"Insecurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... double the expense. Yet, now that I am on the point of deciding to come in her, people daily dissuade me, saying that I have no conception of what a voyage of sixty or seventy days will be in point of fatigue and suffering; that the insecurity, compared with packet-ships or steamers, is great; that the cabin, being on deck, will be terribly exposed, in case of a gale, &c., &c. I am well aware of the proneness of volunteer counsellors to frighten ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... acted in consequence of that which he believed, with a decision, vigour, and invariability, seldom found even among philosophers. Of late years he had, in real life, seen striking instances of the treachery of courtiers, and had felt some symptoms of insecurity in the smile of princes. Fortune had been favourable to him—she was fickle—he determined to quit her before she should change. Ambition, it is true, had tempted him—he had risen to her highest pinnacle: he would not be hurled from high—he would descend voluntarily, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... directions, and handed her letter to the Major, who receiving it as a precious charge, made a show of laying it near his heart, but was fain to put it in the pocket of his pantaloons on account of the insecurity of his waistcoat The Major then took a very polished and chivalrous farewell of both ladies, which the elder one acknowledged in her usual manner, while the younger, sitting with her face addressed to the window, bent her ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... took passage in a merchantman from Leghorn, the Elizabeth, the expense being one-half what a return by way of France would have been. The remonstrances of her acquaintance, founded on the fatigues of a two months' voyage—the comparative insecurity of such a bark—the exposed position of the cabin (on deck)—and so on, were not unaided by Margaret's own presentiments. Ossoli, when a boy, had been told by a fortune-teller, to 'beware of the sea,' and this was the first ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... I wonder if this avowal will seem odd to Englishmen of the next century! To Englishmen of the present one, a Roman Catholic and a lover of priestcraft and tyranny are two words for the same thing; as if we could not murmur at tithes and taxes, insecurity of property or arbitrary legislation, just as sourly as any other Christian community. No! I never loved the cause of the Stuarts,—unfortunate, and therefore interesting, as the Stuarts were; by a very stupid and yet uneffaceable confusion of ideas, I confounded it with the cause ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... letters of the 4th and 7th (which I have just received) with very interesting enclosures, which shall be duly returned. The little report of what the Emperor said to the Empress is very curious, and tallies with what I have also heard of his thinking much more of the insecurity of his position than he used to do. The description of the young Empress's character is an interesting one, and also agrees with what I had heard from those who know her well. It may be in her power to do much good—and I hope she may. Her character is made to captivate a man, I should say—particularly ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... now took and fortified the small town of Dec-e-le'a, only twelve miles from Athens. Here they kept an armed force, ready to spring out at any minute and molest the Athenians, who thus found themselves in a continual state of warfare and insecurity. ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... endeavors for the preservation of harmony with all nations will continue to be used, the experience of the world and our own experience admonish us of the insecurity of trusting too confidently to their success. We can not, without committing a dangerous imprudence, abandon those measures of self-protection which are adapted to our situation and to which, notwithstanding our pacific policy, the violence and injustice of others may again compel us to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... gutters and beneath the cornice, flitted from porch to porch, and from house to house, seeking in vain from some safe retreat from the cold. The street pump, which had a small opening just over the handle, was an attraction which they could not resist. And yet they seemed aware of the insecurity of the position; for no sooner would they stow themselves away into the interior of the pump, to the number of six or eight, than they would rush out again, as if apprehensive of some approaching danger. Time after time the cavity was filled and refilled, with blue and brown intermingled, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... can study his character and purposes. The large boots betoken a wood-man or ice-man: yet such a one would hardly have stepped so irresolutely where a little film of water has spread between the ice and snow and given a look of insecurity; and here again he has stopped to observe the wreaths on this pendent bough, and this snow-filled bird's-nest. And there the footsteps of the lover of beauty turn abruptly to the road again, and he vanishes from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... direction of the foreign policy of France, that suspicions of danger to the Republic from his ambition arose. From this time, in the narrow circle of the Ministers whom official duty brought into direct contact with the President, a constant sense of insecurity and dread of some new surprise on his part prevailed, though the accord which had been broken by the letter to Colonel Ney was for a while outwardly re-established, and the forms of Parliamentary government ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... State, a report of the day's impressions which was anything but reassuring—Leavenworth in the hands of armed men committing outrages under the shadow of authority; theft and murder in the streets and on the highways; farms plundered and deserted; agitation, excitement, and utter insecurity everywhere, and the number of troops insufficient to compel peace and order. All this was not the worst, however. Deep in the background stood the sinister apparition of the Atchison cabal. "I find," wrote he, "that I ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... interview left me with a great feeling of insecurity. If the Duke Casimir were thus full of fears, doubts, misgivings, whence came the fierce and cruel courage with which he dominated his liege burghers and harassed the country round about for a hundred leagues? The ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... I mean you. I certainly mean me. I mean the rich and the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful, the idle and the diligent, the luxurious and the austere. For, what with the limits of digestion, the practical impossibility of wearing two neckties at once, the insecurity of investments, the responsibilities of wealth and of success, the exhaustingness of the search for pleasure, and the cheapness of travel—the real differences between one sort of plain man and another are slight in these times. (And indeed they ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... been advertised by Government to those who traced us; and though for the moment we were secure, because we never went abroad, and could not have been naturally sought in such a neighbourhood, still that very circumstance would eventually operate against us. At length, every night I dreamed of our insecurity under a thousand forms; but more often by far my dreams turned upon our wrongs; wrath moved me rather than fear. Every night, for the greater part, I lay painfully and elaborately involved, by ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... has been more whole-heartedly with the Italians in their splendid efforts to recover the lands to which they are justly entitled; no one more thoroughly realizes the agonies of apprehension which Italy has suffered from the insecurity of her northern borders, or has been more keenly alive to the grim but silent struggle which has been waged between her statesmen and her soldiers as to whether the broad statesmanship which aims at international good-feeling and abstract ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... purposes. The chair is a composite structure: I found a cane seat on a dust-heap, which a black sergeant combined with two legs from a broken bedstead and two more from an oak-bough. I sit on it with a pride of conscious invention, mitigated by profound insecurity. Bedroom-furniture, a couch made of gun-boxes covered with condemned blankets, another settee, two pails, a tin cup, tin basin, (we prize any tin or wooden ware as savages prize iron,) and a valise, regulation-size. Seriously considered, nothing more appears needful, unless ambition might crave another ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... was a very young man of not much experience as a seaman. I therefore felt