure; for when that fails or ceases to satisfy he has nothing on which to rely. Midas craves for gold, and when he gets it his senses become as metallic as the object of his affection. Therefore, if we are of this type, simply seeking ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... belated, dusty, and thirsty, came to the spring on their way to the retreating army, their boasting met with an incredulous denial, which soon led to their summary arrest as chicken-stealers and public enemies. Confined in the insecure Marlborough jail, one of them speedily escaped, and reached a scouting-party of British cavalry, which, by order of Cockburn, returned to Upper Marlborough, roused Dr. Beanes out of his bed at midnight, and conveyed him to the ...
— The Star-Spangled Banner • John A. Carpenter
... This was his ordeal, to sit, nerveless and insecure, on the brink of the precipice. But Hazard, lying safely in his crevice, now had to face his own ordeal, but one of a different nature. When Gus began to slide—as he soon must—would he, Hazard, be able to take in the slack and then meet the shock as the other tautened the rope and darted ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... vice. In the same way the passionate love of our kind has for its obverse an equally passionate hatred for the wrongs they endure. For this reason justice and virtue are nowhere so secure as in the hands of men who love their kind intensely. They are most insecure in the hands of the cynic, who despises his kind, and therefore misapprehends their conduct. For love, in its last analysis, is understanding, and where there is understanding of our fellows there can hardly fail to be wisdom in our method of treating them. That was ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... at last, we drove in one of the queer little Serb carts we had avoided so anxiously. A few planks nailed together and bound around with an insecure rail, four wheels slipped on to the axles with no pins to hold them, a Turkish driver dangling his legs—such was our chariot. Some hay was produced to improvise a seat; we bought some apples on tick, as the vendor said he had no change for our ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... halt here, for the purpose of recruiting their exhausted energies so far as it might be done by taking a few minutes' rest, but the ice was so shivered by the shock of its recent rupture as to present a very insecure appearance, and they were therefore constrained to keep moving notwithstanding their fatigue. Very fortunately the breaking away of the snow-bank had, in one place, laid bare the surface of the rock, which here ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Florida, after having cost us nobody knows how many millions of dollars and thousands of lives to render the holding of slaves possible to her, coolly proposes to withdraw herself from the Union and take with her one of the keys of the Mexican Gulf, on the plea that her slave-property is rendered insecure by the Union. Louisiana, which we bought and paid for to secure the mouth of the Mississippi, claims the right to make her soil French or Spanish, and to cork up the river again, whenever the whim may take her. The United States are not a German ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... acrobat going over a horizontal bar. This feat, which required great muscular strength, flexibility, and tenaciousness, was the very hardest physical performance I ever accomplished, for, besides being unable to get a firm grip on it, I found, to my dismay, that the great pillar I clung to was insecure in its position, and threatened to fall and crush me beneath its weight. And as inch by inch I slowly and persistently worked my way upward and outward, so inch by inch did it slowly, but surely, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... far to show that they are not always synonymous terms: Once upon a time (to commence in the good old way) there came into a city a merchant on horseback, attended by his servant on foot. Hearing that the city was infested by many bold and expert thieves, in consequence of which property was very insecure, he said to his servant at night: "I will keep watch, and do you sleep; for I cannot trust you to keep awake, and I much fear that my horse may be stolen." But to this arrangement his faithful servant ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... may not feel insecure, my friends," he said, "I will take post at the entrance of the valley during the night, and give you due notice should any ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... becomes sufficient for us to infer from general laws of procedure what the procedure in a particular case should be. We venture to infer what ought to be done in some cases, but generally we feel insecure till we have proved our inference correct by trying out different methods ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... young female slipped from an insecure hold upon a high branch and came crashing to the ground almost ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... present standpoint, is the more remarkable inasmuch as it is the only great European movement on which Jews had absolutely no influence, direct or indirect, owing to their inappreciable numbers and insecure position in the chief centers, Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles. The Revolution principles spread into the neighboring countries with the advance of the French arms. In Venice, the walls of the original Ghetto, from which all the rest received their name, fell ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... discovered that, instead of being strongly sewed (like