"Unstable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... masculine imaginative art. We feel Simone's charm mostly in single heads and detached figures, some of which at Assisi have incomparable sweetness. "Molles Senae," the delicate and femininely variable, fond of all things brilliant, and unstable through defect of sternness, was the fit mother of this ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... "'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,'" he answered. "A man weak as any child, and as easily led astray. If he be your head, Avery, I would say it were scarce worth to turn out for the cause. You would have an halter round ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the tide of fluctuation, the things that were established or traditional upon this coast of chance were mere islands in the wash of ocean. It was amazing, it was almost frightening, the fluid, unstable quality of life; the rapid, inconsequent changes; yet it was also this very quality of transformation that most stirred and ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... you one needless burden; He will not exact more than He knows your strength will bear; He will ask no Peter to come to Him on the water, unless He impart at the same time strength and support on the unstable wave; He will not demand of you the endurance of providences, and trials, and temptations you are unable to cope with; He will not ask you to draw water if the well is too deep, or withdraw the stone if too heavy. But neither, at the same time, will He admit as an impossibility ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... species; and that species become, in like manner, differentiated into genera, is abundantly indicated by the facts of geographical distribution, and the obvious relation of local forms to the conditions of environment. The present more or less unstable condition of the circumstances surrounding organic beings, together with the known mutations of climate our planet has undergone in past geological ages, point clearly to the agency of physical conditions as one of the chief factors in the evolution ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... would he ever be so with the main contour of a circular base. Observe, we have taken some trouble to reduce the member Yb into this round form, and all that we have gained by so doing, is this unsatisfactory and unstable look of the base; of which the chief reason is, that a circle, unless enclosed by right lines, has never an appearance of fixture, or definite place,[37]—we suspect it of motion, like an orb of heaven; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... be bereft of even the Heaven-sent consolation for the sake of the beloved, in whom may she find not only the earthly mate-fellow, but the kindred soul. For, all-pitying Mother of Mercy! should she, too, be doomed to stake all upon a wavering, unstable, headlong Richard, what ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... buoyancy. Although the open water was several feet deep, it was so full of aquatic plants that a craft of any width, or drawing more than a few inches, would make but slow progress through it. Needless to say that these craft, which retain the round form of the log, are exceedingly unstable, but their owners stand up in them and, pole them ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... severance which in the oncoming years was to arise between them; and of how she would die without his knowing of her death for two whole months; and of how his life thereafter would be changed, somehow, and the world would become an unstable place in which you could no longer put cordial faith. And he foreknew all the remorse he was to shrug away, after the squandering of so much pride and love. But these things were not yet: and besides, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... these countries of Eastern Europe, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, received their supplementary daily meals of specially fit and specially prepared food, could not be suddenly dropped by the American workers. There could be no confidence that the still unstable and struggling governments would be able to carry it on successfully. But with the abolition of the blockade and the incoming of the year's harvest, and with the growing possibility of adequate financial help through government and bank loans, the various new nations of Eastern Europe ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... that riding away from the old vicomte's preparations to make a match of it between Adeliza and me. About us the woods sighed and whispered, dappled by the moonlight with unstable chequerings of blue and silver. Tightly he clung to my crupper, that swart tireless horseman, Care; but ahead rode Love, anterior to all things and yet eternally young, in quest of the Castle of Content. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... growing anger. The blacks moved uneasily, like a herd of cattle, at the sound of his voice. But not one spoke. All eyes, however, were staring at him in certitude of expectancy. Something was about to happen, and they were waiting for it, waiting with the unanimous, unstable mob-mind for the one of them who would make the first action that would precipitate all of them into a common action. Sheldon looked for this one, for such was the one to fear. Directly beneath him he caught sight of the muzzle ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... he do so much, and not do more? He knew that Jeremiah was innocent, and that his word was God's; and what he should have done was to have shaken off his masterful 'servants,' followed his conscience, and obeyed God. Why did he not? Because he was a coward, infirm of purpose, and therefore 'unstable as water.