that, under critical circumstances, my main support had fallen from me. It is needless to add, that a deep sense of forlornness and insecurity was the result of ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... had determined to make of the young poet the heir of its glory. It came to nothing. He accompanied his relative to Rome: but the diplomacy of the mission ill-suited him. Of the Royal ladies at court who befriended him, the marriage of one, the death of another, increased his insecurity. He had inherited, to his bane, another estate—Gonor—from his elder brother. It was encumbered, the cause litigious, and he had inherited with it the tutelage of a sickly child. He never shook off the burden. A tragic error marked his end. He died, certainly ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... that the State of South Carolina was not immediately affected. It was not until the discussions bearing on the negro's insecurity and economic state, which accompanied the exodus in justification of it, had begun to be emphasized as the cause of the movement that a great exodus took place in the State. The principal occasion here was the unfortunate lynching of Anthony Crawford. A ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... already searched every room and every cupboard in the house, except in Mrs. Colwyn's own domain, and had put every bottle that she could find under lock and key; but she left the house with a feeling of terrible insecurity upon her, as if the earth might open at any moment beneath ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... cushion. This was once a favorite means of travel between Bayonne and Biarritz. It was expeditious, enlivening,—and highly insecure; that was one of its charms. Throughout the ride there was a ludicrous titillation of insecurity; but it was greatest at the start and at the finish. For, the seats being evenly balanced, to mount was in itself high art. Driver and passenger needed to spring at precisely the same instant, or the result was dust and ashes. Trial after trial was needed by the neophyte; ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... night of February 12, 1322, the eve of S. Ermenilda's day, the central tower fell. Its insecurity had long been known. The monks had just left their matin service in S. Catharine's Chapel. Some persons conclude from this fact that the choir had already been disused as being unsafe; but unless there is ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... from the teredo or worm, and their provisions failing, he sent them back to San Domingo, and set out on his return by land. Roldan accompanied him a little distance on horseback, evidently disturbed in mind. He feared to return to Spain, yet was shrewd enough to know the insecurity of his present situation at the head of a band of dissolute men, acting in defiance of authority. What tie had he upon their fidelity stronger than the sacred obligations which they had violated? After riding thoughtfully ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... fabric of a real sufficiency. He would have greater security, a brighter outlook, a more confident hope of being able to keep his head above water. The experience of life suggests that hope is a better stimulus than fear, confidence a better mental environment than insecurity. If desperation will sometimes spur men to exceptional exertion the effect is fleeting, and, for a permanence, a more stable condition is better suited to foster that blend of restraint and energy which makes up the tissue of a life of normal health. There would be those who would abuse ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... Kitty screamed, or shrieked, or whatever name best expresses her discordant and piercing yells. I more than suspect I shrieked too, partly at the difficulty of keeping both Kitty and Helen in any sort of order, and partly at my own insecurity. No sooner had Helen landed on the other side, than she fled homewards as if a tin kettle were tied to her tail. The speed at which we dashed through the fragrant summer air completely took away Kitty's breath, and the poor creature appeared more dead than alive by the time I ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... gave a pledge in the House of Commons that the Government would introduce legislation "at the earliest possible moment in the following Session," which would put an end to the present "wide- spread feeling of insecurity on the part of ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... of Great Britain; Religious Agitations; Death of the Duke of Wellington; The Court; Parliamentary Discussions; Changes of Ministry..... Ireland: Animosities on Account of Religion; Insecurity of Life; Terrible Assassinations..... Colonies: War at the Cape; Gold in California; General Condition of the British Colonies..... Foreign Affairs: Electric Telegraph Between London and Paris; Revival of the French Empire; English Policy in Reference ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of agitation and insecurity which followed upon the conquest of Palestine invited attacks by the eastern nomads, and once more the Israelite peasantry showed all its old helplessness, until at last the indignation of a Manassite of good family, Gideon or Jerubbaal, was roused ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... evidence of a well-organized government is to be found in the strict execution of these laws. "Judging the Spanish government by these tests, it will appear the worst and weakest government that ever held together. Justice of no kind has any existence; there is the most lamentable insecurity of person and property; redress is never certain, because both judgment and the execution of the laws are left to men so inadequately paid that they must depend for their subsistence upon bribery. Nothing is so difficult as to bring a man to trial who ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... bull-roarers used on these occasions are kept in them. Husband and wife live together, often two couples in one hut; but each family has its own side of the house and its own fireplace. In times of insecurity the Kai used to build their huts for safety among the spreading boughs of great trees. A whole village, consisting of three or four huts, might thus be quartered on a single tree. Of late years, with the peace and protection for life introduced ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... the tensions producing mental disturbances? Physical and financial insecurity, the threat of war, the aggressive patterns of a competitive society, the unresolved Oedipus-situation rooted in the old-style family relationship. These were the swamps where the mosquitoes buzzed and bit. Most of the swamps have been dredged, ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... philosophers. At the same time, both in personal intercourse with them and in his writings, he exhorted his pseudo-Mohammedan brethren to remain true to Judaism. This would have cost him his life, had he not been rescued by the kindly offices of Mohammedan theologians. The feeling of insecurity induced his family to leave Fez and join the Jewish community in Palestine. "They embarked at dead of night. On the sixth day of their voyage on the Mediterranean, a frightful storm arose; mountainous waves tossed the frail ship about like a ball; shipwreck seemed imminent. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... our reasonings on premisses which are simply more or less probable; and accordingly the conclusions which we arrive at have in them always an element of insecurity. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... may be affirmed, with truth, that the habit of forming Amphictyonic unions, and of frequenting each other's religious festivals, was the great means of creating and fostering the primitive feeling of brotherhood among the children of Hellen, in those early times when rudeness, insecurity, and pugnacity did so much to isolate them. A certain number of salutary habits and sentiments, such as that which the Amphictyonic oath embodies, in regard to abstinence from injury as well as to mutual protection, gradually found their way into men's minds: the obligations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure of her brother's hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received a telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of Mrs. Touchett's authorship. "Ralph cannot last many days," it ran, "and if convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... was crowded with troops and wagons. Though the exhausted soldiers slept, even while the guns of the enemy roared in front of them, and during the brief halts which the confusion in the road caused, there was no real repose. The excitement of the battle and the retreat, and the undefinable sense of insecurity which their situation engendered, banished rest. Tired Nature asserted her claims, and the men yielded to them only when endurance ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... then drag us down? We