that of the preceding year, which had so triumphantly rode the canons of the Upper Great Platte), our present boat was only pasted together in a very insecure manner, the maker having been allowed so little time in the construction that he was obliged to crowd the labor of two months into several days. The insecurity of the boat was sensibly felt by us; and, mingled with the enthusiasm and excitement that we all felt ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... nurse declared that unless they should immediately send her, in advance-payment, a certain sum of money, she would altogether abandon Angelo. It seemed, at first, impossible to forward the money, the road was so insecure, and the bearer of any parcel was so likely to be seized by one party or the other, and to be treated as a spy. But finally, after much consideration, the sum was sent to the address of a physician, who had been charged with the care of the child. I think it did reach its ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... we concede that woman's ennobling influence should be confined chiefly to home and society, we claim that public opinion has had a tendency to limit woman's sphere to too small a circle, and until woman has the right of representation this will last, and other rights will be held by an insecure tenure." ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the spot, without consulting me; Such a very public place, and insecure for it, I can scarcely sleep at night for nervousness; but he Says I am a silly thing and ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... had ever reached the point of inculcating upon men the belief that it was the highest joy to spend the energies of life in contributing to the happiness of others. Though he saw in the system of Christ, as popularised and interpreted, a whole host of insecure assumptions, unverified assertions, and even degrading traditions, yet he could not doubt of the Divine force of the central message. If he was not in a position to affirm with certitude the truth of the recorded events which attended the origin ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... has returned from Rome, and my sister will follow him as soon as the weather will admit of her crossing the Alps with her babies. All his property is in the French funds, that seems an insecure security nowadays.... ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... in the nineteenth century knows well how insecure his tenure is. His motto must be, "Let us eat and drink, for to- morrow we die;" and, therefore, the first objects of his rule will be, private luxury and a standing army; while if he engage in public works, for the sake of keeping ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the walls with respect to apparent solidity and stability, it was found that nearly all are in fair or good condition. The only portion that would seem in special danger is the central section of the southern exterior wall. This section seems insecure, and might at any time be overthrown by a heavy wind following a rain storm. This section was not, unfortunately, braced or tied to the stronger interior wall when the protective works were carried out ...
— The Repair Of Casa Grande Ruin, Arizona, in 1891 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... consequence of his vengeance for his brother, and of the execution and banishment of a large number of persons, Hippias became a distrusted and an embittered man. About three years after the death of Hipparchus, finding his position in the city insecure, he set about fortifying Munichia, with the intention of establishing himself there. While he was still engaged on this work, however, he was expelled by Cleomenes, king of Lacedaemon, in consequence of the Spartans being continually incited by oracles to overthrow the ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... covered up with snow in heaps, By melancholy fogs concealed. Amid the snowdrifts which surround A stream, by winter's ice unbound, Impetuously clove its way With boiling torrent dark and gray; Two poles together glued by ice, A fragile bridge and insecure, Spanned the unbridled torrent o'er; Beside the thundering abyss Tattiana in despair unfeigned Rooted ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... position would collapse were their own people to acquire knowledge, information, comprehension about our free society. Their world has many elements of strength, but this one fatal flaw: the weakness represented by their iron curtain and their police state. Surely, a social order at once so insecure and so fearful, must ultimately lose its competition ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... Holland.—One or other of these countries would have to declare war on Germany unless her neutrality were violated, and in both cases the overseas communication would be so vulnerable to mine or torpedo attack as to be in the highest degree insecure. ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... struggle previous to his fall. Had such a struggle taken place, the doctors would have expected to find certain signs and traces of it on the body: there were none. Everything seemed to point to the theory that he had leaned over the insecure fencing of the old shaft to look into its depths; probably to drop stones into them; that the loose, unmortared parapet had given way with his weight, and that he had plunged headlong to the bottom. He might have been pushed in—from behind—of course, but that was conjecture. Under ordinary ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... way, as I am not going myself)—somewhere on the coast of the Solent—to which I need not allude at any length; I will, therefore, only mention one race having been so successful lately, that I can afford to rest on my oars—(rather an insecure position by the way, for anyone who can't swim!) and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... a journey of two days caused grave anxieties; the carriage was almost certain to be overturned in some deep rut and the travelers injured or killed; robbers lay in wait in the mountains; protection was almost unheard of; life and property were insecure; every traveler had to be his own policeman, and never issued forth on a journey without dagger, pistol ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... when they do things which were formerly done with ease; this experience is so common that it can scarcely be considered other than natural. Curiously enough this is also the period during which the attachment of the ovum to the womb is relatively insecure, and therefore the inclination to be quiet is justified by the prevailing anatomical conditions. No prospective mother should struggle against the inclination to rest; she should yield to it in spite of the advice to ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... their dialect has its roots deep down in the soil of classical English. And when their proofs are demanded they are indeed a sorry few. A vast edifice of mistaken pride has been established upon the insecure basis of three words—fall, gotten, and bully. These once were familiar English, and they are English no more. The word "fall," "the fall of the leaf," which so beautifully echoes the thought of spring, survives only in our ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... till at length they emigrated in a body to the Ricara nation, where they formed themselves into two villages, and joined those of their countrymen who had gone before them. In their new residence they were still insecure, and at length the three villages ascended the Missouri to their present position. The two who had emigrated together still settled in the two villages on the northwest side of the Missouri, while the single ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... glass, mocked her own radiant beauty of face and form and dress. Not really a full human being; merely a decoration. No more; and no worse off than most of the women everywhere, the favorites licensed or unlicensed of law and religion. But just as badly off, and just as insecure. Free! No rest, no full breath until freedom had been won! At any cost, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... fort and barracks of Ticonderoga, are on the top of a rising ground, just behind the tavern: they were at this time in ruins, and it is not likely that they ever will be rebuilt; for the situation is a very insecure one, being commanded by a lofty hill, called Mount Defiance. During the great American war, the British troops obtained possession of this place, by dragging cannon and mortars up the hill, and firing down upon ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... strolling through vast spaces, crushing as he walked the grains of sand under his feet. For the past twenty days his rovings had been upon planks, following with the automatic precision of a riding school the oval promenade on the deck of a ship. His feet accustomed to insecure ground, still were keeping on terra firma a certain sensation of elastic unsteadiness. His goings and comings were not awakening the curiosity of the people seated in the open, for a common preoccupation ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... toward the east. But that division which had been despatched for that purpose, rushed to meet them; but by dint of superior fighting and the greater weight of the horses, they fell in a moment like flax before a storm. The road to the castle was open, but escape thither was insecure and too far away, because the Zmudzian horses were fleeter than those of the Germans. The blue knight was ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... rose higher and higher and there was no one present upon whom he could expend it. He grasped one of the lamps, but his hold on the glass handle was insecure and it fell to the floor, the lamp breaking, while the burning oil was thrown in every direction. He wished then that some of the "loafers" were present to help him put the fire out. There was no water nearer than the pump in the back ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... house was once dug. A horse is always sure to be lame for want of a shoe nail, or a saddle to be useless from a broken buckle, and the wagon and harness are a marvel of temporary shifts, patchings, and insecure linkings with strands of rope. Nothing is ever ready or whole when it is wanted. Yet Chalmers is a frugal, sober, hard-working man, and he, his eldest son, and a "hired man" "Rise early," "going forth to their work and ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... feasible to prohibit the Austrian-Germans from ever entering the Republic as a federated state. In a word, the Allied governments need only command, and the Teutons would hasten to obey. It is hardly credible that men of experience in foreign politics should build upon such insecure foundations as these. It is but fair to say the Conference rejected this singular program in theory while unintentionally carrying ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... when the morning dawned the Crusaders found themselves with their swords at the breasts of their fellow-soldiers, whom they had mistaken to be foes. The Turkish commander fled, first to the citadel, and, that becoming insecure, to the mountains, whither he was pursued and slain, and his gory head