"Insidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for his own political and financial purposes. He had entrusted him with State secrets, in order to speculate thereon in all the money-markets of the world. He had induced him to approach the Premier with crafty promises of support, and to inveigle him by insidious degrees into the same dishonourable financial 'deal.' So that if this one man,—this fat, unscrupulous turncoat of a Jew,—chose to speak out, he, Carl Perousse, Secretary of State, would be the most disgraced and ruined Minister that ever attempted to defraud a nation! His brows grew moist ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... insidious mixture of flattery and sarcasm in her words that, for a moment Ebben was at a loss what to answer, so Malen, the milkmaid, took the opportunity of changing ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... her in the delicious wriggle of her glorious backside. After we had soaked for some time in all the ecstasies of the after-languour. I withdrew, to place her on her hands and knees for the next bout, but took advantage of her position to gamahuche her again into spending twice before I withdrew my insidious tongue. Then turning round, and gazing in rapture on that most noble and massive bottom, which, as I have before remarked, I never saw equalled by any woman, I stooped, and closely embraced and kissed its divine orifice, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... responsibility and subverts all essential difference of right and wrong, they have found the means of proving and explaining, "the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation," that is, the great and only sufficient antidotes of the right faith against this insidious poison. For Pantheism—trick it up as you will—is but a painted Atheism. A mask of perverted Scriptures may hide its ugly face, but cannot change a ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to this kind of ambiguity, and in practice still more insidious, is the ambiguity which arises from the connotation or emotional implications of words. The use of "republican" and "democrat" cited above runs over into this kind of confusion. In collegiate athletics ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... the publication of their circular letter and declaration in all the provincial newspapers, "that the good people of the United States may be informed of what nature are the Commissioners, and what the terms, with expectation of which the insidious Court of Great Britain had endeavoured to amuse and disarm them; and that the few who still remain suspended by a hope, founded either on the justice or moderation of their late King, might now at length be ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... creature in the picture confined itself to a ribonny dress which floated charmingly about it—and discharged her flowers. She was prepared for astonishment in her audience, and her reception was all she could ask; but what she was not prepared for was the insidious decay which had set in among the blooms, and which robbed them entirely of their natural colour and fragrance, transforming them into a composition recognized by polite people only upon their lawns. It had been Mary's first encounter with the baffling thaumaturgy of chemistry; and to the end ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... sweetness and poison intermixed. I have never had my soul strangled by the coils of a woman's hair—black hair, black as night,—in the perfumed meshes of which a jewelled serpent gleams ... I have never felt the insidious horror of a love like strong drink mounting through the blood to the brain, and there making inextricable confusion of time, space, eternity, everything, except the passion itself; never, never have I felt all this, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... sister, whose delicate health alarmed them all, more and more, as time went on, was only another royal road to Lydia's heart. Elizabeth was becoming frail, shadowy, her appetite was fitful, her eyes larger and more wistful, her fingers smaller and weaker. No one seemed to realize the insidious oncreepings of "the white man's disease," consumption, that was paling Elizabeth's fine English skin, heightening her glorious English color, sapping her delicate English veins. Only young George would tell himself over and ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... want of natural affinity to the family; but, it far exceeded her self-command to make a direct allusion to it to Robert Willoughby. Still, it was now rarely absent from her mind; the love she bore the captain and his wife, and Beulah, and little Evert, coming to her heart through a more insidious and possibly tenderer tie, than that of purely filial or sisterly affection. It was, indeed, this every-day regard, strangely deepened and enlivened by that collateral feeling we so freely bestow on them ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... better feeding, better dressing, better health and better child-culture? Is it any wonder that to our parlor-mindedness the daily press descends, gives us the pap we are used to, and then artfully peppers our pap, insinuating some sparkle of alcohol, some solace of insidious drug, that we may "get the habit" more firmly? Is it any wonder that we, parlor-bred and newspaper-fed, continue to cry out fiercely against personal, primitive, parlor sins, and remain calm and unshocked by world-sins that should ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... their bloodhound sockets, vacantly on him, and assume that the detonations were part of the tour's programme? Could he not fill him up with conflicting alcohols, and see what inebriety would do for him? But Mr. Ducksmith declined insidious potations. He drank only at meal-times, and sparingly. Aristide prayed that some Thais might come along, cast her spell upon him, and induce him to wink. He himself was powerless. His raciest stories ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... holds, Daughter of sapient Atlas, who the abyss Knows to its bottom, and the pillars high Himself upbears which sep'rate earth from heav'n. His daughter, there, the sorrowing Chief detains, 70 And ever with smooth speech insidious seeks To wean his heart from Ithaca; meantime Ulysses, happy might he but behold The smoke ascending from his native land, Death covets. Canst thou not, Olympian Jove! At last relent? Hath not Ulysses oft With victims slain amid Achaia's fleet ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... cried Kate. "You have a great deal to do with all our lives. You are a dear old insidious sapper-and-miner, looking at first very inoffensive, and then working your way into our affections, and spoiling us with coaxing. How you behave about children, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Another way would be to call it an essay upon insecurity, although the word essay is too dry to use in a story which is fairly awash with alcohol. The war, the story seems to say, sapped our security of property and comfort and life. But insecurity is an insidious disease that spreads, like bacteria, where strength is relaxed. It infects the lives of those who have lost their certainties and become doubtful of their wills. In this relaxed society of the 1920's, where nothing seemed certain but the need of money and a drink, insecurity spread ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... law of England, I see it excepted to, though ignorantly, in two points. The one, that it should make no difference between an insidious and foul murder, and the killing of a man upon fair terms, as they now call it. The other, that the law hath not provided sufficient punishment and reparations for contumely of words, as the lie, and the like. But these are no better than childish novelties ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... retired with Margaret to the latter's room, he began to feel disturbed in spite of his firm belief that his cause was wholly that of justice victorious. Margaret had insidious ways of stating a case; and her point of view, no matter how absurd or unjust, was almost always adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Schofield ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... hand, is