are in the very centre of the lake. There is no use in thinking or in taking heed. Enjoy the moment, then, and march. Enjoy the contrast between this circumambient serenity and sweetness, and the dreadful sense of insecurity beneath. Is not, indeed, our whole life of this nature? A passage over perilous deeps, roofed by infinity and sempiternal things, surrounded too with evanescent forms, that like these crystals, trodden underfoot, or melted by the Foehn-wind into dew, flash, in some ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Whitney had proposed a secret partnership, in which he was to play Whitney's game and, in exchange, was to get control of the Ranger-Whitney Company. And what Whitney had said about the folly of board managements, about the insecurity of his own position, was undeniably true; and the sacrifice of the "smaller morality" for the "larger good" would be merely doing what the biographies of the world's men of achievement revealed them as doing again ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... understood the eating of mutton, and horned cattle are reserved for agricultural labour. In case of exceptions being met with, they are only such few exceptions as help to prove the rule. This may perhaps be attributed to the general insecurity of animal property in the East; but that I do not think a sufficient reason to account for it. It seems, however, that the ancient Israelites were not so much limited to eating ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... fertile and full of small villages, and the soil is so rich that little labour is required for its cultivation. It is, however, the chief district whence slaves are obtained, and a feeling of insecurity was ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... a post of a man rendered notorious by his contempt for authority, who already boasted of no less than thirty murders, and who had voluntarily placed himself in the lowest ranks of society, would be a thing absolutely incredible; but the Ocampos probably felt the insecurity of their authority, and were sufficiently sagacious to attempt, at least, to render that man a useful adherent or ally, who might, if allured by their foes, prove a terrible weapon against them. But they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... once. The rolling of a stone, or the parting of stirrup, girth, or crupper, would have involved the safety of one's neck. Nor did the very common sight of wooden crosses along the path, indicating sudden death by accident or crime, tend to lessen the sense of insecurity. The frequent casualties among these precipitous paths, together with the healthfulness of the climate, have made it a proverb, that it is a natural death, at St. Antonio, to be dashed to pieces on the rocks. But such was not our fate. We at length reached the sea-shore, and ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... semi-independent tribes, behind whom looms the grim figure of Russia, daily advancing into clearer outline from the opposite or northwest quarter. It is to protect the Indian Empire, its peoples, its trades, its laboriously established government and its accumulated wealth from the insecurity and possible danger arising from a further Russian advance across the intervening space that the frontier which I am about to describe has been traced and fortified. Politicians of all parties have agreed that, while the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... the pillar is too massive for the load supported, it gives you the unsatisfactory impression of doing something absurdly small for your powers. If on the contrary the pillar is too slender for the load that seems to rest upon it, you get the feeling of strain and insecurity; but if it is rightly proportioned, you get the feeling of a worthy task successfully accomplished. The pillar, according to empathy, pleases you by arousing and gratifying your mastery impulse; and many other architectural effects can be interpreted ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... her the feeling of luxurious languor that she longed to enjoy with a sense of security and freedom from care. But even as her eyelids drooped with momentary drowsiness, there was a consciousness, like a dull, half-recognized pain, of insecurity, of impending trouble and danger, and of a need for exertion that would lead to something more certain than anything ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... gentlemen of intelligence and high standing in the South, the intended establishment of a different order of government, based on privilege of class, has appeared to be the ruling motive. They have set down the expressed apprehension as to the insecurity of slavery as a hypocritical pretext for revolution; believing that the more absorbing motive was to establish an order of nobility, either with or without monarchy. There is some plausibility for giving the ambitious motive the greater prominence; but a more severe analysis of the whole question ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... occur with such frequency and violence as to influence their lives. There can be no question that wherever earthquakes occur in such a measure as to produce widespread terror, where, recurring from time to time, they develop in men a sense of abiding insecurity, they become potent agents of degradation. All the best which men do in creating a civilization rests upon a sense of confidence that their efforts may be accumulated from year to year, and that even after death the work of each man may remain as a heritage ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... themselves into a family, but this confederation, as an individuality, must create an opposition and so beget an enemy. Not only do nations issue forth invigorated from their wars, but those nations torn by internal strife win peace at home as a result of war abroad. War indeed causes insecurity in property, but this real insecurity is only a necessary commotion. From the pulpits much is preached concerning the insecurity, vanity, and instability of temporal things, and yet every one, though he may be touched by his own words, thinks that he, at least, will manage to hold on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Wilson detached himself and made a collection, whilst we pulled the sledge on. We camped late, abreast the lower end of the mountain, and had nearly our usual satisfying supper. Yesterday was the worst experience of the trip and gave a horrid feeling of insecurity. Now we are right up, we must march. In future food must be worked so that we do not run so short if the weather fails us. We mustn't get into a hole like this again. Greatly relieved to find that both the other parties got through safely. Evans seems to have got mixed up with ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... fascinated, had they not fallen to pieces like a flower whose petals are scattered in the tempest? Even the burning hope of his heart, the dream of a life of earthly bliss with his love, was showing its insecurity and dropping asunder. His ship was sinking in the ocean of Eternity. How futile his intrigue, how mean his deceptions, how insufficient his excuses. The Everlasting Presence gazed through them, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... disintegration which sprang like itself from the struggle with the northman. The tendency towards personal dependence and towards a social organization based on personal dependence received an overpowering impulse from the strife. The long insecurity of a century of warfare drove the ceorl, the free tiller of the soil, to seek protection more and more from the thegn beside him. The freeman "commended" himself to a lord who promised aid, and as the price of this shelter he surrendered ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... its broad streets are trodden by the feet of thousands. Between gigantic blocks of buildings rising everywhere, strips of the prairie turf lay undisturbed still. The air of newness, of incompleteness, of insecurity that seemed to surround all things impressed him painfully; the sadden prosperity seemed unreal and unnatural, as well it might, to one brought up in a country where the first thought awakened by change or innovation is one of mistrust ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... late, the insecurity of his position, and endeavored to provide a temporary remedy. There was a height near the city, called by the Moors Santo Albohacen, which was in front of the bridge. He ordered several of his most valiant cavaliers to take possession of this height and to hold it as a check upon the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... by the British Euphrates expedition in 1841 to connect Aleppo with the sea by steamer through the nearest point on the Euphrates, Meskine, failed owing to the obstructed state of the stream and the insecurity of the riparian districts. The latter drawback has been minimized by the continued success of the Aleppo administration in inducing the Anazeh Bedouins to become fellahin; but river traffic has not been resumed. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... copper coin took up a good deal of room and was not easy to conceal. If anyone had much money, everyone in his village knew it. No one dared to hoard to any extent for fear of attracting bandits and creating lasting insecurity. On the other hand the merchants wanted to attain the standard of living which the nobles, the landowners, used to have. Thus they began to invest their money in land. This was all the easier for them since it often happened that one of the lesser nobles or a peasant fell deeply ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... sunk by this method of attack during 1917 as compared with previous years; the number of vessels sunk does not, however, convey a complete appreciation of the effect of this form of anti-submarine warfare. The great value of it lay in the feeling of insecurity that it bred in the minds of the enemy submarine commanders. The moral effect of the constant apprehension that one is being "stalked" is considerable. Indeed, the combination of our aircraft and our submarine ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... was not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very soft and yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. The mattress was partly transparent, a fact he observed with a strange sense of insecurity, and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. About his arm—and he saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow—was bound a curious apparatus of rubber, bound so cunningly that it seemed to pass into his skin above and below. And this strange bed was placed in ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... people with towards their government." Cited by Ford, Rise and Growth of American Politics, p. 69.] security was seen to be a necessity if democracy was to work. There must be as little disturbance as possible of the premise of a self-contained community. Insecurity involves surprises. It means that there are people acting upon your life, over whom you have no control, with whom you cannot consult. It means that forces are at large which disturb the familiar routine, and present novel problems about which quick and ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... and especially in France and Germany, unable to strengthen itself by intermarriage with the noblesse, they retained that timidity which is the fruit of the insecurity of trade; and had to submit to a more and more centralised despotism, and grow up as they could, in the face of exasperating hindrances to wealth, to education, to the possession, in many parts of France, ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... raised in Parliament by the pacific propositions of the First Consul, Pitt based all his arguments upon the instability and insecurity of a treaty of peace with the French Revolution, whatever might be the name of its chief rulers. "When was it discovered that the dangers of Jacobinism cease to exist?" he cried. "When was it discovered that the Jacobinism ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... increasing. The question inevitably arises, Is this a consequence of our political system? and if so, is political liberty worth having, are democratic principles worth establishing, if the price to be paid for them is increased insecurity of life and greater wretchedness among the poor? If the origin of these evils is to be found in the incompetency of the government or the inefficiency of individuals in a democracy, a remedy must be applied, or the whole system ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... and feeling the insecurity of his position, wished to save himself. He had too much sense and too much knowledge of the world not to feel that if he obstinately clung to the finances he should not only lose them but the seals also. He yielded therefore to Law, who was at last declared comptroller-general of the finances, and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... The man was benevolent; he spent his life in the creation of beauty; and he was secure. Surely an ideal existence! Yes, George wished that he could say as much for himself. Marguerite, completely deprived of ambition, would never have led any man into insecurity. He had realized already that afternoon that there were different degrees of success; he now realized that there were different ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... The uncertainty and insecurity of their power, has always led petty chiefs to seek the support of some powerful suzerain. In 1876 the Mehtar of Chitral, Aman-ul-Mulk, was encouraged to seek the protection, and become the vassal ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... mission of the man explains the contradictions of his own Government, and that confused groping about, that now seeks to win, then to humiliate now this class and then that, and finishes by arraying against itself all the classes; whose actual insecurity constitutes a highly comical contrast with the imperious, categoric style of the Government acts, copied closely from ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... down to Deir el-Bahari occasioned more laughter and little screams and offers of help from the sterner male, who, under an extreme insouciance, tried to hide the insecurity of his perch on the back of the humble, ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... a slight disposition to stretch his lean limbs unduly, and a feeling of insecurity attending his first efforts to stand, he was not aware of any inconvenience ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... compare our own social condition with that of the Greeks or the Italians—if we look into their houses, their cities, and their fields,—if we acquire an accurate and vivid conception of the insecurity of life, of property, and of peace among them,—and if we measure the happiness of life by the comforts of every day existence, then, indeed, the superiority belongs to ourselves; and we may be led to ask, whether the advantages of both conditions of political and social existence may not be united; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... those in chapters 11, 19 and 35; the endless dialogue in the boat; the even more tedious happenings in the local law-court; the very externals—relaxing wind and fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena—the jovial immoderation of everything and everybody: they foster a sense of violence and insecurity; they all tend to make the soil ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the ways of society, and this insecurity left him helpless how to act in such an emergency. To ignore it never occurred to him; he could only resent it. He bowed too low to see Leon's extended hand, and saying frostily, "I am honored to meet you, sir!" turned on his heel and stalked out ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... she observed, "but one hates the feeling of insecurity, all the same. Both my steward and stewardess are old friends. It must have been a very clever person who found his ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... us at its close. I never saw Uncle Silas during that period. It may seem odd to those who merely read the report of our last interview, in which his manner had been more playful and his talk more trifling than in any other, that from it I had carried away a profounder sense of fear and insecurity than from any other. It was with a foreboding of evil and an awful dejection that on a very dark day, in Milly's room, I awaited the summons which I was sure would reach ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... upon its members, and the natural reaction of generous indignation in repelling them; while the city in its more stationary and native classes would very soon have manifested THEIR awful sense of things, of the hideous insecurity for life, and of the unfathomable dangers which had undermined their hearths below their very feet, by sacrificing, whenever circumstances allowed them, their houses and beautiful gardens in exchange for days uncursed by panic, and nights unpolluted ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... during the year ending on September 30 last, and amounting to more than nine millions of dollars, have enabled us to fulfill all our engagements and defray the current expenses of government without recurring to any loan; but the insecurity of our commerce and the consequent demands of the public revenue will probably produce a deficiency in the receipts of the ensuing year." Beyond this Madison did not venture; Gallatin was ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... the case demanded the interposition of this Government. Justice required that reparation should be made for so many and such gross wrongs, and that a course of insolence and plunder, tending directly to the insecurity of the lives of numerous travelers and of the rich treasure belonging to our citizens passing over this transit