"Instability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Earl of Hertford, Aug. 3. Instability of the ministry. Determination to quit party. Regrets that the Earl did not espouse mr. Conway's cause. Consequences of Lord Bute's conduct. The Queen's intended visit to Strawberry. A dinner with the Duke of Newcastle. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... applied to the council of state in their behalf, but he was put off with perpetual excuses. While the affair was in agitation he went to Capua, where the prisoners were confined. "There," he writes to the Cardinal Colonna, "I saw your friends; and, such is the instability of Fortune, that I found them in chains. They support their situation with fortitude. Their innocence is no plea in their behalf to those who have shared in the spoils of their fortune. Their only expectations ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... eye through the porthole,—a great grey shoulder of land standing up in the pink light of dawn, powerful and strangely still after the distressing instability of the sea. Pale trees and long, low fortifications... close grey buildings with red roofs... little sailboats bounding seaward... up on the cliff a ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... over. He, too, was being drawn into the whirlpool. No more dreaming among his books; no more waking to the ordinary duties and cares of a reasonable life. As a natural consequence of the feeling of unsettlement, of instability, he had recourse more often than he wished to the old convivial habits, gathering about him once again, at club or restaurant, the kind of society in which he always felt at ease—good, careless, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... democratically elected president of Afghanistan and the National Assembly was inaugurated the following December. Despite gains toward building a stable central government, a resurgent Taliban and continuing provincial instability - particularly in the south and the east - remain serious challenges for ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to quiet Clotilda and persuade her to return home. The task, owing to the weakness and instability of the Baroness, was not difficult. Sylvia remained with her aunt, and her quiet, resolute disposition had a wholesome effect upon her. In the meantime Agatha had got Eberhard's address. After some search she found the house: Eberhard was ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... of personal goodness II. Unconsciousness III. Reflex action IV. Conscious experience V. Self-consciousness VI. Its degrees VII. Its acquisition VIII. Its instability ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... of two antagonistic principles. He called the one, unity, light, the right hand, equality, stability, and a straight line; the other he named binary, darkness, the left hand, inequality, instability, and a curved line. Of the colors, he attributed white to the good principle, and black to ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... of its offshore oil resources, Cameroon has one of the highest incomes per capita in tropical Africa. Still, it faces many of the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as political instability, a top-heavy civil service, and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise. The development of the oil sector led rapid economic growth between 1970 and 1985. Growth came to an abrupt halt in 1986 ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and conspicuous figures of his time, a man of brilliant abilities, a great orator, one who distinguished himself without effort in any sphere of activity he chose to enter, but whose natural gifts were marred by a restless ambition and instability of character fatal to real greatness. Clarendon describes him as "the only man I ever knew of such incomparable parts that was none the wiser for any experience or misfortune that befell him," and records his extraordinary facility in making friends and making enemies. Horace Walpole characterized ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... then that Aladdin saw him show fear. Bullets tore up the bark of the tree, and pine needles, clipped from the trees overhead, fell in showers. But he did not mind that. It was the slenderness and instability of the fallen tree that froze the marrow in his bones: would it bear his one hundred and twenty-four pounds, or would it precipitate him, an awful drop of ten feet, into the softest of muds at the bottom of the gully, where a sickeningly ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... aggressive and business-like means, and selling at the lowest price consistent with excellence of product and fairness alike to producer and consumer. But of the baser sort there are always enough to make rugged paths for those who walk uprightly, and to contribute to instability of values on the one hand, and on the other to flooding the country with publications which the home and the world would be better without. Every great city has more of the rightly made and rightly sold papers than of the other sort, and the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... conformity of opinion, and fellowship of study, should finally part in acrimonious opposition. Such a controversy was "bellum plusquam CIVILE," as Lucan expresses it. Why could not faction find other advocates? But among the uncertainties of the human state, we are doomed to number the instability of friendship. Of this dispute I have little knowledge but from the "Biographia Britannica." "The Old Whig" is not inserted in Addison's works: nor is it mentioned by Tickell in his Life; why it was omitted, the biographers doubtless give the true reason—the fact was too recent, and ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... considerable number of vain experiments, she resolved to put the matter beyond a doubt. She got out of bed and stood upright, holding on to the brass ball at the end of the bedstead. Ice-cold at first, it soon became as hot as the palm of her hand, and as the pains in her head and body and the instability of the floor proved that it would be far more intolerable to stand and walk than to lie in bed, she got into bed again; but though the change was refreshing at first, the discomfort of bed was soon as great as the discomfort of standing up. She accepted the idea that she ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... striking example of the instability of human prosperity. He was once the wealthiest man of his time in Scotland, a merchant in an extensive line of commerce, and a farmer of the public revenue; insomuch that, about 1640, he estimated his fortune at two hundred thousand pounds sterling. Sir ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... escape the necessity of saluting, and, still more, a quiver of the nerves which affected me so painfully. If ever a man did me harm, it was he; harm physical and moral. In all seriousness I believe that something of the nervous instability from which I have suffered since boyhood is traceable to those accursed hours of drill, and I am very sure that I can date from the same wretched moments a fierceness of personal pride which has been one of my most troublesome characteristics. The disposition, of course, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... sky, seemed to fall wearily into the little grave. What was the use of asking Death where her sting was, before that small, dark hole in the ground? And then my thoughts escaped me altogether—away into matters of life—and no very high matters at that—ships, freights, business. In the instability of his emotions man resembles deplorably a monkey. I was disgusted with my thoughts—and I thought: Shall I be able to get a charter soon? Time's money. . . . Will that Jacobus really put good business in my way? I must go and see him in a day ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... was actuated by opposite motives which are hard to analyze, and which in their instability have within themselves, whatever their outward advantages, the doom of failure in the highest excellence. He was a proud man, dissatisfied both with himself and his calling, resenting, with less reason ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... resolute a manner it was not difficult to see that something more was at stake than the arrest of a single man. This was so; the real issue was whether the king, with whose instability it was difficult to cope, should fall back into the hands of his old advisers or not. My arrest was a move in the game intended as a counterblast to the victory which M. de Rambouillet had gained when he persuaded the king to move to Tours; a city in the neighbourhood ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... 