more practical. He knows his own people better, and anticipates much greater success from an insidious surprise in which the warriors shall stealthily crawl over walls and through windows upon the unguarded and unsuspecting garrison, and ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... father, again resenting with impotent passion the change in their fortunes, but ending usually by comforting herself with the thought that Mr. Van Dam was true to her. He was as true and faithful as an insidious, incurable disease when once infused into the system. His infernal policy now was to gradually alienate her interest from her family and centre it in him. Though promising nothing in an open, manly way, he adroitly made her believe that only through him, could ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... remaining two talk'd together about the singular events of the evening. As the time wore on, Gills show'd no disposition to leave his cosy chair; but sat toasting his feet, and bending over the coals. Gradually the insidious heat and the lateness of the hour began to exercise their influence over the old man. The drowsy indolent feeling which every one has experienced in getting thoroughly heated through by close contact with a glowing fire, spread in each ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... thrust with the very forces which gave it birth. Once having happened, it so acts as to persist. But it should be remarked that this opposition between the careless and rough course of the cosmos, the insidious forces of dissolution, on the one hand, and the self-preserving care of the organism on the other, is present absolutely ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... there would have been no necessary harm in working a miracle to feed Himself. But its evil is betrayed by the words, 'If Thou art the Son of God,' and the answer of our Lord, which begins emphatically with 'man,' puts us on the right track to understand why He repelled the insidious proposal even while He was faint with hunger. To yield to it would have been to shake off for His own sake the human conditions which He had taken for our sakes, and to seek to cease to be Son of man in acting as Son of God. He takes no notice of the title given by Satan, but falls back ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... religious aspect, it concurs with Christianity a certain way, and then diverges from it; and consequently proves in the event, sometimes its serviceable ally, sometimes, from its very resemblance to it, an insidious and dangerous foe. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... encouragement, however, deepened and strengthened his hopes, in spite of her insidious hints concerning Mr. Pixley's possible intentions. For she was a shrewd, shrewd woman, and those soft brown eyes of hers saw far and deep. And, since she bade him hope, hope he would, though every brick in London town became a Pixley set ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... to appear on your apples out here, is one of the most insidious diseases we have in the whole fruit industry. I think that scab fungous disease is probably the one that affects you the most. Now, scab fungus will not be noticed particularly in the spring of the year. The time that those spores are most prevalent, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... with vexatious passions; may, by false reports, odious suggestions, and slanderous defamations, blast our credit, raise a storm of general hatred, and conjure up thousands of enemies against us; may, by insidious practices, supplant and undermine us, prejudice our welfare, endanger our estate, and involve us in a ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... a situation typical of all that is worst in American industrial life, a local manufacturing enterprise grown rich upon the labor of underpaid foreigners, through the practice of all the vicious, lawless, and insidious methods of an ingrown autocracy, and had believed it to be fairly representative. Had not Horace Vanney, doubtless genuine in his belief, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and more insidious crimes against the political state, it is enough to say that graft has become a science in city, state and nation. Losses by such misapplication of public funds—piled Pelion on Ossa—no longer run in the millions but the hundreds of millions. Our city governments ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious re—ception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... a common barker at envied power—to beat the drum of faction, and sound the trumpet of insidious patriotism, only to displace a rival,—or to be a servile voter in proud corruption's filthy train,—to market out my voice, my reason, and my trust, to the party-broker, who best can promise, or pay for prostitution; these, sir, are services my nature abhors,—for ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... mechanism or relationship known to biology which could account for what is popularly termed "pre-natal influence." A developing embryo has its own circulation, so insulated from that of the mother that only a few of the most virulent and insidious disease germs can ever pass the barrier. The general health of the mother is of utmost importance to the vitality, chances of life, constitution and immunity from disease of the unborn child. Especially must she be free from diseases which may be communicated to the ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... however, was very slow to be convinced. Petitions of Independent congregations for toleration to themselves were coolly received and neglected; the Presbyterians more and more saw the importance of making Anti-Toleration their rallying dogma; more and more the call to be wary against this insidious notion of Toleration rang through the pulpits of England and Scotland. [Footnote: Hanbury's Historical Memorials relating to the Independents, Vol. II. pp. 68-ll7; where ample extracts from the pamphlets mentioned ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... observed, to prevent his religion from damaging his morality. The simpleminded people with whom this sharp-witted and fresh-spirited young Englishwoman met had not fortified themselves against that insidious peril. One woman told a lie and the offense was sheeted home to her. 'Ah, well,' she replied, in a nonchalant and easy way, 'I do not feel that I have grieved the Spirit much!' George Eliot was horrified. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... Sampson, from whom, in his own juridical style of wit, he contrived to extract great amusement, both for himself and one or two friends whom the Colonel regaled on the same occasion. The grave and laconic simplicity of Sampson's answers to the insidious questions of the barrister, placed the bonhomie of his character in a more luminous point of view than Mannering had yet seen it. Upon the same occasion he drew forth a strange quantity of miscellaneous ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the only ones who need information upon the subject. Thousands of young men are to-day being treated for seminal troubles who will never be cured, because they are entirely ignorant of the existence of a Varicocele of the Cord, that most insidious and dangerous of all forms of Varicocele, or, if aware of it, do not understand the terrible influence it has on their Sexual Powers, and how great and persistent a stumbling-block it will be in ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... the timorous prudence of this judicious class is far from exempting them from the dominion of chance, a subtle and insidious power, who will intrude upon privacy and embarrass caution. No course of life is so prescribed and limited, but that many actions must result from arbitrary election. Every one must form the general plan of his conduct by his own reflections; he must resolve whether ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... apprehensions about his own re-election were keen, and the resignation of Chase, along with the retention of Blair, seemed likely to provoke anger which was very dangerous to himself. An excellent successor to the indispensable man was soon found. Chase found more satisfaction than ever in insidious opposition to Lincoln. Lincoln's opportunity of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... finding the tribal cure for cancer; of the time when, on a girl-chase, he had toured with a theatrical company for a few months while his father thought he was at the hospital working. Her sponge-like eagerness for all the Romance, the Adventure he could give her was insidious in its effect on him; she was flattered that he, with all his cleverness, his "grown-up-ness" that went so queerly with his babyishness, should have so thrown himself on her mercy; to her nineteen years it seemed a wonderful and beautiful thing that a man of twenty-seven should find in her an anchor. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... they can well be received and observed without any violence to good conscience." (C. R. 7, 270.) It was as late as September, 1556 that Melanchthon, though even then only in a qualified way, admitted that he had sinned in this matter, and should have kept aloof from the insidious counsels of the politicians. (8, 839.) Indeed, in 1557 and 1560 the Leipzig and Wittenberg theologians still defended the position they had occupied during the Interim. Evidently, then apart from other motives of ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Domestic treason, with insidious stab, Snatched from Zenobia's side her gallant lord, And threw into her hand the exigencies Of an unstable and capricious throne. Yet was her genius not inadequate. The precepts of experience, intertwined With intellectual ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... cast a hurried glance over her shoulder. Alas, they had not calculated on the insidious levels of the terraced plain, and the faithful Pedro had suddenly disappeared; the intervention of six inches of rising wild oats had wiped him out of the prospect and their possible salvation as completely as if he had been miles ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... whole claim is in full force. In the course of a month or two, perhaps in a less period, a sheriff's writ is served, and the poor fellow's furniture, or small stock in trade, is seized, and he broken all up again. To have replied—"You have no claim against me," to the insidious question, seemed in the mind of the poor, but honest man, so much like a public confession that he was a rogue, that he could not do it. And yet this was his only right course, and he should have taken it firmly. Letters are often written, calling attention to the old matter, ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... sullen and discontented faces; a spirit of insubordination was beginning to manifest itself among the troops, and the very men who would have rushed to the cannon's mouth, grew cowardly at the approach of the invisible foe that stole away their lives, by the gradual and insidious poison of disease. The songs and jests of the bivouac were hushed, the white tents were mournful as sepulchres, and the men lost all confidence in their leaders. They now accused the emperor and Lacy of incapacity, and declared that they must either be disbanded ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Indian public opinion have been poisoned for years past by those who claim to represent the intelligence and enlightenment of modern India. Only too graphically also do they illustrate one of the most unpleasantly characteristic features of the literature of Indian unrest—namely, its insidious appeals to the Hindu Scriptures and the Hindu deities, and its deliberate vilification of everything English. Calumny and abuse, combined with a wealth of sacred imagery, supply the place of any serious process of reasoning such as is displayed in Mr. Pal's programme ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... he said, "how the insidious something which men call Death seems to grow nearer to me day by day. Now, as we stood together, I felt just a touch of the cold hand; the touch was but a feather weight, but any instant it will come down like a giant on its prey. It is terrible to stand as ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... was once a light in the re-reformed faith. That was the reason, said Mrs. Welland, why the owner of Redbeck House continued to dwell in foreign parts. If ever she came back at all, it would be as an insidious enemy; but more likely she would never return; possibly her life would close in a convent, like that of other hapless Englishwomen whose personal property excited the covetousness of the Pope. In the Bartles newspaper there had appeared, from time to time, enigmatic paragraphs, ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... at this point that the guileful James delivered his insidious yorker, and the dull thud of the tennis ball on the board which served as the wicket told a listening world that Charchester had won the fourth test match, and that the scores ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... resisted the depressing influence of disease. But she was perfectly aware of her danger even before the bloom faded from her cheek sufficiently to excite the alarm of those around her. It was a malady which had proved fatal to many of her family; and she had too often witnessed its insidious approaches in others, to be deceived when she was herself the victim. Towards the close of winter, she was confined entirely to her apartment, and Lucie, and the faithful Annette, were her kind and unwearied attendants. Her decline was from ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... suppose they had the slightest weight upon his side of their discussion. The more he thought the less they seemed to be on Likeman's side, until at last they began to take on a complexion entirely opposed to the old man's insidious arguments, until indeed they began to bear the extraordinary interpretation of a ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... democracy than anarchy is snobbery. The former is violent, while the latter is insidious. Both poison the source of the stream of democracy. If the home instills into the minds of children the notion of inherent superiority, they will carry this into the school and it will produce a discord. A farmer and ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... discrimination as to persons, but they still uphold discrimination as to localities.[3] Now, among abuses of sovereign power, this is one of the most galling, for of all taxes the transportation tax is perhaps that which is most searching, most insidious, and, when misused, most destructive. The price paid for transportation is not so essential to the public welfare as its equality; for neither persons nor localities can prosper when the necessaries of life cost them more than they cost their competitors. In towns, no cup of water ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... region would have consented to a form of government which should give to a majority of three fourths of the States the power to deprive them of their dearest rights and privileges. Yet to this extremity the new-born theory of the power of amendment would go. Against this insidious assault, this wooden horse which it is threatened to introduce into the citadel of our liberties, I have sought to warn the inheritors of our free institutions, and earnestly do invoke the resistance of all ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... time a slow insidious madness worked in Heathcliff. When it was at its height he was not fierce, but strangely silent, scarcely breathing; hushed, as a person who draws his breath to hear some sound only just not heard as yet, as a man who strains his eyes to see the speck on the horizon which will rise the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... first, that chief renown'd— The Power of Love! by every nation own'd. His sway thou soon, as well as we, shalt know, Stung to the heart by goads of dulcet woe. In him unthinking youth's misgovern'd rage, Join'd with the cool malignity of age, Is known to mingle with insidious guile, Deep, deep conceal'd beneath an infant's smile. The child of slothful ease, and sensual heat— By sweet delirious thoughts, in dark retreat, Mature in mischief grown—he springs away, A winged god, and thousands own his sway. Some, as thou seest, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... at Gettysburg, nor cry continually, 'O Beautiful! My country!' Yet, in the long dull interspans between these sacred moments we need some one to remind us that we are a nation. For in the dead vast and middle of the years insidious foes are lurking—anaemic refinements, cosmopolitan decadencies, the egotistic and usurping pride of great cities, the cold sickening of the heart at the reiterated exposures of giant fraud and corruption. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... much of this little pool,' he thought. And as he smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound itself redly round the rise ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... and was waiting impatiently for the death of Edward, an event which would enable him to control yet more completely the supreme power, through the puppet queen whom he had ready at hand to place upon the throne. An Italian of the sixteenth century, steeped in the traditions of the bloody and insidious state-craft of Milan and the Lombard cities, Cardan would naturally shrink from committing himself to any such perilous utterance: all the more for the reason that he had already formed an estimate of the English as a fierce and cruel people. With his character as a magician ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... reality fully a mile distant from the nearest point of the coast, seem in this clear atmosphere as though they were lying within a stone's throw of the beach. Around these bare bluffs of rock, seemingly flung by the hand of Nature in a sportive mood into the blue waves, lingers one of the most insidious of all the old Greek legends, for it was past these lonely cliffs that the cunning Ulysses sailed during his long career of mazy wanderings in search of his island home and his faithful Penelope. In those days, so the Greek bard tells us, there dwelt upon ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... territories. He was shortly after appointed to the command of the brig Argus, stationed for the protection of our commerce on the southern maritime frontier. In this situation he acted with vigilance and fidelity, and though there were at one time insidious suggestions to the contrary, it has appeared that he conformed to his instructions, promoted the public interest, and gave entire satisfaction to the government. In 1811, he was transferred to the command of the sloop-of-war Wasp, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... To-day, as in the days of Lee, the Mormon missionary is abroad in the world. He is in your midst; he makes his converts among your neighbors; within the month, on one detected occasion, he stood at the portals of your public schools and gave his insidious pamphlets, preaching Mormonism, into the ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... Japanese walnut might not be a safeguard in the area where they don't have the disease, in that you will detect the disease the quickest on the Japanese walnut, and in that way anyone would become wise to it, rather than if it was in the black walnut. It might be so insidious that it could be well spread before persons knew they had it at all. I wonder if the Japanese walnut, through its quickness in showing the disease, might not be a safeguard to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... impossible. The early Christian might be wrong in believing that by entering the brotherhood men could in a few years become perfect even as their Father in Heaven was perfect, but he believed it and acted flatly and fearlessly on the belief: this is the type of the higher visionary. But all the insidious dangers of the vision; the idleness, the procrastination, the mere mental aestheticism, come in when the vision is indulged, as half our Socialistic conceptions are, as a mere humour or fairy-tale, with a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... increasing in intensity for the last twenty-four hours, from the insidious steeping of a Scotch mist to the violence of a chronic thunderstorm, and had about reached this crisis when we started in the morning for the Pre de S. Livres. I had already tested its effects before breakfast, in a search for the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... who is by and by to become a father. Under these circumstances, he has fallen under the too common temptation of selfish love, and a desire to wait upon and cultivate an exclusive intimacy with the woman who was to bear a child through him. This is an insidious temptation, very apt to attack people under such circumstances; but it must nevertheless be struggled against." Charles, he went on to say, had come to him for advice in this case, and he (Noyes) had at first refused to ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... travelling that such good fortune must be largely attributed. His faring on foot has caused him to see much that he would otherwise have never seen; it has also widened his knowledge of his fellow-men, and has helped him to control prejudices which are not to be entirely overcome, but ever remain an insidious snare to the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... biography. He realises the hopelessness of writing a history of the Victorian Age; it can only be dealt with in detail; it must be nibbled into here and there; discredited piecemeal; subjected to the ravages of the white ant. He has seen that the lives of the great Victorians lend themselves to this insidious kind of examination, because what was worst in the pretentiousness of their age is to be found enshrined in the Standard Biographies (in two volumes, post octavo) under which most of them are buried. Mr. Strachey has some criticism of these monsters ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... had skirted the Pacific Coast from Cape Horn to Alaska, and had brought to the attention of the fur-dealing and fur-wearing world the sea-otter of the Northern Pacific. He also gave a psychological prophetic glimpse of the insidious sealskin sack. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... Nawab's only faithful general, Mir Mudin, who was mortally wounded by a cannon-shot, was, as we have said, the crisis of the battle. It so disheartened the Nawab that from that moment he gave himself up in despair, and became only too ready to listen to the insidious advice of the leaders who had betrayed him, that he should quit the field and leave it to them to continue the battle. Important as Plassey was, and well as it was fought by Clive and his small ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... not merely enthroned, he is enshrined. To the nobility he is omnipotence, and to the rabble mystery. Since the occupation of the country by the Jesuits, many foreigners have fancied that the government is becoming more and more silent, insidious, secretive; and that this midnight council is but the expression of a "policy of stifling." It is an inquisition,—not overt, audacious, like that of Rome, but nocturnal, invisible, subtle, ubiquitous, like that of Spain; proceeding without witnesses or warning; ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... all golf clubs have extensive bars! It is not hard to understand why men who realize that they have become incurable victims of the insidious habit of golf should wish to drown the thought in drink. But in Birmingham they can't do it—not, at least, at bars. Alabama has beaten her public bars into soda fountains and quick-lunch rooms, and though her club bars still look like real ones, the drinks served are so soft that ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... sea-voyage of three or four days. They are especially inviting to those persons who have occasion to avoid the rigor of Northern winters. People threatened with consumption seek Nassau on sanitary principles, and yet it was found upon inquiry that many natives die of that insidious disease, which rapidly runs its career when it is first developed in a tropical climate. To the author it would seem that consumptives might find resorts better adapted to the recovery of their health. Intermittent fever, also, is not unknown ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the silence he heard