way, should be peremptorily arrested. Whatever it might be in other respects, the community in question, in power ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Gujarat, which has given them from the most remote times a commercial celebrity. Bhinmal is said to contain about 1500 houses and Sanchor half that number. Very wealthy mahajans or merchants used to reside here, but insecurity both within and without has much injured these cities." From Bhinmal the Srimalis appear to have gone to Gujarat, where they are found in considerable numbers. Their legend of origin is that the goddess Lakshmi created from a flower-garland 90,000 families to act as servants to the 90,000 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... dwelling-place sought; with the uncertainty of a present permanent dwelling-place there is linked the uncertainty of a goal to strive for when the present uncertain dwelling-place must be abandoned. Thus, the punishment contains two features, the insecurity of the present dwelling-place and a lack of knowledge whither to turn when thrust forth from the insecure abode of the present. In this sense the term is used in Psalm 109, 10: "Let his children be continually vagabonds." That means, Nowhere shall ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... think me very stupid," resumed the old lady after a slight pause, her face grown grave again, "but for weeks past, even before this happened, I've had such an odd sense of insecurity, a presentiment of trouble. I'm not given to feelings of that kind, which makes this one more noticeable. I can't explain it, but there it is—a kind of foreboding that I ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... have visited the farthest parts of the globe, have seen nothing like it.[7] At Allahabad he launched on the broad stream of the Ganges; and after passing through part of the territory of Awadh or Oude, the insecurity of life and property in which is strongly contrasted with the rigid police in the Company's dominions, arrived in due time at the holy city of Benares, the centre of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... been violently tossed from a life of extreme trouble and peril into a profound, unbroken, sleepy security. At first the sudden change stupefied me; but after a while there came over me an uneasy restlessness, a longing to get away from the silence and solitude, even if it were into insecurity and danger. I began to wonder how the world beyond the little island was going on. No news reached us from without. Sometimes for weeks together it was impossible for an open boat to cross over to Guernsey; even when a cutter accomplished its voyage out and in, no letters could ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... ten days of Monte Carlo, the Villa Bella Vista was full of the Dauntreys' paying guests, a cold sense of insecurity and trouble to come, which would be worse by and by than the bitter disappointment of the present, lay heavy upon Eve's heart. Her menage was uncomfortable, and people were threatening to go. Every day nearly she had a "scene" with some one, a guest or a servant, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... constitutes the greatest difficulty in the making of motion pictures, I should reply the insecurity of the tripod in the making of outdoor scenes. Exteriors require the greatest amount of attention from the cameraman because of the varying light and shade and the mobility of the camera itself and its liability to accident. The location chosen by the expert ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... a high reputation for his skill in making a doubtful cause appear a good one. At first he had no intention of gaining a fortune by confounding right and wrong. On the contrary, he had a painful sense of insecurity when retained for a client whose cause seemed to him unjust. He differed but little, indeed, from the best of his colleagues; perhaps he had somewhat fewer scruples; and, certainly, he was too fond of good red wine. He had ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... point of want of tenant-right, and insecurity of tenure, and displacement of the tenantry, we have quoted only the evidence of small farmers and some few agents, with one exception Roman Catholics, and to a man devoted followers of Mr O'Connell; if they have not heard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... would find the sweet, sad ghost of Maisie haunting her, coming between her and the memory of her dark ecstasy. Maisie, utterly innocent, utterly good, trusting her, sending Jerrold back to her because she trusted her. Only to think of Maisie gave her a fearful sense of insecurity. She thought: If I'd loved her I could never have done it. If I were to love her even now that would end it. We couldn't go on. She prayed God that she might not ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... last degree; the dwellings were mere hovels. We passed deep holes in the ground, the sides of which were baked by fire, so as to resemble earthen jars about ten feet deep and seven in diameter, with a small aperture; these were subterranean granaries, the sure sign of insecurity before the British occupation. The flat-topped hovels had the usual roofs of clay and chopped straw, and projected two or three feet as eaves beyond the walls, which were of stone and mud, exhibiting the crudest examples of masonry. The projecting eaves ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... behind the private drama of true love, intrigue, persecution, the broad picture of society. It is no idealised version of the Middle Ages. The ugly, sordid side of mediaeval life is turned outwards; its dirt, discomfort, ignorance, absurdity, brutality, unreason and insecurity are rendered with crass realism. The burgher is more in evidence than the chevalier. Less after the manner of the Waverley novels, and more after that of "Hypatia," "Romola," and "Fathers and Sons," it depicts the intellectual ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... resolution unanimously passed by the French Senate a few years after the State had taken over certain lines, beginning: "The deplorable situation of the State system, the insecurity and irregularity of its workings." He gives figures demonstrating the invariably greater efficiency, economy and superiority of service of private management as compared to State management in countries where these ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn
... son-in-law at first objected to being made a cat's-paw, but the squire was obstinate, and after a night upon it, Phil acceded. No other difficulty was found in the attainment of Mr. Meredith's purpose, the money-lenders in New York being only too glad, in the growing insecurity and general suspension of law, to turn their investments into cash. It was a task of some weeks to gather them all in, but it was one of the keenest enjoyment to the squire, who each evening, over his mulled wine in the King's Arms Tavern, pictured and repictured the moment of triumph, when, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... seditious movements showed the insecurity of the situation. At the beginning of 1556 traces were detected of a plan for plundering the treasury in order to levy troops with the money.[176] The Western counties were discontented because Courtenay was removed from among ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... friend, immediately after my arrival at New York, I said I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions. This state of mind, however, very soon subsided; and I was again seized with a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness. I was yet liable to be taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of slavery. This in itself was enough to damp the ardor of my enthusiasm. But the loneliness overcame me. There I was in the midst of thousands, and ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... house, erected the previous summer, and making other improvements around it, indicating his design of having a permanent and inviting home, it so happened that a company of settlers in passing by, paused to view with astonishment what was going on. From a feeling of insecurity they had just abandoned their new locations in this region, and had come thus far on their way, having resolved to return to the more safe and quiet homes they had left at the east. But beholding the enterprise of Mr. Morris, and the business and thrift that prevailed here on ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... course, pleasant recollections from Heligoland, and the many discussions about money matters in the midst of the honeymoon are quite explicable when we know how the dramatist was continually haunted by money troubles, even if occasionally he received a big fee, and that this very financial insecurity was one of the chief reasons why Frida Uhl's father opposed the marriage. Again, the country scenes which follow in Part I, shift to the hilly country round the Danube, with their Catholic Calvaries and expiation ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... constitute the chief wealth of the people, who have nearly forsaken the agriculture which anciently gave Chaldaea its pre-eminence, and have relapsed very generally into a nomadic or semi-nomadic condition. The insecurity of property consequent upon bad government has in a great measure caused this change, which render; the bounty of Nature useless, and allows immense capabilities to run to waste. The present condition of Babylonia gives a most imperfect idea ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... in one of the colleges; his academical sinecures, and the relics of his private fortune, afforded him a decent support; he was surrounded by people of his own principles; and as all the strength of the King's cause was concentrated about the seat of the court, every apprehension of personal insecurity was at an end. He was now, therefore, in a state of comparative comfort; man is seldom placed in a better; and in times like those I describe, a good subject ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... lord was bound to make to the vassal as a compensation for these various services, was counsel and protection—by no means a small return in an age of turmoil and insecurity. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... in her eyes? A confession of insecurity, fear; a mute appeal? Before it all his doubts and misgivings vanished; the look they exchanged was like that when she had stood on the staircase in ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... occasioned a violent crisis, which the traders and farmers turned to account, by disastrous monopoly and jobbing. To increase the difficulty, the assignats were falling into discredit, and their value diminished daily. More than eight milliards worth of them had been issued. The insecurity of this paper money, by reason of the revolutionary confiscations, which had depreciated the national property, the want of confidence on the part of the merchants, tradesmen, etc., in the stability of the revolutionary government, which ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... in return. It would be observed, in answer, that this was an inconvenience greatly to be lamented; but that it was an evil which bore no comparison to the black train of distresses that would inevitably be occasioned by the insecurity of property; that the quantity of food which one man could consume was necessarily limited by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; that it was not certainly probable that he should throw away the rest; but that even if he exchanged his surplus food for ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... strong that civilisation itself would be in danger if it should fall into the power of a herd of vociferating women (I am but the reporter of his angry formulae) to prevent a gentleman from taking his glass. Mrs. Farrinder proved to him that she had not the eagerness of insecurity; she asked him if he wouldn't like to give the company some account of the social and political condition of the South. He begged to be excused, expressing at the same time a high sense of the honour done him by such a request, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... that is, of the respectable public,—of the respectable public, gentlemen. For in these days, when the spirit of discontent is so widespread, all illegal actions have, so to say, a political bearing, my lord, and all illegal actions are wicked, gentlemen of the Jury, since they tend towards the insecurity of society, or in other words, are definitely aimed at the very basis of all morality and religion. Therefore, my lord, I have received instructions from the Home Secretary to prosecute this woman, who, as I shall be able to prove to you, gentlemen of the Jury, by the testimony ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... The insecurity of the temporary prison mentioned above, and the defects in its control, led to changes in its structure and general management. The Resident, then Mr. J. Crawford, expended $900 towards the construction of a more substantial building for the local ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... During the insecurity of the Middle Ages, the seclusion of women for their own protection had been severely necessary. In the East the 'purdah-system' reached the length of excluding women of the better classes from the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... reach swiftly and simply a conclusion which candor would have foreseen as the inevitable and unjudicial result of following one's own likes and whims, and one's contentment with which must be alloyed with a haunting sense of insecurity. In criticism it is perhaps better to keep balancing counter-considerations than to determine brutally by excluding a whole set of them because of the difficulty of assigning them their true weight. In this way, at least, one ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... supremacy of the Kings, vigilance augmented with insecurity; and almost everybody who was not an opposer, who refused being an accomplice, or feared to be a victim, was obliged to serve as an informer and vilify himself by becoming a spy. The rapidity with which parties followed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... get far in the arts without healthy doses of both ego and insecurity, and the downside of being able to google up all the things that people are saying about your book is that it can play right into your insecurities — "all these people will have it in their minds ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... literature and science, rapid and easy communication by land and sea, spread far more quickly, and connect distant countries far more closely, in modern times than in the ancient world. Yet there is always an element of unrest and insecurity underlying the position of imperial rulership over different and often discordant groups of subjects; and this has been one main cause of the immemorial weakness of Asiatic empires, and of the indifference of the people to a change ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... nothing but their appointments, which accustomed them to an ease of living with which they could no longer dispense. If he made them grants of land, it was out of his conquests, which were exposed to insecurity by war, and which ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... quickly. There was no mistaking the exultation in his low voice. It amazed her, and again she was stabbed by that sense of insecurity. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... prevent sleep. In the old part of the house, some of the partitions did not run up to the roof, but were left open (for ventilation, I suppose), thus making a fine play-ground for cats and rats, which darted along, squeaking, meowing and clattering all the night through. An uncanny feeling of insecurity was ever with me. What with the accumulated effect of the day's heat, what with the thieving Indians, the sand-storms and the cats, our nights by no means gave us the refreshment needed by our worn-out systems. By the latter part of the summer, I was so exhausted by the heat ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... are prepared to risk destruction. Even after Hawke's decisive victory at Quiberon had completed the overthrow of the enemy's sea forces, a British transport was captured between Cork and Portsmouth, and an Indiaman in sight of the Lizard, while Wellington's complaints in the Peninsula of the insecurity of his communications are well known.[9] By general and permanent control we do not mean that the enemy can do nothing, but that he cannot interfere with our maritime trade and oversea operations so seriously as to ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... revolutions and invasions, the Genoese ever contrived to return to an endurable condition. Perhaps it was owing to the fact that all who took part in public affairs were at the same time almost without exception active men of business. The example of Genoa shows in a striking manner with what insecurity wealth and vast commerce, and with what internal disorder the possession of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... house of the deceased, or to a small bark-house by its side, prepared for their reception. In this manner the skeletons of the whole family were preserved from generation to generation by the filial or parental affection of the living After the lapse of a number of years, or in a season of public insecurity, or on the eve of abandoning a settlement, it was customary to collect these skeletons from the whole community around and consign them to a common ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... the river, satiate themselves with plunder and murder in the British town, and return with their spoils to their own territory, where they were secure from British retaliation. The English general, knowing the insecurity of the mission-house, had urged Mr. B. to remove with