'You rave! I have no cause for anger. In every way I have been taught my weakness, my instability, and my unfitness for the world. I am a plexus of weaknesses, an impotent Prince, a doubtful gentleman; and you yourself, indulgent as you are, have twice reproved my levity. And shall I be angry? I may feel the unkindness, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... potential and had become actual. Since those August days at Monomoy, the convulsions had recurred at irregular intervals. The physical constitution of the Danes had refused to give way to them; the nervous instability of the Lorimers had yielded to them utterly. Unless some miracle intervened, the child must face a future of vigorous body and enfeebled brain; and Beatrix, as she watched him, told herself the melancholy truth that the day of miracles was irrevocably ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... brahmins, who stood immovable in rows on each side of her throne, became impatient: they talked about the fickleness of the sex, the impossibility of inducing them to make up their minds; they whispered wise saws and sayings from Ferdistan and others, about the caprice of women, and the instability of their natures, and the more their legs ached from such perpetual demand upon their support, the more bitter did they become in their remarks. Poor, prosing old fools! the beauteous princess had long made up her mind, and had never swerved from it through the tedious ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... to be raised. The shrowk in its ascent was caught by the uplifted debris. Beast and riders experienced in that moment all the horrors of an earthquake—they were rolled violently over, and thrown among the rocks and dirt. All was thunder, instability, motion, confusion. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... at her shyly. He was not a man to do homage to material gods, but the pomp and circumstance with which she was surrounded had had a sobering effect upon him, and added to his sense of the instability and unreality of the present moment. He had an almost guilty feeling of having broken an unwritten law, of abducting a princess, and the old Duncan house had seemed to frown protestingly that such an act should have taken place under its windows. If Victoria ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... % 149. Changeableness. — N. changeableness &c. adj.; mutability, inconstancy; versatility, mobility; instability, unstable equilibrium; vacillation &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... better part, will seem for a while as it were annihilated by the quiet in which their virtue and moderation incline them to enjoy the blessings of government. Besides that the opinion of the mere vulgar is a miserable rule even with regard to themselves, on account of their violence and instability. So that if you were to gratify them in their humor to-day, that very gratification would be a ground of their dissatisfaction on the next. Now as all these rules of public opinion are to be collected with great difficulty, and to be applied with equal uncertainty ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ago. M. Michel Chevalier (Revue des Deux Mondes, November, 1857) predicted,—"that a decline would occur in the price of gold, equal to one-half of its former value; that a period of peril was impending, full of inquietude, instability and damage to a great variety of interests; that the value of gold would be diminished, and that consequently wages and prices would be doubled; that the duties on imports, and the interest on the debts of the principal nations of the world, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... criminal character; some of them are normal and not morbid; their inheritance as in the Jukes family; epileptics and their nervous instability; insanity; religious rapture; strange views of the insane on individuality; their moody segregation; the religious discipline of celibacy, fasting and solitude (see also 125); large field of study among ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... reading this product of the modern mind, that we are all a little mad, and that the cleverest of us know it, and indulge the vagaries and instability of insanity. In an advertisement to Mr. Aiken's poetry we are told that it is based on the Freudian psychology. We are not seldom reminded to-day of that base to the New Art. We are even beginning to look on each other's simplest ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... well for a man to resolve to tear an idol from his heart; it is quite another thing to do it. George Aspel had long ago given up all hope of winning May Maylands. He not only felt that one who had fallen so low as he, and shown such a character for instability, had no right to expect any girl to trust her happiness to him; but he also felt convinced that May had no real love for him, and that it would be unmanly to push his suit, even although he was now delivered from the power of his great enemy. He determined, therefore, to banish her as much as ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... wealth—the feeling that it should do some good in the world, or at least be in part applied to some useful purpose. Lastly, the exciting pursuit of wealth helps to produce a curious restlessness and instability of character, of which we have many examples in the age we are studying. "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel," are words that might be applied to many a young man among Cicero's acquaintance, and ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... circumstances? I will not say that there are no witches; but ever since the difficulty of convicting them has been recognized in the island, they all seem to have disappeared, as though the evidence of the times gone by had been but an illusion. This shows the instability of all ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... faculty, Beda, or Bedier, reign without a rival in the academic halls. Pierre Caroli, one of the doctors invited by Briconnet to Meaux, a clever wrangler, and never better pleased than when involved in controversy, albeit a man of shallow religious convictions and signal instability, wearied out by his counter-plots the illustrious heresy-hunter. When forbidden to preach, Caroli opened a course of lectures upon the Psalms in the College de Cambray. Having then been interdicted from continuing his prelections, he made ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the organization of the diamond trust Rhodes gave another evidence of his business acumen. He saw that the disorganized marketing of the output would lead to instability of price. He therefore formed the Diamond Syndicate in London, composed of a small group of middlemen who distribute the whole Kimberley output. In this way the available supply is measured solely by ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... critical history of the workings of the institutions of the Greek city state. In Books IV., V., and VI. the ideal state seems far away, and we find a dispassionate survey of imperfect states, the best ways of preserving them, and an analysis of the causes of their instability. It is as though Aristotle were saying: "I have shown you the proper and normal type of constitution, but if you will not have it and insist on living under a perverted form, you may as well know how to make the best of it." In this way the Politics, ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... so well the ardour—the hope—the triumph of youthful love, there is yet something irresistibly affecting in the earnestness with which he expresses that passion; something which adds most deeply to the interest which its expression is calculated to excite, by reminding one of the instability of human enjoyment, and of the many misfortunes which the course of life may bring with it to destroy the visions of inexperienced affection. We have already mentioned, that in the expression of profound emotion and deep suffering, the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... through the first military division; 5. The Council of State is dissolved; 6. The Minister of the Interior is charged with the execution of the present decree." The appeal to the people contained these further propositions; "Persuaded that the instability of power, that the preponderance of a single Assembly, are the permanent causes of trouble and discord. I submit to your suffrages the fundamental basis of a constitution which the Assemblies will ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... that faculty. The same infirmity, which makes them faint at the sight of a naked sword, though in the hands of their best friend, makes them pity extremely those, whom they find in any grief or affliction. Those philosophers, who derive this passion from I know not what subtile reflections on the instability of fortune, and our being liable to