brought back to Antioch as a trophy. At daylight the massacre ceased, and the Crusaders gave themselves up ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... again whether it would be wisdom to attempt to carry off the treasure by night, we two alone to guard it. I stood, hesitating, thinking of how easy it it would be for the Indians to take us at a disadvantage; of what an insecure place the plantation would be should they discover that the treasure was gone; and at last I made up my mind as to my course, and walked sharply back to where ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... Zealand mutton and Argentine beef as English—five or six grocers, three or four milk shops, one or two big drapers and three or four small haberdashers, milliners, and "fancy shops," two or three fishmongers, all very poor, all rather bad, most of them in debt and with their assistants all insecure and underpaid. He would find in spite of this wealth of competition that every one who could contrive it, all the really prosperous people in fact, bought most of their food and drapery from big ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... armed resistance to rebellion against Parliamentary rule, and behind whose new-found loyalty there always lurked a veiled threat of a fresh resort to arms which might prove dangerous. The commissioners sent to compose matters found themselves suspected by all whose titles were insecure, and actively opposed by those whom they dispossessed. They were swayed by opposite factions, now to accept doubtful claims, and now to confirm existing settlements upon insufficient evidence of right. The examination of all claims was transferred to England; and Charles ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... impoverishing the richest soil in comparatively few years, whence the perpetual impulse of the slave-owners to acquire new territory. The dishonesty of blacks and the danger of slave insurrections made property insecure, at the same time that the system diminished in every community the number of its natural defenders. The result was that the South, the superior of the North in natural resources, was, by 1800, rapidly becoming the inferior in every single ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Nero's sister; once more the chorus bewail her fate. At last her rival Poppaea appears in conversation with her nurse. The nurse congratulates her, but Poppaea has been terrified by visions of the night and is ill at ease. Her rival is not yet removed and her own place is still insecure. At this point comes the one ray of hope that illumines this sombre drama. A messenger arrives with the news that the people have risen in Octavia's favour. But the reader is not left in suspense for a moment. Nero appears and orders ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... their children cannot share in that respect, unless they deserve it by their own merits. Too many youth, it is to be apprehended, are depending upon their parents' reputation as well as their parents' property, for their own standing and success in life. This is an insecure foundation. In our republican land, every individual is estimated by his or her own conduct, and not by the reputation of their connections. It is undoubtedly an advantage in many points of view, for a young person to have respectable parents. But if they ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... proprietors of Carolina for a settlement in that colony. Any condition seemed preferable to the living in their native country, which, by the prevalence of persecution and violence, was become as insecure to them as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... technically considered, except perhaps De Quincey; who also employed the long rich rolling sentence that, like a rocket, bursts into stars at the end. But De Quincey's sentences, as I have said, have always a dreamy and insecure sense about them, like the turret on toppling turret of some mad sultan's pagoda. Ruskin's sentence branches into brackets and relative clauses as a straight strong tree branches into boughs and bifurcations, rather shaking off its burden than merely adding to it. It is interesting ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... race would have been annihilated. "As soon as we demand to pass beyond mere awareness to a genuine knowledge, we discover our deplorable poverty, and must confess that what is termed certain seems on clearer investigation to rest upon a totally insecure foundation."[75] "It is not natural science itself which leads to naturalism, for, indeed, no natural science could arise if reality exhausted itself in the measurements of naturalism; but it is rather the weakness of the conviction of the spiritual life; it is the failure of certitude ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... who from some peculiarity in the habit resist the common effects of variolous matter inserted into the skin, and who are in consequence haunted through life with the distressing idea of being insecure from subsequent infection. A ready mode of dissipating anxiety originating from such a cause must now appear obvious. And, as we have seen that the constitution may at any time be made to feel the febrile attack of Cow-pox, might it not, in many chronic diseases be introduced into ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... and retraced our steps along the edges of chasms where the ice was disintegrated and insecure, and succeeded at length in finding a bridge which bore us across the crevasse. This error caused us the loss of an hour, and after walking for this time we could cast a stone from the point we had attained to the place whence