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... perhaps indebted for the fine geniuses who have honored humanity to beds which are solidly constructed; and the turbulent population which caused the French Revolution were conceived perhaps upon a multitude of tottering couches, with twisted and unstable legs; while the Orientals, who are such a beautiful race, have a unique method of making their beds. I vote ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the first time unfolded his arms. With some appearance of caution he balanced his unstable footing into absolute immobility. Then he turned ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... Bill's momentary attitude of didactic propriety was not further excited by the subsequent conduct of his protege. For by this time Tom, half supporting the unstable Johnson, who developed a tendency to occasionally dash across the glaring road, but checked himself mid way each time, reached the corral which adjoined the Mansion House. At its farther extremity was a pump and horse-trough. Here, without a word being ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for a reply, with an expression of unstable satisfaction, as of one who has solved a problem by a distrusted method. Presently he rose and swallowed a glass of whisky from a full bottle on the counter, then ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... to Percivale and kissed him, and commended him to God; and so he went to Sir Bors and kissed him, and commended him to God, and said: "Fair lord, salute me to my lord, Sir Launcelot, my father, and as soon as ye see him, bid him remember of this unstable world." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... "I am not so sure about that. You see, their Government is so very unstable. The country itself is rich enough in mineral wealth, if that is what you mean." All the while Howard stood there with his mouth agape, and I felt like shoving my ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... that intersect the different routes across our continent are broad and shallow, and flow over beds of quicksand, which, in seasons of high water, become boggy and unstable, and are then exceedingly difficult of crossing. When these streams are on the rise, and, indeed, before any swelling is perceptible, their beds become surcharged with the sand loosened by the action of the under-current from the approaching ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... like a Lord Chancellor." And for this part of the work, the stateliness and dignity of the Latin corresponded to the proud claims which he made for his conception of the knowledge which was to be. English seemed to him too homely to express the hopes of the world, too unstable to be trusted with them. Latin was the language of command and law. His Latin, without enslaving itself to Ciceronian types, and with a free infusion of barbarous but most convenient words from the vast and ingenious terminology ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... The spot in the Roman road, between Carcassonne and Toulouse, where the battle was fought, was one heap of dead bodies, and continued to be mentioned in the Arab chronicles under the name of Martyrs' Causeway. But the Arabs of Spain were then in that unstable social condition and in that heyday of impulsive youthfulness as a people, when men are more apt to be excited and attracted by the prospect of bold adventures than discouraged by reverses. El-Samah, on crossing the Pyrenees to go plundering ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... is a wrong to the whole community, from whose liberality they hold most valuable privileges, whose rights they violate, whose business they derange, and the value of whose property they render unstable and insecure. It must be evident that this new ground for bank suspensions, in reference to which their action is not only disconnected with, but wholly independent of, that of the public, gives a character to their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... [scientific computation] To become unstable. Suggests that the computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon overflow or at least go ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of the slavery problem, and it was natural that he should seek to use this principle for the purpose of reaching a permanent settlement. When with the assistance of the South he effected the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he honestly thought that he was replacing an arbitrary and unstable territorial division of the country into slave and free states, by a settlement which would be stable, because it was the logical product of the American democratic idea. The interpretation of democracy which dictated the proposed ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... talks, she has only a decorative value as a witness, either for or against herself, for she deals mainly in unsupported assertion; and in the rare cases where she puts forward a verifiable fact she gets out of it a meaning which it refuses to furnish to anybody else. Also, when she talks, she is unstable, she wanders, she is incurably inconsistent; what she says to-day ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... word crackled and sputtered in Mrs. Budlong's brain like a fuse in the dark. The past month had been so packed with other excitements that she had forgotten the very word. Now it blew up and came down as if one of her own unstable Christmas trees had toppled over on her with all its ropes of tinsel, its lambent ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... said Louis, "that your friend the Chevalier is placed under arrest at once, and as much for his attempt upon your life as for the unstable quality of his political opinions, the law shall deal with him—conclusively." He sighed. "It always pains me to proceed to extremes against a man of his stamp. To deprive a fool of his head seems ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... close of the seventeenth century the central spire was in an unstable condition, and Elmes, in his "Life," says of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... do I hate the tide of vulgar thought! Profane, unjust, with childish folly fraught; It breaks and bends the rays of truth divine, And by its own conceptions measures mine. Famed Epicurus' master[37] tried The power of this unstable tide. His country said the sage was mad— The simpletons! But why? No prophet ever honour had Beneath his native sky. Democritus, in truth, was wise; The mass were mad, with faith in lies. So far this error went, That all Abdera sent ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... figured that if instead of direct current, an alternating flow could be induced, so as to attract and repel in quick succession, enough of a disturbance would be raised in that highly unstable mixture to start fireworks. So I rigged up an automatic break in the circuit, timed it to permit us to get up enough speed from the repulsion to be safely on our way before it would start. The circuit-breaker worked and the alternating current ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... rulers entered upon a course of policy in accordance with the