the same miseries we behold, will find this observation contrary to them among a great many others, which ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the chief normal and primitive characteristic of the menstrual state is the more predominant presence of the sexual impulse. There are other mental and emotional signs of irritability and instability which tend to slightly impair complete mental integrity, and to render, in some unbalanced individuals explosions of anger or depression, in rarer cases crime, more common;[107] but the heightening ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... plans. Francis I came here to hunt sometimes, and it was upon one of these parties of pleasure, when his son Henry and Diane de Poitiers were with him, that she fell in love with this castle on the Cher, and longed to make it her own. Having a lively sense of the instability of all things mortal, kings in particular, she took good care to make friends with the rising star, and when Francis was gathered to his fathers and his uncles and his cousins,—you may remember that his predecessor was an uncle or a cousin,—Henry promptly ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... however, prevent him from dying the same day, without waiting for the district doctor, who (on seeing the hardly cold body) found nothing left for him to do, but with a melancholy recognition of the instability of all things mortal, to ask for 'a drop of vodka and a snack of fish.' As might have been anticipated, Tihon Ivanitch had bequeathed his property to his revered patron and generous protector, Panteley ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... to the spring of 1849, passed in a many-sided development of my position and temper, as I have described them, that is to say, in a sort of dull agitation. My latest artistic occupation had been the five-act drama, Jesus of Nazareth, just mentioned. Henceforth I lingered on in a state of brooding instability, full of expectation, yet without any definite wish. I felt fully convinced that my activity in Dresden, as an artist, had come to an end, and I was only waiting for the pressure of circumstances to shake myself free. On the other hand, the whole ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... is the wonderful central octagon, with its dome-like roof crowned by a lofty lantern, which is said to be the only Gothic dome of its kind in existence in England or France. We are told that the original cathedral had a central tower, which for some time showed signs of instability, until on one winter's morning in 1321 it came down with an earthquake crash and severed the cathedral into four arms. In reconstructing it, to ensure security, the entire breadth of the church was taken as a base for the octagon, so that it was more than three times ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... in this projection were, of course, the figments of some unstable dreamer's imagination. But they showed the instability of the usual lackland wanderers. And what could such men do that a solid, responsible man like himself ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... urged (but most erroneously, in my opinion) that instability is just as apt to be produced by retaining the public lands as a source of revenue as from any other cause, and this is ascribed to a constant fluctuation, as it is said, in the amount of sales. If there were anything in this objection, it ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... now I pause before I enter this sacred edifice, and think of that hour of tribulation. I could hear the fine, full voice of the Rev. Dr. Duche as he intoned the Litany. He lies now where I stood, and under the arms on his tomb is no record of the political foolishness and instability of a life otherwise free from blame. As I stood, Mrs. Ferguson came out, she who in days to come helped to get the unlucky parson into trouble. With ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... of the place united in an invitation and the ministers were ready to cooperate." But the whole affair was of course intensely distasteful to unemotional people; the very fact that a man could be converted argued his instability; and it is unquestionably true that Boston's attitude toward Mr. Durant was reflected for many years in her attitude toward the college ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... handicapped by illness and lack of opportunity, the child who is inherently dull and backward, must be distinguished from the child with nervous instability or definite mental defect. Wherever possible, the training suitable for various improvable types of children should be arranged in connection with the ordinary public schools. But the curriculum must be modified ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... "one would believe that morality was being left behind; more ardent passions multiply crimes; each tries to gain from others all the advantages which can minister to these passions." Buckle believes that the interruption of work caused by instability of climate leads to instability of character. In analysing the contents of French statistics, Quetelet,[14] while admitting that other causes may neutralise the action of climate, proceeds to say that the "number of crimes against property relatively to the ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... and bore his head and shoulders downward. Thereat Mr. Polly, emitting such words as everyone knows and nobody prints, butted his utmost into the concavity of Mr. Rusper, entwined a leg about him and after terrific moments of swaying instability, fell headlong beneath him amidst the bicycles and pails. There on the pavement these inexpert children of a pacific age, untrained in arms and uninured to violence, abandoned themselves to amateurish and absurd efforts to hurt and injure one another—of which the most palpable consequences were ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... cracks of Harry's heavy dog-whip, and his incessant rating—"Down, cha-arge! For sha-ame! Dan! Dan! down cha-arge! for sha-ame! "—broken at times by the impatient oaths of Tom Draw, in the gulley, who had, it seems, knocked down two woodcock, neither of which he could bag, owing to the depth and instability of the wet bog. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the present hour is more shameful and criminal, as no man is betrayed to it by errour, but admits it by negligence. Of the instability of life, the weakest understanding never thinks wrong, though the strongest often omits to think justly: reason and experience are always ready to inform us of our real state; but we refuse to listen to their ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, putting out his hand, 'this is indeed a meeting which is calculated to impress the mind with a sense of the instability and uncertainty of all human—in short, it is a most extraordinary meeting. Walking along the street, reflecting upon the probability of something turning up (of which I am at present rather sanguine), I find a young ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... valuable, that I cannot except to be bound by it in these remarks; and if in the sequel his own argument (and his friend's proposition to boot) shall be blown up by his own petard, it will show the instability of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... intrinsic loveliness, the character of Ophelia has a relative beauty and delicacy when considered in relation to that of Hamlet, which is the delineation of a man of genius in contest with the powers of this world. The weakness of volition, the instability of purpose, the contemplative sensibility, the subtlety of thought, always shrinking from action, and always occupied in "thinking too precisely on the event," united to immense intellectual power, render ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... pure indigo of the extreme distance. And all this is empty, silent, and dead. It is the splendour of an invariable region, from which is absent the ephemeral beauty of forest, verdure, or herbage; the splendour of eternal matter, affranchised from all the instability of life; the geological splendour of the world ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... of it is their apparent instability. Of all the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the Gothic cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards of the flying buttress,—the visible effort to throw off a visible ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... by which an action is, or was, or will be, undergone or undergoing—a state continuing, or so regarded, though perhaps the action causative may be ended—or sometimes perhaps imagined only, and not yet really begun. With a marvellous instability of doctrine, for the professed systematizer of different languages and grammars, Dr. Bullions has recently changed his names of the second and third participles, in both voices, from "Perfect" and "Compound Perfect," ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... this Troilus for love! *end Such fine hath all his *greate worthiness!