we had been compelled ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... wardrobe. He had moved the bed in front of the window, and by pushing the wardrobe door three parts out of the window and lodging the inside end of it under the rail at the head of the bed, he had provided himself with a sort of insecure platform outside the window. All this he did without making the least sound. He must then have got through the window, and stood on the little platform. With his fingers he would just be able to reach the outer edge of the wide cornice under the roof of ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... with the knowledge that there was no one fit to supply his place, dispirited the Mexicans, and they retreated; but since that time they have proved to the Texans how insecure they are, even at this moment England and other European governments have thought proper, very hastily, to recognize Texas, but Mexico has ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... veranda attached to it, over-hanging the water. Above the doorway was placed a sign whereon might be read the words, "Beaver Beach, Mike's Place." The shore end of the pier was so ruinous that passage was offered by a single row of planks, which presented an appearance so temporary, as well as insecure, that one might have guessed their office to be something in the nature of a drawbridge. From these a narrow path ran through a marsh, left by the receding river, to a country road of desolate appearance. Here there was a rough enclosure, or corral, with some tumble-down ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... the dividing presence of another woman. She could not separate him from his genius; and his genius had long ago overleapt the social gulf. And now, without poor Flossie, without the safeguard of his engagement, she felt herself insecure and shelterless. More than ever since he had overleapt that ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of the blockade as the only radical cure; but he was not very hopeful of this being achieved thoroughly or permanently except through revolutions in other countries. Peace between Bolshevik Russia and capitalist countries, he said, must always be insecure; the Entente might be led by weariness and mutual dissensions to conclude peace, but he felt convinced that the peace would be of brief duration. I found in him, as in almost all leading Communists, much less eagerness than existed in our delegation for peace and the ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... to rescue him from his perilous condition was indeed a serious question. The "Flying Cloud," it was obvious, with her great size and spreading pinions, could not venture among those ticklish quicksands, whose insecure foundations had just been so strikingly illustrated before us. Indeed, the slightest jar might precipitate another fall of snow, and bury the object of our solicitude five hundred feet deep in its bosom. The sagacity of Mr. Bonflon relieved us ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... had strength and courage to meet disaster unmoved, it would have been different. But now, when all things looked threatening, when certain loss—possible ruin—lay before them, when the misfortunes of some, and the treachery of others were making the very ground beneath their feet insecure, could he leave the feeble old man to struggle through these difficult and dangerous times alone? He knew his uncle too well to believe that he would willingly accept help from him, their relations being changed, and he knew that no skill ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... order to let go the anchor, on the point of being given, as the wind baffled, and as often was it countermanded, to take advantage of its reviving. These were feverish moments, for the ship was now so near the reef as to render her situation very insecure in the event of the wind's rising, or of a sea's getting up, the sand of the bottom being too hard to make good holding-ground. Still, as there was a possibility, in the present state of the weather, of kedging the ship ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... had found that his hold on the Greek cities of Asia Minor was insecure so long as they could look for armed help to their kindred beyond the Archipelago, and he had sent his satraps to raid the Greek mainland. That first invasion ended disastrously at Marathon. His son, Xerxes, took up the quarrel and devoted years to ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... He informed me that Napoleon was much agitated on perusing them, and that he launched into abuse of the inefficiency of the police. Rapp added that he did not confine himself to complaints against the agents of his authority. "Is, then, my power so insecure," said he, "that it may be put in peril by a single individual, and a prisoner? It would appear that my crown is not fixed very firmly on my head if in my own capital the bold stroke of three adventurers can shake it. Rapp, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... she had been dreadfully nervous all night and almost afraid to stop to rest anywhere, but now her fatigue had quite overcome her. Her position against the tree was uncomfortable and insecure, so, drawing her head very gently down until it rested on my shoulder, and shading her eyes with her mantilla, I let her sleep on. Her face looked strangely worn and pallid in that keen noonday light, and, gazing on it while she slumbered, and remembering all the dark ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... California; but only the sudden transition from tropic heat to chilling northern fogs can explain the crew's exaggerated