wants and demands of the age, and that policy is still adhered to, though meantime the general aspect of affairs is sadly changed, and Sardinia herself has experienced the sorest reverses. The weak, unstable King whose ambition first conspired to throw her into the current of the movement for the liberation of Italy, has died defeated and broken-hearted, but his wiser son and heir has taken his stand deliberately ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... he was again foiled; it was much too small. At length, after a great deal of ineffectual wriggling and struggling—which occasioned serious inconvenience and anxiety to the human supports who were with the utmost difficulty maintaining a state of very unstable equilibrium beneath his feet—his patience completely failed him, and, in a fit of childish anger and spite, he sent a series of truly blood- curdling yells echoing into the interior of the pilot-house. These cries were of course distinctly heard by George and the chef, but (acting ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... The unstable and perishable nature of stock and credit, however, renders them unfit to be trusted to as the principal funds of that sure, steady, and permanent revenue, which can alone give security and dignity to government. The government of no great nation, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... humanity, this is Christianity; the rest is but formality and picture-courteous idolatry, and Jewish and Popish blasphemy against the Christian religion." And yet the mind of Roger Williams was impulsive, erratic, and unstable, compared with theirs; and in what respect has the work they left behind them proved, after the testing of two centuries, less solid or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... out powders. Thus, he knew a horse, and, what is harder to understand, a horse-dealer, and was a match for him. He knew what a nervous woman is, and how to manage her. He could tell at a glance when she is in that condition of unstable equilibrium in which a rough word is like blow to her, and the touch of unmagnetized fingers reverses all her nervous currents. It is not everybody that enters into the soul of Mozart's or Beethoven's harmonies; and there are vital symphonies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... city of the beautiful, Home of all art, all elegance, all grace; Whose orators and poets sway the soul As the winds move the sea's unstable face; O wonderous city, nurse and home of mind, This is my oracle to you this day— No generous growth from starved roots will you find, But fruitless blossoms ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... in continental countries generally, the number of political groups is legion. Many are too small and unstable to be entitled properly to the designation of parties; and, in truth, of even the larger ones none has ever become so formidable numerically as to acquire a majority in the popular chamber. For the enactment of measures the Government is obliged to rely ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... want me to come, why in the world didn't you have the courage to say so at the start? I must say I don't admire people whose tempers—and manners—are so unstable. I'm sorry I forced my presence upon you, and I promise you it won't occur again." She hesitated, and then fired a parting shot which certainly was spiteful in the extreme. "There's one good thing about ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... public school man," fallen upon evil days. Alban was perfectly well aware that this was a shameless imposition, but his ideas of morality as it affected the relations of rich and poor were ever primitive and unstable. "If this old thief gets half a sovereign, what's it matter?" he would argue; "the other man stole his money, I suppose, and can well afford to pay up." Here was a gospel preached every day in Thrawl Street. He had never stopped ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... husband; "not a knave, but a singular example of a man whose feelings and susceptibilities never deepen into affection—unstable as water—tossed hither and thither for want of fixed principles, and suffering intensely in his better moods from the knowledge of the weakness he has not the courage to overcome. I was not inclined to let him spare himself, and did not contradict his opinion that he was a 'fool,' but ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... that there are so many things concur to make him and his Fellow Commissioners unable to go through the King's work that he do despair of it, every body becoming an enemy to them in their retrenchments, and the King unstable, the debts great and the King's present occasions for money great and many and pressing, the bankers broke and every body keeping in their money, while the times are doubtful what will stand. But he says had they ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... man of letters of an unstable creed, born in Seville, of Irish parentage; first ordained a priest; left the Catholic Church, and took orders in the Church of England; left the English, became a Unitarian, and settled to miscellaneous literary work; left an autobiography ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... cities experiments in the various forms of government were perpetually made and perpetually failed. They existed for a time, and were in turn supplanted. The most permanent government was that of Sparta; the most unstable was that of Athens. The former promoted a lofty patriotism and public morality and the national virtues; the latter inequalities of wealth, the rise of obscure individuals, and the progress ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... be remarked that Byron's popularity made it difficult for him to indulge sentiments of envy. But without referring to the unstable character of popularity, was not his own attacked by the jealousy of those who wished to pull him down from the pedestal of fame, to which they hoped themselves to rise? Did he not think, some years before his death, that his popularity was wavering, and that his rivals ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... very desperate person!" exclaimed Keyork. "If you had the management of this unstable world you would make it a very convulsive and nervous place. We should all turn into flaming ephemerides, fluttering about the crater of a perpetually active volcano. I prefer the system of the brick liver. There is more durability ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... but an unstable sentiment, and so it proved with this unreasoning affection of the American people for France. Firmly the American authorities held to their policy of neutrality, refusing to be influenced in the slightest degree by the popular clamor of the people for an alliance with France. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... grunted disdain for the hunches of Kit, even while his eyes smiled response to the ever-living call of youth. To Rhodes there was ever a "next time." He was young enough to deal in futures, and had a way with him by which friends were to be found for even unstable venturings with no backing more ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... you used to send me, for I do not love distance or ceremony; there is more of love and tenderness in the name of mother than in all the complimentary titles in the world... You complain that you are unstable and inconstant in the ways of virtue. Alas! what Christian is not so too? I am sure that I, above all others, am most unfit to advise in such a case: yet since I love you as my own soul, I will endeavour to do as well as ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... still upon drawing a line between cosmical and moral forces, let it be drawn at the point where there first arises that unstable complex called life. Life does in a sense oppose itself to the balance of nature. To hold itself together, it must play at parry and thrust with the very forces which gave it birth. Once having happened, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... and is, both dangerous and unstable. Not only is it sensitive to flame or spark, but it absorbs moisture from the air. In other words, it was no easy matter to "keep your powder dry." During the middle 1700's, Spaniards on a Florida river outpost kept powder in glass bottles; ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... fifty thousand dollars in the panic of '74, and at another ten thousand dollars by endorsing for a friend. His old acquaintance, poverty, again took up its abode with him. In addition, he was heavily in debt. Those were black days, days that taught him how unstable were the things of this world—money, position, the ambitions that once had seemed so worthy. The only thing that brought a sense of satisfaction, of having done something worth while, was the endeavor to make ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... touch with a tool the stones which construct the sacred altar of peace. I would not violate with modern polish the ingenuous and noble roughness of these truly constitutional materials. Above all things, I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering,—the odious vice of restless and unstable minds. I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither wander nor stumble. Determining to fix articles of peace, I was resolved not to be wise beyond what was written; I was resolved to use nothing else than the form of sound words, to let others ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... respectable than any that can be invented for her. She springs from man's experience concerning his own well-being—and this, though not infallible, is still the least fallible thing we have. A system which cannot stand without a better foundation than this must have something so unstable within itself that it will topple over on whatever ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... blunted horns renew, Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky, Nor, poised, did on her own foundations lie, Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown; But earth, and air, and water were in one. Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable, And water's dark abyss unnavigable. No certain form on any was impressed; All were confused, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... was to injure oneself, since it was composed of "every particular man." The sovereign power was unlimited, and was not to be questioned. Whether monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy was the form of government was unimportant, though Hobbes preferred monarchy, because popular assemblies were unstable and apt to need dictators. Civil laws were the standard of right and wrong, and obedience to autocracy was better than the resistance which led to civil war or anarchy—the very things that induced men to establish sovereignty. Only when ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... anything that was told her. She was examined by a commission of Chacrot, Brouardel, and Mollett, who reported that this condition came from the use of morphia, suffering, and hunger; that these suggestions from others, acting on an unstable nervous organism, greatly deranged by morphia and other causes, rendered her irresponsible for her ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... citizen; and not the man as a whole. You do not create the living being; you do not fashion the living clay, as God did in the Bible; you make regulations. Individual worth, on which some pretend to rely, is relative and unstable, and no one is a judge of it. In a well-organized entirety, it cultivates and improves itself automatically. But that magnificent anarchy cannot, at the inception of the human Charter, take the place of ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... proved unworthy of the confidence placed in them. Of course there, as elsewhere, the faith of the missionaries has been tried. Storms, and floods, and disease have visited the island; evil-disposed persons have come from other lands and endeavoured to introduce drunkenness, and to turn the unstable to their own bad courses. Still I may safely say, that there are not twenty persons in the island, and very few in the whole group, who do ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... conducted the diplomatic maneuvers preceding of immediately following the beginning of the war in the six most important countries of Europe is still in power. In Russia, Goremykin and Sazonoff are forgotten behind a line of successors, equally unstable. In France, Delcasse left the foreign office and Viviani ceased to head the cabinet, following the collapse of Serbia in the second autumn ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... temper. At these times the Andamanese are gentle and pleasant to each other, considerate to the aged, the weakly or the helpless, and to captives, kind to their wives and proud of their children, whom they often over-pet; but when angered, cruel, jealous, treacherous and vindictive, and always unstable. They are bright and merry companions, talkative, inquisitive and restless, busy in their own pursuits, keen sportsmen and naturally independent, absorbed in the chase from sheer love of it and other physical occupations, and not ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... breath he clutched the tap root a foot higher and tried his weight upon it. It held like a rope. He pulled himself a foot higher from the waters. Once more, and then he found that he had command of his legs and could dig his feet into the unstable clay. Then, inch by inch, scarce daring to hope, he pulled himself up, up until he was free of the flood and between him and the ground above only a scant yard remained. Below him the rushing torrents roared, as though angry at his escape, ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... 