* *exalted royal rank* Such fine hath his estate royal above! Such fine his lust,* such fine hath his nobless! *pleasure Such fine hath false worlde's brittleness!* *fickleness, instability And thus began his loving of Cresside, As I have told; and in this ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... true, had one excuse for his instability, which Richard had not; for Clarence, having married the Earl of Warwick's daughter, was, of course, brought into very close connection with the earl, and was subjected greatly to his influence. Accordingly, whatever course Warwick decided to take, it was extremely difficult for Clarence ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... entertained by a fight between two sects of Hindu devotees, the Jogis and the Suniasis, for the possession of the rich harvest of gold, jewels, and stuffs, brought to the shrine of the saint by pious pilgrims. Another sign of the instability of his rule awaited him at Delhi, for he found that a state prisoner had eluded the vigilance of the governor, and that the governor, apprehensive of the imperial displeasure, had quitted the city, and broken ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... motives to falsehood, it is somewhat cruel to discredit assertions. The Dr. could not be influenced by views of interest to give this, or any other account of his lordship; and could certainly have no other incentive, but that of serving his country, by shewing the instability of vice, and, by drawing into light an illustrious penitent, adding one wreath more to the banners ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... be doubted if the 'lust of praise' was the cause of his eccentricities, so much as an utter restlessness and instability of character, Pope's description is sufficiently correct, and will prepare us for one of the most disappointing lives we ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... which the American Democracy has exercised on the Laws relating to Elections Public Officers under the control of the Democracy in America Arbitrary Power of Magistrates under the Rule of the American Democracy Instability of the Administration in the United States Charges levied by the State under the rule of the American Democracy Tendencies of the American Democracy as regards the Salaries of public Officers Difficulties of distinguishing the Causes which contribute to the Economy of the American ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... contact with, and they mostly belonged to the more intelligent class, every irregularity that occurred was directly charged against the system of free labor. If negroes walked away from the plantations, it was conclusive proof of the incorrigible instability of the negro, and the impracticability of free negro labor. If some individual negroes violated the terms of their contract, it proved unanswerably that no negro had, or ever would have, a just conception of the binding force of a ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... is greatly lessened by the exclusion of meat from their dietary. Dr. Clouston, of Edinburgh, an eminent medical authority, states that in his experience, those children who show the greatest tendencies to instability of the brain, insanity, and immoral habits are, as a rule, those who use animal food in excess; and that he has seen a change of diet to milk and farinaceous food produce a marked change ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... were unruly democrats and were suspicious of any efficient political authority, the Federalists came, justly or unjustly, to identify both anti-Federalism and democracy with political disorder and social instability. They came, that is, to have much the same opinion of radical democracy as an English peer might have had at the time of the French Revolution; and this prejudice, which was unjust but not unnatural, was very influential in determining the character ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... before him, and when he began to speak, it was as in soliloquy. He was talking to a vague audience, into that space where a man's eyes look when he is searching his own mind, discovering it to himself. The instability of earthly power, the putting down of the great, their exile and chastening, and their restoration in their own persons, or in the persons of their descendants—this was his subject. He brought the application ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... soft, liquescent fluid scene, the impression which I derived was melancholy. It evoked in my spirit a sense of instability, a lack of restfulness. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... this family cannot fail to remind us of the instability of earthly possessions and enjoyments; nor ought we to forget the wisdom and the goodness of that divine superintendence, which holds all these changes in subserviency to his will. How impressive is the language of inspiration, "we all do fade as a ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... again on the heath. Edgar, still attired as a lunatic, soliloquizes in stilted terms about the instability of fortune and the advantages of a humble lot. Then there comes to him somehow into the very place on the heath where he is, his father, the blinded Gloucester, led by an old man. In that characteristic Shakespearean language,—the chief peculiarity ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... Shang[1] Received the appointment without any element of instability in it, And it is (now) held by ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... method of detecting the position of a metallic mass is by the use of the magnetometer. This device operates on the principle of magnetic attraction, and in laboratories on stable foundations it is extremely sensitive. But the instability of the ship on which it would be necessary to carry this instrument would render it impossible to obtain a sufficient degree of sensitiveness in the apparatus to give it any value. The fact that the submersible is propelled under water by powerful ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... themselves refused to visit. They tried to dissuade us but, being of a much younger species, we were less plagued by caution and went anyway. The mountains of this little moon are up to fifteen miles high, causing a state of instability that is chronic. Walking down those alabaster valleys was a more awesome experience than any galactic vista I have ever encountered. Our aesthetic sense proved stronger than common sense alertness and seven of us were buried in a ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... these are all good fathers, generous brothers, sincere friends, and faithful subjects. Their entertainments are derived rather from reason than imagination; which is the cause that there is no impatience or instability in their speech or action. You see in their countenances they are at home, and in quiet possession of the present instant as it passes, without desiring to quicken it by gratifying any passion or prosecuting any new design. These are the men formed ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... I interpret the fundamental feeling which impelled the North to take up arms: "Better one stout tussle for the idea of Unity, than a facile acquiescence in the idea, of Multiplicity, with all its sequels of instability, distrust, rivalry, and rancour. Better for our children, if not for us, one great expenditure of blood and gold, than never-ending threats and rumours of war, commercial conflicts, political complications, frontiers to be safeguarded, bureaucracies ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Instability of Human Greatness Happiness of the Shepherd's Life Marriage of Christ ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Human resource levels in the population are low, particularly in the poverty-ridden countryside. The almost total lack of basic infrastructure in the countryside will continue to hinder development. Recurring political instability hinders foreign investment. Corruption and inexperience among Cambodia's government officials will serve as a further ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... could not help them. Their fault was that they believed one thing one day and another thing the next. That has always been the fault of the people. Your grandfather did not despise them for their instability. So far as they were not stable to Baal it was good, and he pitied them as they flocked to his standard, hoping that he could deliver them. He blew the