a gentle scratching sound—low, but very distinct in the quiet of the night. It came from the door of the house. Ferrier crept into the hall and listened intently. There was a pause for a few moments, and then the low insidious sound was repeated. Someone was evidently tapping very gently upon one of the panels of the door. Was it some midnight assassin who had come to carry out the murderous orders of the secret tribunal? Or was it some agent who was marking up that the ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... labors. But there is such a want of straightforwardness, and we might almost say, of real faith, in his theological statements, that no one can be surprised to find that, while he is taken as the representative of orthodoxy by some, he has been attacked by others as the most dangerous and insidious enemy of Christianity. Writers of the school of De Maistre see in him a decided atheist ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... to shun him as a moral leper; but how shall I tell you that, not satisfied with pressing his effusions upon the shrinking object of his precocious affections, the impious wretch has availed himself of the shelter of a church to cloak his insidious advances, and even force a response to them from a ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... believe, this letter be spurious, none the less may it serve to indicate how firmly the persuasion was fixed in the minds of the Protestants that insidious designs were cherished ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... and insolent, Of warlike aspect and defiant mien, With wall and rampart unassailable, Impregnable to the assaults of man— Surrender at the mold's insidious tread. ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... lurking in brandy balls. Our society women while in theatres sit grossly intoxicated from eating these candies filled with brandy. When the fire fiend sweeps down upon them they are unable to escape. The candy stores are the devil's distilleries. If you assist in the distribution of these insidious confections you assist in the destruction of the bodies and souls of your fellow-beings, and in the filling of our jails, asylums and almshouses. Think, girl, ere you touch the money for which brandy ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... spending the time with his old friend and comrade and cousin, John de Brocas. It had become evident to all who knew him that John was not long for this world. He might linger on still some few years, but the insidious disease we now call consumption had firm hold upon him, and he was plainly marked as one who would not live to make any name in the world. He showed no disposition to seclude himself from his kind by entering ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the contrary, is one incessant course of strife, struggle and calamity, beginning with the unprovoked attack on the Ciconians. Polyphemus the savage Cyclops is the opposite of the civil ruler Alcinous; Circe, the enchantress, is the insidious foe to domestic life represented by Arete; State and Family in Phaeacia are counterbalanced by an anti-State and an anti-Family in Fableland. Thus man and woman are shown in the two different places as institutional and anti-institutional. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... built one over the other, and all above the ground, to be safe from the encroachment of water, the ever-pervading foe of New Orleans. Not only must the dead be stowed away above-ground, but the living must wage a daily war against this insidious foe, and watch with vigilance ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... be inappreciable under the name of Doppelkinn, which happens to be, as doubtless you have already surmised, a name of mine own invention. I could likewise tell you how the ancient dukes of Barscheit fought off the insidious flattery of Napoleon, only it is a far interest, and Barscheit is simply a characteristic, not a name. Some day I may again seek a diplomatic mission, and what government would have for its representative a teller ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... oaths. No American carried small bright flashing daggers such as he carried in his inner pockets, nor did Americans talk glibly as he talked of weird poisons, not every day drugs, but marvelous, death dealing concoctions done up in lustrous jewel-like capsules or diluted in sparkling, insidious gorgeous hued fluids. The man was too wise—altogether too wise to be an American. He had traveled much, knew strange secrets. They rather thought he knew black art. Certainly he knew more of the arts of healing than the ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... study much French on that morning in late October. For suddenly a new, insidious question jumped into the forefront of his thoughts: Why had he blurted out everything to Mr. Beaver? ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... whole corpus of international sanctions on which her independence finally rests. In the last analysis, then, the Chinese note of the 9th February to the German Government was a categorical and unmistakable reply to all the insidious attempts which had been made since the beginning of the war to place her outside and beyond the operation of the Public Law of Europe; and it is solely and entirely in that light that her future actions must be judged. The leaders who direct the destinies of China became fully prepared for ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... takes sometimes little less than Ithuriel's spear to make the low, insidious, unobtrusive forms of evil stand up and shew themselves what ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... stretches from Switzerland to the sea is far worse to face than the fire of machine guns or the great black trench-mortar bombs that come twisting down through the air. It is more terrible than the frost and the rain—you cannot even stamp your feet to drive away the insidious chill that mud always brings. Nothing can keep it from your hands and face and clothes; there is no taking off your boots to dry in the trenches—you must lie down just as you are, and often you are lucky if you have two empty sandbags under you to save ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... her, that heightened that reckless desire for risk and excitement which really made up the greater part of his gallantry. Nevertheless, as was his habit, he had treated her always with a charming unconsciousness of his own attentions, and a frankness that seemed inconsistent with any insidious approach. In fact, Mr. Hamlin seldom made love to anybody, but permitted it to be made to him with good-humored deprecation and cheerful skepticism. He had once, quite accidentally, while riding, come upon her when she had ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... even these measures, insidious, violent, and unconstitutional as they were, produce so much discontent as the tone and the spirit in which they were tarried into execution. The most insulting imputations on the loyalty, and even on the intellect ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... treachery'! Into what cloud cuckoo land have we been beguiled by Coleridge's laudanum trances? A limbo—of this we are confident—where Shakespeare never set foot at any moment in his life, and where no robust critical intelligence can endure for a moment. We must save ourselves from this insidious disintegration by keeping our eye upon the object, and the object is just a good (not a very good) play. Not an Ibsen, a Hauptmann, a Shaw, or a Masefield play, where the influence and ravages of these 'ideas' are certainly perceptible, but merely a Shakespeare play, one of ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... "materiel" of war, and next day expect it to act like a regular army, as to expect engines to be managed with any general prospect of success, unless the men are properly trained and prepared for the duty which is expected from them. Fire is both a powerful and an insidious enemy, and those whose business it is to attack it will best succeed when they have become skilful and experienced in ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... had resolved itself into the Delhi