his family to the protection of the fort; but his object was to benefit the Burmans, and to do that, he must ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... in Nature is that she preserves characteristics long after they have ceased to be needed; and so, though a man in a civilised community has very little to dread, he is still haunted by an irrational sense of insecurity and precariousness. And thus many of our fears arise from old inheritance, and represent nothing rational or real at all, but only an old and savage need of vigilance ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of insecurity which obtains during the Sessions of the Raad is due scarcely less to the threats which are not fulfilled and attempts which do not succeed, than to what is actually compassed. A direct tax on gold has more than once been threatened; concessions for cyanide, jam, bread, biscuits, and woollen ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... as easily as perhaps should be expected of a longshoreman. There was no more sleep, though no more was wanted. By putting out my hand to the table I managed to keep where I was, even when, in those moments of greatest insecurity, the screw was roaring in mid-air. Our fascinating hanging lamp would perform the impossible, hanging acutely out of plumb; and then, when I was watching this miracle, rattle its chain and hang the other ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... assigned for his refusal claims careful notice. It was that his earlier proposals (those of 1782-5) had aimed at national security; while those of the present would tend to insecurity. Possibly in the month of April 1792 this argument had some validity; though up to that time all the violence had been on the Tory side. But the plea does not excuse Pitt for not taking action in the year 1790. That was the period when the earlier apathy ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... belligerents, to say it again, put in the first line of their requirements security against renewed attacks, protection against the continuation of the insecurity of peace. Both admit that the proposed League of the Nations has become a necessity; both admit that it might indeed protect mankind against new wars and a state of incessantly endangered peace. Why then wait and let the disaster go on instead of proceeding at ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... formerly to have enjoyed. The existence of such a state of things, as we have described, in the preceding pages, the oppositions of the Moors, the resistance of the negroes, the frequent change of masters, and the insecurity of property consequent upon these intestine struggles, would all lead directly and inevitably to this result. That they have led to it, may be collected from other sources than Adams. Even Park, to ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... able to penetrate Madame's frivolous wig to her busy brain and detect her prudent schemes for the future; but the girl was sick of her dependence on George's father, and, in the revolt of her pride, she would have accepted any honest work which would have enabled her to escape from the insecurity of her position. Of her competence to earn a living, of her ability to excel in any work that she undertook, of the sufficiency and soundness of her resources, she was as absolutely assured as she had been when she entered the millinery department of Brandywine ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... lying coiled like a serpent, tail to mouth, in the outrageous ocean, and I was never weary of passing—a mere quarter-deck parade—from the one side to the other, from the shady, habitable shores of the lagoon to the blinding desert and uproarious breakers of the opposite beach. The sense of insecurity in such a thread of residence is more than fanciful. Hurricanes and tidal waves over-leap these humble obstacles; Oceanus remembers his strength, and, where houses stood and palms flourished, shakes his white beard again over the barren coral. Fakarava itself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now crouched and peered over the crest, was what she might have expected—yet one can never become quite used to such pictures as that! Below was the first-line trench, deserted since the third division had been sent forward, and its emptiness gave her a feeling of insecurity. She would have preferred a visual line of stalwart fellows between her and the maddened enemy, instead of one that had gone into the smoke. She looked back to see if another division were coming up, but the intervening world seemed destitute ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... would increase. When one reached the disturbed districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with by a vigorous administration of the existing law. Unfortunately, the so-called "better classes," full of bitterness ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... advantageous, will, in a moderate time, return the capital already expended, with a commensurate advantage. But these things can only take place provided the public tranquillity be maintained, and the government keep their engagements with foreigners inviolate. The insecurity arising from the domestic feuds now disturbing this fine country, must, if it continues, finally annihilate its best resources.—Foreign ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... between him and his father. John Caldigate had gone into partnership with Crinkett,—who had indeed tried to cheat him wretchedly but had failed,—and at that time was the manager of the Polyeuka mine. The claim at Ahalala had been sold, and he had deserted the flashy insecurity of alluvial searchings for the fundamental security of rock-gold. He was deep in the crushing of quartz, and understood well the meaning of two ounces to the ton,—that glittering boast by which Crinkett had at first thought to allure him. From time to time he sent money ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... busy with the fastenings. "Nothing. I can't see one thing. We simply lie open to each other, you and I. There isn't one new corner in either of us that she could reveal. It's only that I always have in this house the most awful feeling of insecurity." ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... accident occur. Thus wound up in the present instance, I entered the water. Even where it was not more than knee-deep, its power was manifest. As it rose around me, I sought to split the torrent by presenting a side to it; but the insecurity of the footing enabled it to grasp my loins, twist me fairly round, and bring its impetus to bear upon my back. Further struggle was impossible; and feeling my balance hopelessly gone, I turned, flung myself towards the bank just quitted, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... how Nicholas Chopin fared while these whirlwinds passed over Poland. The threatening political situation and the consequent general insecurity made themselves at once felt in trade, indeed soon paralysed it. What more particularly told on the business in which the young Lorrainer was engaged was the King's desertion of the national cause, which ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... they attacked the house of Mr. Harrison, and maintained a fire which riddled his premises. These men attempted to fortify themselves by erecting stone fences on the peak of a hill at the Macquarie: there they were surprised and taken. The insecurity of the prisons, and the mode of disposing of respited offenders, made it not unlikely that an officious witness would be called to a future account: thus an old man, who prosecuted a burglar, was visited by the culprit when he returned ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... their city having been so often and for so long the theatre of uncertain fate and distracting political disturbances. It is the half-startled expression of people with the ever-present knowledge of insecurity. But they are a warm-hearted, impulsive set of fellows, and when, while looking through the museum, we happen across Her Britannic Majesty's representative at the Servian court, who is doing the same thing, one of them unhesitatingly approaches that gentleman, cap in hand, and, with ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... independent incomes are prone to the same sort of wilfulness as Bull's, the salve abject submission to it which we behold in his tidal bodies of supporters. Neptune has done something. One thinks he has done much, at a rumour of his inefficiency to do the utmost. Spy you insecurity?