trumpet, and at the simple blast of that trumpet in each village and town the nation seemed to rise as one man, such strength ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... not very remote. These land bridges, moreover, must, many of them, have been literally bridges; long, narrow tongues of land thrust in every direction across the broad oceans. According to this view the continental land masses have been in a fairly fluid condition of instability. By parity of reasoning, the land bridges could be made a hundred instead of merely ten in number. The facts of distribution are in many cases inexplicable with our present knowledge; yet if the existence of widely separated but ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... stand in the estimation of the people, they are by no means exempt from the instability of mundane conditions, and the higher a man rises the less secure is his position. The power to see everything, to guard against evil, and to cure illness issues from the light of his heart, which was given him by Tata Dios. It enables him to see Tata Dios himself, to talk to ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... (1440-1478) wrote a single poem of the highest merit; his scanty other works are forgotten. The Coplas por la muerte de su padre, beautifully translated by Longfellow, contain some laments for the writer's personal loss, but more general reflections upon the instability of worldly glory. It is not to be thought that this famous poem is in any way original in idea; the theme had already been exploited to satiety, but Manrique gave it a superlative perfection of form and a contemporary application which left no room ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... three classes of causes, the anthropological (organic and psychological) factor, the telluric factor, and the social factor. And by this last factor we must not only mean want, but any other condition of administrative instability in political, moral, and intellectual life. Every social condition which makes the life of man in society insincere and imperfect is a social factor contributing towards criminality. The economic factor is in evidence in our civilization wherever the law of free competition, which ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... and bitternesses were still swinging and swaying and developing when King George was being crowned. Close upon that event came a wave of social discontent, the great railway strike, a curious sense of social and political instability, and the first beginnings ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... at intervals he mechanically rolled and lit cigarettes, which glowed for a moment and went out, unsmoked. The feeling of depression that had cloaked him during the few days past changed imperceptibly to one of callous indifference toward existence in general. The seeds of revolt, of instability, which Clare and a measure of worldly position, of pressure, had held in abeyance, germinated in his disorganized mind, his bitter sense of injustice and injury. He hardened, grew defiant ... the strain of lawlessness brought so many years ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... extraordinary determinability and influence which outside impressions have upon the disorder, the mode of genesis and the psychological evolution of the delusions, etc.,—may be attributed to the essential ear-marks of the degenerative character; that is, to the exaggerated auto-suggestibility, the great instability of the existing conditions and mental pictures, the disharmony between the perceptive and imaginative capacities and the preponderance of a lively fantastic coloring to the dry thinking of these individuals. They do not form disease processes of a definite characteristic ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... confess, and the gods are witnesses, who determined the issue of the former war, and who are now determining and will determine the issue of the present according to right and justice. As to myself, I am not forgetful of the instability of human affairs, but consider the influence of fortune, and am well aware that all our measures are liable to a thousand casualties. But as I should acknowledge that my conduct would savour of insolence ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... strayed along the walks, and contemplated the most terrific of ruins—that of a human soul. What is the view of the fallen column, the mouldering arch, of the most exquisite workmanship, when compared with this living memento of the fragility, the instability, of reason, and the wild luxuriancy of noxious passions? Enthusiasm turned adrift, like some rich stream overflowing its banks, rushes forward with destructive velocity, inspiring a sublime concentration of thought. Thus thought ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... occurred in that small South American town on the occasion of the earthquake. Yet, awful though these were, they were as nothing compared with the more stupendous calamities that have been caused by earthquakes in that land of instability, not only in times long past, but in times so very recent that the moss cannot yet have begun to cover, nor the weather to stain, the tombstones and monuments of those ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... diminution of mental and moral fiber at the present day," states Dr. Tredgold.(2) Such populations, this distinguished authority might have added, form the veritable "cultures" not only for contagious physical diseases but for mental instability and irresponsibility also. They are susceptible, exploitable, hysterical, non-resistant to external suggestion. Devoid of stamina, such folk become mere units in a mob. "The habit of crowd-making is daily becoming a more serious menace ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... however, in order to strengthen this position, that a few objections which still menace it should be removed. The instability of the electron is not yet sufficiently demonstrated. How is it that its charge does not waste itself away, and what bonds assure the ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... their fall is our death. If we were not eager to stand on the giddy top of fortune's rolling wheel, we should not heed its idle whirl; but we let our foolish hearts set our feet there, and thenceforward every lurch of the glittering instability threatens to lame or kill us. He who desires fleeting joys is sure to be restless always, and to be disappointed at the last. For, even at the best, the heart which depends for peace on the continuance of things subjected ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... redemption, and offering up to God before the altar prayers in their behalf, he also ascended the pulpit to speak of life and death in all their sublime relations. "There was nothing touching," says Talfourd, "in the instability of fortune, in the fragility of loveliness, in the mutability of mortal friendship, or the decay of systems, nor in the fall of States and empires, which he did not present, to give humiliating ideas of worldly grandeur. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... we must all lay it continually and with uttermost humiliation to heart that we all have Captain Anything's opportunism, his self-interest, his insincerity, his instability, and his secret deceitfulness in ourselves. That man knows little of himself who does not despise and hate himself for his secret self-seeking even in the service of God. For, how the love of praise will seduce and corrupt this ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... something of an actor after all now, and play the philistine part, though it be vi coactus and not for human applause; while I, a lowly slave, nevertheless through my quiet mental activity enjoy the highest freedom in my chains, proclaiming to King Demos the weakness and instability of his power, because he shall not himself ascend the throne without the help of tyrants and shall be driven off by a yet more mighty and righteous Lord. And even for this Lord I am still a critical and fault-finding subject, but I think these are ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... wind was diminished, and that the inertia of the machine prevented it from readily accommodating itself to the new conditions. During this part of the voyage Smith had to be constantly alert to warp the planes instantaneously when he detected the least sign of instability, and he was very glad when he saw once more the reflection of the stars in the sea beneath him, and knew that he would encounter no more obstacles between Timor, which he had just passed, and ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Ashamed of her instability, and feeling herself unworthy and no longer pure as absolution had made her, she went that afternoon to