Sikh, Jiwan Singh. He had been on a tramp among the Hills, combating insidious Home-Rule fairy-tales among the villagers: and finding the Sahib very ill, had stayed on ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... friends, and to restore the repute of his political connection, thought fit, without consulting his colleagues, to publish a manifesto denouncing the aggression of the Pope upon our Protestantism as insolent and insidious, and as expressing a pretension of supremacy over the realm of England which made ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... power would be taken away from the assemblies. Instantly the distinction of "external" and "internal" taxation was abandoned; and from end to end of the Atlantic seaboard a cry went up that the duties were an insidious attack on the liberties of the Americans, an outrageous taking of their property without their consent, and a wanton interference with their {42} governments. Not merely agitators such as the shrewd Samuel Adams and the eloquent Patrick Henry uttered these views, but men of far more considerable ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... permitted to Mr. Burke, he would have shown distinctly, and in detail, that what the Assembly calling itself National had held out as a large and liberal toleration is in reality a cruel and insidious religious persecution, infinitely more bitter than any which had been heard of within this century.—That it had a feature in it worse than the old persecutions.—That the old persecutors acted, or pretended ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... may be spoiled by unwise handling. I think I can promise you that I will not spoil it. I feel that Betty is my vocation; and I shall set myself up as a rival of Wordsworth's 'nature,' of whose methods I have always had a decided distrust, in spite of his insidious verses." ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... consideration inclines me to hesitate about the policy of a present nomination. It is this—that Jackson ought first to be admonished to be passive: for, the moment he shall be announced as a candidate, he will be assailed by the Virginia junto with menaces, and with insidious promises of boons and favours. There is danger that Jackson might be wrought upon by such practices. If an open nomination be made, an express should ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... this singular change in character. He had trained himself, in order to fight a paralyzing something in the desert's influence, to oppose with memory and thought an insidious primitive retrogression to what was scarcely consciousness at all, merely a savage's instinct of sight and sound. He felt the need now of redoubled effort. For there was a sheer happiness in drifting. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... gains the moiety of a fortune by marrying the young, gay Miranda, but cannot rest without securing to himself the portion of the elder sister as well. Althea's thoughtful and less volatile nature has hitherto resisted the assaults of love, but her insidious brother-in-law undermines her virtue by giving her wanton books and tempting her with soft speeches until she yields to his wishes. When he attempts to make her sign a deed of gift instead of a will to provide for their child, she discovers ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... the will of God, not belief in destiny, not fortitude or fatalism, not unselfishness or devil-may-care indifference, had saved the people from the haunting dread of being mown down by the unseen and insidious foe. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... idea of being able to forget all about Andrew J. Burris for a little while was almost insidious. Malone liked it more the more he thought about it. Burris went on naming vacation spots and drawing magnificent travel-agency pictures of how wonderful life could be, and after a while Malone left. There just wasn't anything else to say. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... mental inside is equally indecent and equally discomposing. 'I have never thought about thinking,' said the wise Goethe. No one can go through a treatise on insanity and come out as sane as he started. And there is an even more insidious way in which this human vivisection operates for evil. People now forgive their friends—they call their eccentricities 'pathological,' and endure instead of discouraging them. I had two letters this very morning. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... that may be, our Lord here, with a singular mixture of dignity, tenderness, and decisiveness, puts aside the insidious snare without shaming its contrivers, and turns from the kinsmen, with whom He had no real bond, to draw closer to Himself, and pour out His love over, those who do the will of His Father in heaven. His words go very deep; let us try ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... his mind. And while we see around us some men addressing themselves with stout, brave hearts to what Carlyle terms, with homely vigor, their "heavy job of work," and, by denying themselves many an insidious indulgence, doing it effectually and well, and rearing up well-taught families in usefulness and comfort, to be the stay of the future, we see other men yielding to the ignoble solicitations of appetite or of indolence, and becoming worse than useless themselves, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... very cold. The insidious fog penetrated his tightly buttoned coat, and set his teeth to chattering in spite of the aid he sometimes drew from a pocket-flask. His clothes were wet and the stern-sheets were covered with spray. The comforts of ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... is as insidious as the sleeping-draught of an Indian soothsayer, under its spell men go mad for gain and forget that to stand on the brow of a mountain at night, arms outstretched in kinship to Vega and Capella, is a golden moment of purer alloy than certified bonds. What magnate remembers where the best tackle ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... opinion and the compact majority and all that devilry? No, thank you! And what I want to do is so simple and clear and straightforward. I only want to drum into the heads of these curs the fact that the liberals are the most insidious enemies of freedom—that party programmes strangle every young and vigorous truth—that considerations of expediency turn morality and justice upside down—and that they will end by making life here unbearable. Don't you think, Captain Horster, that I ought to be able ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... closely enough, may we not observe that the moral force of character and the higher intellectual capacities in parents seem often to wear out mysteriously in the course of transmission to children? In these days of insidious nervous exhaustion and subtly-spreading nervous malady, is it not possible that the same rule may apply, less rarely than we are willing to admit, to the bodily gifts ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... than we are here, at this moment, the designs of the mischief-makers will not fail to be accomplished, and brethren and friends will be made strangers and enemies to each other, without ever having said or thought a thing amiss of each other. I presume that the most insidious falsehoods are daily carried to you, as they are brought to me, to engage us in the passions of our informers, and stated so positively and plausibly as to make even doubt a rudeness to the narrator; who, imposed on himself, has no other ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... aware how firmly fixed in our Constitution is the policy of this Confederacy against the opening of that trade, but we are informed that false and insidious suggestions have been made by the agents of the United States at European Courts of our intention to change our constitution as soon as peace is restored, and of authorizing the importation of slaves from Africa. If, therefore, ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... just as absolutely as though I were his chattel. Talk about abolishing slavery! We have not abolished slavery; we have only abolished one rude form