—a possibility of invasion? Then indeed the colossal creature, inaccessible to every argument, is open to any suggestion: the oak-like is a reed, the bull a deer. But as there is no attack on his shores, there is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... force of those who wished to interfere energetically on behalf of British subjects. There was a vague but widespread feeling that perhaps the capitalists were engineering the situation for their own ends. It is difficult to imagine how a state of unrest and insecurity, to say nothing of a state of war, can ever be to the advantage of capital, and surely it is obvious that if some arch-schemer were using the grievances of the Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him would ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... feel of insecurity behind, Torode slipped deftly out of the saddle. He still held the reins and endeavoured to drag the poor beast up. But Black Boy's heels were kicking frantically, now on thin air, now for a second against an impossible slope of rock which offered ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... boys insisted upon placing him. Was this Wells Fargo's most famous agent? Was this the man whose warnings were given such credence that they stirred even the largest of the gold camps into a sense of insecurity? And at this Rance indulged again in a fit of mental merriment at ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... had forgotten, and he realized the insecurity of his position. "Oh, yes," he said—"school. Did ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... foreign manufactures and merchandise in the Philippines, there exists a great outlet for it in the islands of Sooloo and Mindanao, although in the present state of society in those islands, where the insecurity of life and property is very great, the natural advantages of these countries have not been at all adequately developed. In front of Zamboanga, the last town towards the south which recognizes the authority of the Government of Manilla, is ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... guide to Mount Tabor. The whole of this country, even to the gates of Damascus, is in a state of insecurity, which renders it very imprudent to travel alone. Merchants go only in large caravans. We ascended the mountain to the west of the town, and in thirty-five minutes passed the ruined vil[lage] of Szermedein (Arabic), on the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... the camerated ceiling. "The general proportions of the church," says Mr. Godwin, "are pleasing; but the columns are too slight, the space between them too wide, and the result is a disagreeable feeling of insecurity." The altar-piece, adorned with the figure of a pelican feeding her young, is richly carved and gilded. The large organ, built by Jordan in 1712, was presented by Sir Charles Duncomb, who gave the clock in remembrance of having himself, when a boy, been detained ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... that, after the retreat of the Taira from Fukuhara, in 1183, Go-Shirakawa sent an envoy to Kamakura inviting Yoritomo's presence in Kyoto. Restrained, however, by a sense of insecurity,* the Minamoto chief declined to leave Kamakura, and sent in his stead a memorial to the Throne. This document commenced with a statement that the ruin of the Taira had been due not to human prowess but to divine anger against the plunderers of sacred lands. Therefore, all manors ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... merchantman wheresoever she was to be met. But this was not all, as the shore as well as the sea yielded up to them its tribute in the shape of slaves and booty, and Christian mothers trembling in the insecurity of their homes would hush their wailing children with the terror of the names of Barbarossa, of Dragut, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... inevitable, and proved, on the whole, benignant. It was simply the question whether the Romans should have civil wars and anarchies and factions, which decimated the people, and kept society in a state of fear and insecurity, and prevented the triumph of law, or whether they should submit to an absolute ruler, who had unbounded means of doing good, and whom interest and duty alike prompted to secure the public welfare. The people wanted, above all things, safety, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... 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 ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... himself and his sister. He could only get the house on a yearly tenancy, as it and the others near it were old, and would probably be rebuilt before long. But meanwhile the rent was all the lower because of the insecurity of tenure. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the arts of smiling poisoning—but they did it so badly; they were as fussily ineffectual as a group of school-boys who hate their teacher. Not "big deals" and vast grim power did they achieve, but merely a constant current of worried insecurity, and they all tended to prove Mrs. Lawrence's assertion that the office-world is a method of giving the largest possible number of people the largest possible amount of nervous discomfort, to the end of producing the largest possible quantity of totally useless ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... for spasmodic responses to these convulsive attacks from foreign manufacturers, with the very evident intention of achieving financial adventures. The dishonest and reckless elements were indeed so evident in this movement as to add very greatly to the general atmosphere of distrust and insecurity, and in the recoil from the prospect of fiscal power in the hands of the class of men known as the "New Financiers," one heard frightened old-fashioned statesmen asserting with passion that "dumping" didn't occur, or that it was a very charming sort of thing to happen. Nobody would ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... prosecuting the war. This non-compliance led to active debate. In regard to the public debt it was said, "That it must, once for all, be defined and established on the faith of the States, solemnly pledged to each other, and not revocable by any, without a breach of the general compact." If a feeling of insecurity existed in regard to the property interests of the Nation when but thirteen legislative bodies assumed their control, how much greater is the insecurity of our personal interests if they are, as is assumed, under the control of thirty-seven separate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... armed force slight if any contingents of men would be drawn from the subject peoples, for the reason that no great numbers would be needed; as also because no devoted loyalty to the dynasty could reasonably be looked for among them, even if no positive insecurity were felt to be involved in their employment. On this head the projected scheme unambiguously commends itself as a measure of economy, both in respect of the pecuniary burdens demanded and as regards the personal ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... had been sent out in search of the missing barge, between Mrs. Smith and a grave and anxious passenger who had chartered it. When he had comforted her, and pointed out, as, indeed, he had many times before, the loneliness and insecurity of her unprotected life, she yielded to his arguments. But it was not until many months after their marriage that she confessed to him on that eventful night she thought she had seen in a moment of great peril the vision of the dead ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... was called, should be extended so as to encircle the whole city. The work, however, was never completed, for as late as 1785 an influential European inhabitant of Madras, addressing the Government on the subject of the insecurity of the city, wrote:— ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... before and behind; and it is true that the utter precariousness of life does not, as a matter of fact, distract us from the pleasure of it, even though the strands to which we hold are slowly parting. It is all, then, an adventure and an escape; but even in the worst insecurity, we may often be surprised to find that it ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... physician to attend upon me. I had not yet told her that I was a fugitive slave. She noticed that I was often sad, and kindly inquired the cause. I spoke of being separated from my children, and from relatives who were dear to me; but I did not mention the constant feeling of insecurity which oppressed my spirits. I longed for some one to confide it; but I had been so deceived by white people, that I had lost all confidence in them. If they spoke kind words to me, I thought it was for some selfish purpose. I had entered this family with the distrustful feelings ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... And I admired the manner in which she bore her inspection. Already rumors of the cause of Mr. Allen's departure were in active circulation, and I was astonished to learn that he had been seen that day seated upon Indian rock with Miss Thorn herself. This piece of news gave me a feeling of insecurity about people, and about women in particular, that I had never before experienced. After holding the Celebrity up to such unmeasured ridicule as she had done, ridicule not without a seasoning of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