St. Joseph's, and in confession laid the matter before Monsignor Mostyn. Regarding the money question, he approved ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... her, very sweetly. The poor man for years and years has undergone a terrible strain, and I fancy her death is a blessed relief. He confesses that he knew at the time of his marriage that he ought not to marry her, he knew all about her nervous instability; but he thought, being a doctor, that he could overcome it, and she was beautiful! He gave up his city practice and came to the country on her account. And then after the little girl's birth she went all to pieces, and he had to "put her away," to use Mrs. McGurk's phrase. The child is ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... representatives, we must mend our own ways and especially purge ourselves of political cant and national vanity,—which is the food that ward politicians grow fat on. The profession of a politician is based on instability, and he cannot acquire, as matters now stand, the solidity of character that we look for ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... A striking object-lesson on the instability of mortal life is permanently given to the Loch Ranza pupils by the proximity of the churchyard, which is just over the wall from the school. The thoughtful visitor should not fail to read the tombstones. If a lover of books, he ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... his negative character; the other was his love of extravagance, vain display, and instability of purpose. Much of the time he drifted about like a ship without ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... from their beautiful eyes. All wish them so well, and they wish so well to all; everything good in life seems as if it came from themselves. They have favourable gales in life—it was so with Eva. Even her weakness, a desire to please, which easily went too far, and an instability of character which was very dangerous to her, exhibited themselves only on their pleasing side, within the circle of her family and of her acquaintance, and helped ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Perhaps the weakest degree of such an admission, and one which allows to the conceding party a semblance of victory, is illustrated in the "last word" of one who has boldly maintained a proposition on the strength of individual recollection, but begins to recognize the instability of his position: "I either witnessed the occurrence or dreamt it." This is sufficient to prove that, with all people's boasting about the infallibility of memory, there are many who have a shrewd suspicion that ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... the formation of an organism and a fully developed brain; in the psychologic order, the antagonism between the pure subjectivity of the imagination and the objectivity of ratiocinative processes; in other words, between mental instability and stability. As for the results, they appear only in the third period, the resultant of ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... other reasons for desiring to be recalled, alledges, that his little farm, being all his subsistence, was going to ruin, owing to the mismanagement of hired stewards. [Y.R. 498. B.C. 254.] A memorable instance of the instability of fortune exhibited in the person of Regulus, who is overcome in battle, and taken prisoner by Xanthippus, a Lacedaemonian general. [Y. R. 499. B. C. 253.] The Roman fleet shipwrecked; which disaster entirely reverses ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... nurslings, Hannah's favorite, perhaps for the very reason that the instability of his character had so often led him into scrapes in which she had shielded and helped him. He had, in his childhood, frequently escaped punishment by her connivance, and it was her theory that "the poor boy was put upon" more than any of the others. ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... objection to regal government is its instability, proceeding from a variety of causes. Where monarchy is found in its greatest intensity, as in Morocco and Turkey, this observation is illustrated in a very pointed manner, and indeed is more or less striking as governments are more or less despotic. The reason is obvious: ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and of sudden, hopeless ruin. "There was never a man so magnificent, there was never a man so unfortunate," say the lively gentlemen and ladies in their Memoires. His story is told to point the old and dreary moral of the instability of human prosperity. It is, indeed, like a tale of the "Arabian Nights." The Dervish is made Grand Vizier. He marries the Sultan's daughter. His palace owes its magical beauty to the Genies. The pillars are of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... levity and instability of the Negro character; light- minded as the Abyssinians,—described by Gobat as constant in nothing but inconstancy,—soft, merry, and affectionate souls, they pass without any apparent transition into a state of fury, when they are capable of terrible atrocities. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... great consequence leading to the instability of civilizations has been the concentration of wealth, power, privilege, comfort and security in the hands of a minority, in sharp contrast with poverty and insecurity among the less well-placed majority. Generally, the privileged minority has been relatively ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... truth, once again, in the acknowledged instability of the passional element in human nature—particularly in man. It is nothing short of amazing to see this very instability urged as a reason why the marriage tie should be still further weakened, as though ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... envied. The ages called by the name of Louis XIV. or of Queen Anne are, in the dispassionate sense of the word, the only true classical ages, those which offer protection and a favourable climate to real talent. We know only to well how in our untrammelled times, through the instability and storminess of the age, talents are lost and dissipated. Nevertheless, let us acknowledge our age's part and superiority in greatness. True and sovereign genius triumphs over the very difficulties that cause others ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... was gradually spreading among the Russian troops. "The development of a further success is being jeopardized by the instability and moral weakness of certain detachments. Particularly noteworthy was the gallant conduct of the officers, great numbers of them perishing during the fulfillment of their duties," says the official Russian statement. On the upper course of the Sereth, from Zalovce ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... customs, to the criticism of reason as to whether these were in and for themselves universal and necessary. The Sophists, as teachers of Grammar, Rhetoric, and Philosophy, undertook to extend the cultivation of Reflection; and this introduced instability in the place of the immediate fixed state of moral customs. Among the women, the Hetaerae undertook the same revolution; in the place of the [Greek: potnia meter] appeared the beauty, who isolated herself in the consciousness of her charms and in the perfection of her varied culture, and exhibited ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... the evening Pawsey, a thought mellowed by the ale of Dover, deplored with tears the instability of a nation whose ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... associated in mutually dependent and cooeperative efforts; with the abrogation, on the part of the superior body of citizens, of all responsibility for, and direct interest in, the affairs and comfort of the lower orders, has come Pauperism, Social Instability, and a degree of misery and depravity among the poorest of the masses, never before known in the history of the world, all things being taken into consideration. It is a well-known saying of Political Economists, that the rich are daily growing richer, and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... story of the overthrow of German opera managed by the owners of the opera house, and the reversion to the system which had proved disastrous at the beginning and was fated to prove disastrous again, it is well to bear the fact in mind that instability was, is, and always will be an element in the cultivation of opera so long as it remains an exotic; that is, until it becomes a national expression in art, using the vernacular and giving utterance to national ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of, or went beyond, his ideal—that is to say, himself—was abomination in Alfieri's eyes. Consequently France and the French, all the nobility, the wit, the sentiment, the