idea of cold along the Pacific coast. Land was sighted at 42, north of Mendocino, and an effort made to anchor farther north; but contrary winds and a rock bottom gave insecure mooring. {161} This was not surprising, as it was on this coast that Cook and Vancouver failed to find good harborage. The coast still seemed to trend westward, dispelling hopes of a Northeast Passage, and if the world could have accepted Drake's conclusions on the matter, a deal of ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... down his rifle and sprang into the branches of a tree. The latter was too small to afford complete safety. The lion began springing at the demoralized hunter, trying to claw him from his insecure refuge. However, a skilful shot from another member of the party brought the furious brute to the dust. A surprising sequel to the incident was this: the man who had fled up the tree claimed the lion's skin, on the score that he had ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... out between England and France in 1627, young Charles la Tour found his position in Acadia very insecure. However, he was naturally resourceful and by his diplomacy and courage continued for many years to play a prominent part in the history of affairs. He sought and obtained from Louis XIII. of France ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... words of description. He found Thebes in a state of anarchy; civil war raged on every side; all the traditions of the past were forgotten; noble fought against noble; the poor were oppressed; life and property were alike insecure; "there was stability of fortune neither for the ignorant nor for the learned man." One night, after he had lain down to sleep, he found himself attacked in his bed-chamber; the clang of arms sounded near at hand. Starting from his couch, he seized his own weapons and struck out; when lo! ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Wilmington. Here Gen. Rutherford created a belief before his arrival that his forces were much larger than they really were. In consequence of this belief Major Craig, in command of the post, deeming his situation then insecure, immediately evacuated Wilmington and fled to Charleston. This was the only post in North Carolina held by the British, and with the flight of Craig all military operations ceased within her borders. This campaign closed the Revolutionary services of a gallant soldier ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... Saturday, or Sunday next. It is a strange affair to be an emigrant, as I hope you shall see in a future work. I wonder if this will be legible; my present station on the waggon roof, though airy compared to the cars, is both dirty and insecure. I can see the track straight before and straight behind me to either horizon. Peace of mind I enjoy with extreme serenity; I am doing right; I know no one will think so; and don't care. My body, however, is all to whistles; I don't eat; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... burgesses. Foreign potentates and ambassadors have equally deemed it an honour to receive the congratulations of these princely traders at their sumptuous banquets, celebrated throughout the world. The ministers of the day feel their position to be insecure until it has been ratified by the acclamations of the citizens, and the hospitable attentions of the civic magistrates. Statesmen and warriors, poets and historians, men of thought and men of action, are all stimulated to ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... with his gaze on the black hole in the pistol-barrel, soon made a discouraging discovery; the position in which he had been arrested was insecure and uncomfortable, and the unusual strain that it brought upon his muscles became painful and exhausting. To shift his position even in the smallest way would be to invite the bullet. As the moments flew ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... France whether it is nominally a despotic empire or a republic at the top, there is scarcely any self-government at the bottom. Hence government there rests on an insecure foundation.] Thus in France people do not manage their own affairs, but they are managed for them by a hierarchy of officials with its head at Paris. This system was devised by the Constituent Assembly in 1790 and wrought into completeness by Napoleon in 1800. The men ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... this world walk to the wall, and resign, without a murmur, their places to their betters. As for the deaconess, I have said already that the fact of her being a lady, and the possessor of a heart, constituted the only ground of hope that I could have in reference to her. This I felt to be insecure enough when I held the knocker in my hand, and remembered all at once the many little tales that I had heard, every one of which went far to prove that ladies may be ladies without the generous weakness of their sex,—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... property insecure, and safe deposit vaults were scarce, it was common for men to bury treasure in time of trouble and to forget it when they were dead. Whoever accidentally found it "struck pay dirt" and hastened to locate his claim. An extraordinary ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... be perfectly well known to the government, without appearing to produce the slightest uneasiness in their minds; and a measure which its advocates propose for the suppression of crime is defended, not because the gentry are insecure under the operation of the existing laws, "but because the peasantry, not being able to have recourse to the same means of defence, are more easy victims to their assailants;" as if the executive were only bound to protect the poor, and had no responsibility imposed upon them as regards the rich. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... "a truly superior person; peculiar, but very clever." He treated her with exceeding deference; rose reverently to open and shut doors for her; reddened his face and gave himself headaches with stooping to pick up gloves, handkerchiefs, and other loose property, whereof Shirley usually held but insecure tenure. He would cut mysterious jokes about the superiority of woman's wit over man's wisdom; commence obscure apologies for the blundering mistake he had committed respecting the generalship, the tactics, of "a personage ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... that he might receive consecration according to the ancient ceremonial.[1337] But if the French had invaded Normandy they would have closed the young Henry's road to Paris and to Reims, a road which was already insecure for him; and it would be childish to maintain that the coronation could not have been postponed for a few weeks. If the conquest of Norman lands and Norman towns was renounced therefore, it was not merely for the sake of capturing the holy Ampulla. The Lord Archbishop of Reims had other objects ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... in the bark and pith, and not the less numerous because hidden from sight. These also have their counterparts in the Reef, where numbers of boring Shells and marine Worms work their way into the solid substance of the wall, piercing it, with holes in every direction, till large portions become insecure, and the next storm suffices to break off the fragments so loosened. Once detached, they are tossed about in the water, crumbled into Coral sand, crushed, often ground to powder by the friction of the rocks and the constant action of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... throughout the season there had been dancing in the great hall;—there was dancing that night also. The population of the hotel had been augmented by the advent of families from other parts of the island, who found their summer cottages insecure places of shelter: there were nearly four hundred guests assembled. Perhaps it was for this reason that the entertainment had been prepared upon a grander plan than usual, that it assumed the form of a fashionable ball. ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... demoralization of the unhappy natives and to the rapid decimation of their numbers. Horse thieves, too, and cattle "rustlers" operating on both sides of "the line" added to the general confusion and lawlessness that prevailed and rendered the lives and property of the few pioneer settlers insecure. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... multiply and thicken on them; they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused detail, in an industry without limit, and without direction; and, in conclusion, the whole of their work becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... optimism raised their spirits. At least they hung on to their insecure refuge with much ardor, and not uncheerfully waited to be cast upon ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... service in a convent would be the way to win his brother's life; but he had ceased to be able to feel that such bargains were the right course, or that a convent necessarily afforded sure way of service, and he never felt mere insecure of the way and means to prayer than in this hour ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... had forgotten even the existence of the favourite of the prince. But Guzman, who, while affecting to minister to the interests of Uzeda, was secretly aiming at the monopoly of the royal favour, felt himself insecure while Calderon yet lived. The operations of the Inquisition were too slow for the impatience of his fears; and as that dread tribunal affected never to inflict death until the accused had confessed his guilt, the firmness of ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... duke, and the softening of its rather uncourtly decisiveness of expression. It stated, that even the conquest of France, if it could be effected, must be wholly useless without the conciliation of the people: that it must be insecure, that it never could be complete, and that even the attempt might rouse this powerful people to feel its own force, and turn its vast resources to war. The first measure ought, therefore, to be an address to the nation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... incredulous laugh, and an instant later the man's shoulder struck the panels with a crash that cracked one of them and partly tore the bolt from its insecure fastenings. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... particular shape which the doctrine of evolution, as applied to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands, would prove to be final or not, was, to me, a matter of indifference. In my earliest criticisms of the 'Origin' I ventured to point out that its logical foundation was insecure so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... thoughts between him and the vessel. At last the daylight appeared—the weather was moderating fast, although the waves still beat furiously against the rocky shore. I could see nothing of the vessel, and I descended the path, now slippery and insecure from the heavy fall of rain, and went as near to the edge of the rocks as the breaking billows would permit. I walked along, occasionally drenched by the spray, until I arrived where I had last ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
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