of it—chattel slavery. There is a deeper and more insidious form, a more cursed form yet before us to abolish, in this industrial slavery that makes a man a virtual slave, while taunting him and mocking him in the name ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the murders of the Lusitania were justified. A German chemist friend of mine told me that the chemists of Germany were called on, after poison gas had been met by British and French, to devise some new and deadly chemical. Flame throwers soon appeared together with more insidious gases. And it is only because of the vigilance of other nations that German spies have not succeeded in sowing the microbes of pestilence in countries ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... general knowledge of the existence of this sentiment which has called into being the present epidemic of curious cults and catholicons—due, it would appear, more to this insidious temptation to such commercial enterprise than to any other cause—and which form so prominent a feature throughout all sections of the community—and especially in the press—throughout the length and breadth of the land. To such, in an alarming ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... your facts." The voice was friendly, almost paternal, but it held an insidious challenge, too, and for one betraying moment all the native antagonism that was really there flashed in the Colonel's eyes. Few enemies of his had been permitted to see it so clearly. It was a triumph for Neil, if a barren one. "Be ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... and he suddenly thought of Mrs. Heeny's clippings. His mother, alarmed by an insidious gain in weight, had brought the masseuse back from New York with her, and Mrs. Heeny, with her old black bag and waterproof, was established in one of the grand bedrooms lined with mirrors. She had been loud in her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... literalism—a school which in after life both my brother and myself came to regard as the main obstacle to the complete overthrow of unbelief; we therefore looked upon it with something stronger than aversion, and for my own part I still deem it perhaps the most insidious enemy which the cause of Christ has ever encountered. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... man had nothing else to do except this second work of this Commandment, he would yet have to work all his life-time in order to fight this vice and drive it out, so common, so subtle, so quick and insidious is it. Now we all pass by this good work and exercise ourselves in many other lesser good works, nay, through other good works we overthrow this and forget it entirely. So the holy Name of God, which alone should be honored, is taken in vain ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... civilization brings in such quantity seemed all at once to mean the abeyance of some central life or power men ought to share with—Nature.... You shall read it all in my written report. I merely wish to show you now how the insidious thing got at me along the line of my special knowledge. I saw the truth that priests and doctors are the only possible and necessary 'professions' in the world, and—that they should be ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the insidious Falcon, by not making his approaches in a way to alarm her, acquired her friendship as well as her gratitude; and, in short, she got used to him and liked him. Not being bound by any limit of fact whatever, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... so he discharged himselfe of them, and thereby disobliged those persons, who thought their quality, tho' not their busines, required a patient and respectfull entertainment. This I reflect upon, because I heard from a good hand, that the Marquiss of Argile making him an insidious visit, and he, knowing he neither loved him nor the Church, entertaining him not with that franknes he should have done, but plainly telling him, he was at that time a little busy about the King's affairs, this great Lord took it so much in indignation, and esteem'd it such a Lordly ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those ...
— Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death • Patrick Henry
... examination of the heart during acute infections will generally show signs of endocarditis if it is present, even if there are no subjective symptoms, the disease may be so insidious as not to be noted until a valvular lesion occurs. Often, however, during the course of the disease, especially in rheumatism, there is a slight increase in fever and there is a discomfort complained of in the region of the heart, frequently accompanied by slight dyspnea. Real pain is seldom ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... has generated innumerable paralogisms which disfigure the pages of their philosophical writings. This procedure is grounded in the common fallacy of supposing that infinity and quantity are compatible attributes, and susceptible of mathematical synthesis. This insidious and plausible error is ably refuted by a writer in the "North American Review."[219] We can not do better than transfer his argument to our pages in an ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... [Greek: gnothi seauton] of the Greek philosopher lies the secret of all reform. To know one's faults is already one half the battle to correct them. He who becomes conscious that health of body and mind are steadily yielding to the inroads of an insidious foe, is worse than a fool if he do not at once apply the knife to the seat of disease, however painful may be the operation. And though to-day we hear but little of reform, and all parties seem striving which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... now. By an insidious mass hypnosis minions from that other dimension ... or was it one supreme intelligence ... had deliberately sown the seeds of dissension. The reduction of the world's mental power had been ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... whose vile proceedings so many tales were told; these were the men, of all ranks and classes, who poured into the jealous despot's ear the venom of calumny and falsehood; these the spies and traitors who, by secret and insidious denunciations, brought sudden arrest and unmerited punishment upon their innocent fellow-citizens, and who kept the King advised of all that passed in Madrid, from the amorous intrigues of a grocer's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... only Stratagem left to draw him in) was given him: That pursuant to this the Donation it self was without Delay, before several reputable Witnesses, tendered to him gratis, with the open Profession of not the least Reserve, or most minute Condition; but that yet immediately after Induction, his insidious Introducer (or her crafty Procurer, which you will) industriously spread the Report, which had reached my Ears, not only in the Neighbourhood of that said Church, but in London, in the University, in mine and his own County, and where-ever else it might ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... was calculated not only to ruin the mother-country, but the colonies themselves; and that the heads of the rebellion, neglecting to take the sentiments of the people at large, had refused to accept the British proposals for peace; that for his part, rather than trust to the insidious offers of France, "I preferred," he continues, "those of Great Britain, thinking it infinitely wiser and safer to place my confidence in her justice and generosity than to trust a monarchy too feeble to ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... were fixed and content and passionless. She liked to sit in the sun, feel its warmth, see its brightness; and sometimes she almost forgot to go back to her patient. She fought at times against an insidious change—a growing older—a going backward; at other times she drifted through hours that seemed quiet and golden, in which nothing happened. And by and by when she realized that the drifting hours were gradually swallowing up the restless and active hours, then strangely, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... cough troubled her by day and prevented her resting at night; an accompanying