warm-heartedness, the enthusiasm, the wide-mindedness, the childishness, the frivolity, the instability, the disrespectfulness, the sentimentality, the high falutinism, the superficiality, the looseness of principle, everything that made up the greatness and littleness of the France of the end of last century, everything which will make up the greatness and littleness ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... A kitten jumping on to the table moves him, not because he sees in that gesture a symbol of human aspiration or of feminine instability, the spirit of youth or the pathos of the brute creation, nor yet because it reminds him of pretty things, but because the sight is charming. He will never be appreciated by people who want something from art that is not art. But to those who care for the ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... could eat. The oats looked the most likely, and he took a mouthful for a trial. He ground at them severely, but, hungry as he was, he failed to find oats good for food. Their hard husks, their dryness, their instability, all slipping past each other at every attempt to crush them with his teeth, together foiled him utterly. He must search farther. Looking round him afresh, he saw an open loft, and climbing on the heap in which he had slept, managed ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... violins on the balcony blended with the soft, gay voices of the women. Ernestine was by his side, every one was good-humoured and enjoying his hospitality. Only one face at the table was a reminder of the instability of his fortunes—a face he had grown to hate during the last few hours with a passionate, concentrated hatred. Yet the man was of the same race as these people, his connections were known to many of them, he was making new friends and reviving old ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the foot of the stairs, talking with the clergyman, a stout and unctuous figure. Bobby noticed that the great stolid form of the doctor was ill at ease. From his thickly bearded face his reddish eyes gleamed forth with a fresh instability. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... Historian. [1] I have read it carefully, and find it written with Skill, good Sense, Modesty, and Fire. You must allow the Town is kinder to you than you deserve; and I doubt not but you have so much Sense of the World, Change of Humour, and instability of all humane Things, as to understand, that the only Way to preserve Favour, is to communicate it to others with Good-Nature and Judgment. You are so generally read, that what you speak of will ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Ellen's father, he never at that time dwelt upon the child's future as much as his wife did, having a masculine sense of the instability of houses of air which prevented him from entering them without a shivering of walls and roof into naught but star-mediums by his downrightness of vision. "Oh, let the child be, can't you, Fanny?" he said, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... flesh was made of a pound of loam; his red and hot blood, of fire; his salt tears, of salt; his sweat, of dew; the colour of his eyes, of flowers; the instability of his thoughts, of cloud; his cold breath, of wind; ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... of Paris. He it was who in creating the sugar beet laid the foundation for one of the chief industries of our time. One of his rules is to select at first not the plant which varies most in the direction he wishes, but the plant that varies most in any direction whatever. From it, from the instability of its very fibres, its utter forgetfulness of ancestral traditions, he finds it easiest in the long run to obtain and to establish the character he seeks of sweetness, or size, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... anxiety. I have known no greater revelation of Nature's glories, even in a sunset hour, than in one of these moments of glow before the darkness of storm. And in a man's life there is sometimes an episode so bright, so full of promise, that we feel its perfection to be the measure of its instability. ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... temptations to evil is instability of temper and want of trust in God; for even as a ship without a helm is tossed about by the waves, so is a man who is careless and infirm of purpose tempted, now on this side, now on that. As fire testeth iron, so doth temptation the ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... Paris. On September 4th, the march, which had been interrupted ten days before, was begun. Immediately afterwards news came which stopped all hopes of a speedy peace. How soon was his warning as to the instability of French Governments to be fulfilled! A revolution had broken out in Paris, the dethronement of the Emperor had been proclaimed, and a Provisional Government instituted. They at once declared that they were ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... human voice, I was never satisfied with the result and yet I have heard French artists who were splendid singers. But the tone was always too high in placement for my full appreciation. The American voices were satisfactory almost without exception. Instability was the great fault; they have not enough earnest concentration in their work and soon discontinue or change to other teachers and many of them who started out with a full determination to be singers have done nothing for themselves. Several ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... of the subject, let it be remembered that there is one other characteristic of the French revolution, as striking as its dreadful and destructive principles; I mean the instability of its Government, which has been of itself sufficient to destroy all reliance, if any such reliance could, at any time, have been placed on the good faith of any of its rulers. Such has been the incredible rapidity with which the revolutions in ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... which may well atone for the gravest of his certainly not infrequent offences. The sweet constancy and gentle fortitude of a Beatrice and a Mellida remain in the memory more clearly, leave a more life-like impression of truth on the reader's mind, than the light-headed profligacy and passionate instability of such brainless and blood-thirsty wantons as Franceschina and Isabella. In fact, the better characters in Marston's plays are better drawn, less conventional, more vivid and more human than those of the baser sort. Whatever of moral credit ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... place began to clear out and tables were being abandoned here and there, a small man in a checked suit appeared in the doorway. An attendant took his hat and coat away from him while he was gazing with kaleidoscopic instability of vision upon the gay scene before him. He had left his walking-stick in a street car, a circumstance which delayed him a long time, for, on missing it, he waited at a corner in the hope of recognising the motorman on his return ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... fringe the subject of the tides; the theoretical study of which, started by Newton, has developed, and is destined in the future to further develop, into one of the most gigantic and absorbing investigations—having to do with the stability or instability of solar systems, and with the construction and decay ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... there is a cross the gipsy strain is generally strongest, although the children, if brought up in the community, often remain in it all their lives; but they are never quite of it. Their love of wildness and of eating wild flesh remains in them, and it is also probable that there is an instability of character, a restlessness, which the small farmers who usually employ such men know and trade on; the gipsy who takes to farm work must not look for the same treatment as the big-framed, white-skinned man who is as strong, enduring, and unchangeable as a draught horse ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... to stuff the memory We ought to grant free passage to diseases We say a good marriage because no one says to the contrary We set too much value upon ourselves We still carry our fetters along with us We take other men's knowledge and opinions upon trust Weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy Weigh, as wise: men should, the burden of obligation Well, and what if it had been death itself? Were more ambitious of a great reputation than of a good one What a man says should be what he thinks What are become of all our brave philosophical precepts? ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... isolation, at least in Wagner's geographical sense. These forms DeVries calls mutations. It is his thought that a species may run along uniformly for a long time when, from some cause which he has not determined as yet, instability comes into the species and it varies in quite a number of directions. Each of these variations may be the starting point of a new species. DeVries believes that he has at least half a dozen mutants ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... term I said "escape." But the word is ill chosen; for it implies a certain amount of violence, and no violence must be employed, on account of the instability of equilibrium already mentioned. If the insect, shaken by a sudden effort, were to lose its hold, it would be all up with it. It would slowly shrivel on the spot; or at best its wings, unable to expand, would remain as miserable ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... around. It seemed to him, as he sat there within three yards of its granite base, like the impersonation of repose in the midst of turmoil; of peace surrounded by war; of calm and solid self-possession in the midst of fretful and raging instability. ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... am weary of tailors, let me reflect a little upon that divine art of which they are the professors. Alas, for the instability of all human sciences! A few short months ago, in the first edition of this memorable Work, I laid down rules for costume, the value of which, Fashion begins already to destroy. The thoughts which ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... animals—Birds and Mammals—with their predecessors, we must admit that they are more controlled, more masters of their fate, with more mentality. Evolution is on the whole integrative; that is to say, it makes against instability and disorder, and towards harmony and progress. Even in the rise of Birds and Mammals we can discern that the evolutionary process was making towards a fuller embodiment or expression of what Man values most—control, freedom, understanding, and love. The ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... view, once held by me in common with most women, I have been compelled to give up. Seduction cannot, I am sure, be accepted without very great caution as a common cause for illegitimate births. My experience has taught me that nervous instability, the result often of monotonous or too exhausting work, leading quickly to a desire for excitement and effort to escape dullness, as also love of finery and joy in receiving presents, are the principal motives that lead girls into illegal relations. And ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... saintly, perhaps, he was more likely to influence others. Firmness showed in his forcible chin, energy in the large lines of his mouth, decision in his clear-cut features. Yet there was something contradictory in his face. And the flitting melancholy, already remarked, surely hinted at some secret instability, perhaps known only to Harding himself, perhaps known to ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the world the instability of diplomatic bargains in a time of such fundamental issues as the present. There is little hope and little strength in hole-and-corner bargainings between the officials or politicians who happen to be at the head of this or that nation ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... of the Established as a Belgian colony in 1908, the Republic of the Congo gained its independence in 1960, but its early years were marred by political and social instability. Col. Joseph MOBUTU seized power and declared himself president in a November 1965 coup. He subsequently changed his name - to MOBUTU Sese Seko - as well as that of the country - to Zaire. MOBUTU retained his position for 32 years through several subsequent sham elections, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... principle had been introduced which could resist the wild projects of the moment, give the people an opportunity to reflect, and allow the good sense of the nation time for exertion. This uncertainty with respect to measures of great importance to every member of the community, this instability in principles which ought, if possible, to be rendered immutable, produced a long train of ills; and is seriously believed to have been among the operating causes of those pecuniary embarrassments, which, at that time, were so general as to influence the legislation of almost every ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... them. Therefore, the circumstances would have to be changed, and the precise time to make the change was at hand. Phil himself was not aware of every factor involved, but he was aware of enough of them. Back on Earth, a certain political situation was edging towards a specific point of instability. As a result, an Earth ship which was not one of the regular freighters had put down at Fort Roye some days before. Among its passengers were Commissioner Sanford of the Territorial Office, a well-known politician, and a Mr. Ronald Black, the popular and enterprising owner ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... gold, as compared with national currency, for the whole of the year 1869 was about 134, and for eleven months of 1870 the same relative value has been about 115. The approach to a specie basis is very gratifying, but the fact can not be denied that the instability of the value of our currency is prejudicial to our prosperity, and tends to keep up prices, to the detriment of trade. The evils of a depreciated and fluctuating currency are so great that now, when the premium on gold has fallen so much, it would seem that the time ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... later years, the fidelity of those noble troops never wavered. They had even in one hour of terrible danger the honor, in the same palace, of saving the life of their queen. But it is a melancholy proof of the fleeting character and instability of popular favor which is supplied by the recollection that these very artisans who were now so vociferous, and undoubtedly at this moment so sincere in their profession of loyalty, were afterward her foul and ferocious enemies. And yet between 1781 and 1789 there had been no change in the character ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... tariff history have already been noted.[3] The extremely high rates levied under that legislation caused a slight reduction in customs revenue in 1891 and a sharp decline in 1892. Moreover the coincidence of instability in the currency system, business depression and the relatively high Wilson-Gorman tariff schedules of 1894 continued the decline of income from customs during ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... separate narrow rigid rings, each revolving with its proper relative velocity.' As was well remarked by the late Professor Nichol, 'If this arrangement or anything like it were real, how many new conditions of instability do we introduce. Observation tells us that the division between such rings must be extremely narrow, so that the slightest disturbance by external or internal causes would cause one ring to impinge upon another; and we should thus ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... to passion; in any other sense it would be socially wrong. Nothing more clearly proves the necessity for indissoluble marriage than the instability of passion. The two sexes must be chained up, like wild beasts as they are, by inevitable law, deaf and mute. Eliminate revenge, and infidelity in love is nothing. Those who believe that for them there is but one woman in the world must be in favor ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... supremacy, and this attained, the State fell into a hasty decline because of the instability of such ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... which have been preserved and yet remain among us; and withal of so many tragical poets, as in the persons of powerful princes and other mighty men have complained against {13} infidelity, time, destiny, and most of all against the variable success of worldly things and instability of fortune. To these undertakings these great lords of the world have been stirred up, rather by the desire of fame, which plougheth up the air and soweth in the wind, than by the affection of bearing rule, which draweth after it so much vexation and so many cares. ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Logical categories, scientific laws, historical epochs, literary tendencies, religious processes, social, moral, and artistic institutions, all exemplify the same onward movement through a union of opposites. There is eternal and total instability everywhere. But this unrest and instability is of a necessary and uniform nature, according to the one eternally fixed principle which renders the universe as a whole ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various |