weakness created some little anxiety as to what its issue might be; but, with the hoping spirit which is ever attendant on that insidious disease called consumption, she believed that the coming spring would ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... in their infancy, if it may be so called, that we ought to be upon our guard against their seduction; they are then soothing and insidious; but if we suffer them to gain strength, and establish their empire, reason, obscured and overcome, rests in a shameful dependence upon the senses; her light becomes too faint to be seen, and her voice too feeble to be heard; and the soul, hurried on by an impulse to which no obstacle is presented, ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... voice to a loud tone, replied, "Such, indeed, are the insinuations, equally false and insidious, with which the desperate emissaries of a party endeavour to poison the minds of his majesty's subjects, in defiance of common honesty and common sense. But he must be blind to all perception, and dead to candour, who does not see and own that we are involved ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... have flung it from me with unconcern. No other than an attempt to destroy Man's dearest hopes, is this infamous book: no other than an insult, the grossest imaginable, offered to the Majesty of Heaven; an attack, the more foul because it is so insidious, against the Everlasting Gospel of JESUS CHRIST. In such a cause I will not so far give in to the smooth fashion of a supple and indifferent age, as to pay these seven writers a single compliment which they will care to accept. The most foolish composition of the seven is Dr. Temple's; the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... a slender blonde, with eyebrows nearly white, and pale blue eyes, almost round; her speech honeyed, her look hypocritical, her manners insinuating and insidious. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... be that society in our day has its dangers and disorders of a different and more insidious kind, we are thankful that our lot is not cast in the harsh and troublous times of our history. All around us the former scenes of rapine and violence are changed to fertility and peace. The Old Castle serves well to illustrate the contrast. ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... ridge tops a few miles, they were shining in the window of Lucy's tiny room, perhaps lighting her fair face. It seemed that these stars were telling him all was not well in Lucy's mind and heart. He could not shake the insidious vague haunting thought, and longed for dawn, so that in the sunlight he could dispel all morbid doubts and the shadows that came ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... disease. He is the most selfish of parasites. The world for a long time disregarded him, but now acknowledges him as one of the mightiest of conquerers; for while other devastators have slain thousands, millions have fallen beneath his insidious attacks. He is a foe to be dreaded, for he is forever lying in ambush for ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... Gould for his "gold conspiracy" were those who had built their fortunes on blood-soaked army contracts. Nor could the worst aspects of Gould's conspiracy, bad as they were, begin to vie in disastrous results with the open and insidious abominations of the factory and landlord system. To repeat, it was a system in which incredible numbers of working men, women and children were killed off by the perils of their trades, by disease superinduced and aggravated by the wretchedness of ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... distinctions strove hard to save the three spiritual forms, which have been recognised as the triad of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, from confusion with the fourth form, still unknown, yet insidious through its indeterminateness, and mother of scandals. For us this triad has finished its task, because we are capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by welcoming even the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings, among the respectable forms of the ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... challenge you again. Go about this wooing as you will; dazzle the lady with your wealth and your magnificence, with your servants, your horses, your equipages; and all the splendours you can command; yet I make bold to say that not a year of your scented attentions and most insidious wiles will bear you fruit. Are ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... interest and the Irish interest, and they will be always at variance. Consider how parties within a single state are at variance, Conservatives and Radicals, in any country in Europe. The proposals of one are always insidious, dangerous or reactionary, as the case may be, in the eyes of the other; and in no case will the parties agree; they will at times even charge each other with treachery; there is never peace. It is the rule of party war. Who, then, can ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... la Plata takes its rise in one of the world's most backward plains, the home of uncivilized Indians, heartless rubber adventurers, and the most rapacious of officials. Not infrequently, the degenerate white men of these regions, yielding to the subtle and insidious influence of the tropics, inflict the most outrageous abuses upon the natives, and even kill them on slight provocation. The natives in turn hate their oppressors, and when the chance comes betray them or leave them to perish in sickness and misery. The upper Mississippi, ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... her neck. But she checked her hands, fearing that if she put it on she would never bring herself to let it go. Already as she watched and fingered it and bent her head now and again to scrutinise a stone, small insidious voices began to whisper ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... spheres of activity, and wherever he appears he is always facile princeps in the public eye. Everyone who has any knowledge of him is compelled to think about him, and those who have no direct knowledge of him—so insidious is his influence—are to be found constantly thinking in terms of Bernard Shaw. The active, talking, persuading, book-writing, lecturing, propagandist population of England has been bitten by him; it re-writes and popularises ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... whether the rapid but insidious increase of ritual in India is understood at home. In England it is bad enough, but in a heathen and Mohammedan land it is, if possible, worse; and the worst is, the spirit of it, or the spirit of tolerance toward it, which is on the increase ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... first, with displeasure and repugnance; later on, with more of toleration; and, at last, with a sense of amusement at the singularity of the notions, or the dexterity with which he defended them. The poison of his doctrines was the more insidious, because, mingled with a certain dash of good nature, and a reckless, careless easiness of disposition, always attractive to very young men. His reputation for courage, of which he had given signal ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... most was his observations about Virginia and her beggar brother. I was so proud of Virginia, I felt that her brother ought not to be a beggar. Such was the effect produced in so short a time by the insidious discourse of this man. Had he still remained at the steps, I do believe that I should have asked, probably have followed, his advice. Fortunately he had left, and, after a little reflection, I had the wisdom to go and seek Peter Anderson, and consult him as to what I could do, for to change my mode ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... working. But, with a surprising lack of political acumen, he likewise expressed his determination to preserve in the new councils the presence and power of the landlord and ex-officio element. This was, in the circumstances, with the Land Question unsettled and landlordism still an insidious power, a rather gratuitous surrender ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan |