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 ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... woes. But, the situation once mastered, by the most loving and accurate of scientific methods of procedure, a happy married life is certain to result. Otherwise, the "married state" will always be in a condition of "unstable equilibrium." So let every bride and bridegroom begin, from the first, to try to establish the greatly to be desired accomplishment. If anything further on this point should be desired, consult a ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... four balls were on the longer side and two on the shorter and steeper side. The balancing of force thus brought about constituted a stable equilibrium, Stevinus being the first to discriminate between such a condition and the unbalanced condition called unstable equilibrium. By this simple experiment was laid the foundation of the science of statics. Stevinus had a full grasp of the principle which his experiment involved, and he applied it to the solution of oblique forces in all directions. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... men that came from a land in which we both feel some interest. The sea is not more unstable than are those rogues in their knavery. Their minds are but half made up to piracy.—'Tis a coarse word, Mr Wilder, but I fear we earn it. But these rascals make a reservation of grace in the midst ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... commercial importance in the world. And its people, especially those in rural parts, are exceptionally frugal and industrious. But France as a nation has not made the progress in the world that its natural advantages call for. It has been cursed with expensive and unstable governments and sanguinary wars. Its upper classes, the natural leaders of its peoples, are excessively fond of pleasure and military glory, and the energies of the nation have been much misdirected. As a consequence, ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... along a corridor and opened a door. Then he set his unstable candle down on a toilet-table and asked at what hour they were to be ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... total does not, of course, represent the number of men in the field at any one time. It is an estimate of the numbers of all who bore arms against the British troops at any time whatever during the campaign. The Boer army numerically was the most unstable known to history,[78] varying in strength as it varied in fortune in the field, varying even with the weather, or with that mercurial mental condition of which, in irregular forces, the numbers present at the front best mark the barometer. Those numbers, even in ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... prompted both by his virtues and his limitations, would not on the whole have been unacceptable to the mass of the Southern whites. Left wholly to themselves, those States would soon have righted themselves from the unstable equilibrium in which they had been placed by the imposition of an ignorant electorate. Natural forces,—just or unjust, benignant or cruel,—would soon have reversed the order. But the nation at large ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... civilized peoples is based almost universally on the union of one man and one woman. There is good reason to believe that this practice of monogamy was in vogue among primitive human beings, but marriage was unstable and it was only through long experimentation that monogamy proved itself best fitted to survive. At first conjugal affection, which has become intelligent and moral, was merely a sexual desire that led the man to seek a mate and the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... which grew a close network of grass, with much decayed matter mixed up with it. In the centre of this, and underneath it, ran a broad, deep, and rapid stream. As the guides proceeded across, the men stole after them with cautious footsteps. As they arrived near the centre we began to see this unstable grassy bridge, so curiously provided by nature for us, move up and down in heavy languid undulations, like the swell of the sea after a storm. Where the two asses of the Expedition moved, the grassy waves rose a foot high; but suddenly one unfortunate ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... to do Him service!' Sadly and dejectedly as the words were spoken—mournful as was the contrast between the will and the result, this was the true cause that there was peace with Louis. Unstable, negligent, impetuous, and weak as he had been, the one earnest purpose had been his, guarding the heart, though not yet controlling the judgment. His soul was awake to the unseen, and thus the sense of the reality of bliss ineffable, and power to take comfort in the one great Sacrifice, came with ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any minute," said I, contemplating the unstable stone crest of the northeast turret with some uneasiness. My face brightened suddenly. "That particular section of the castle is uninhabitable, I am told. It really doesn't matter if it collapses. Ah, Britton! Here you ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... privilege, we achieve, if we achieve it at all, by virtue of great spiritual discipline. We are, to be sure, brought into union with God through the sacraments, but the union so achieved is, if one may so express it, an unstable union; it is union that we have to maintain by daily spiritual action and which suffers many a weakening through our infidelity, even if it escape the disaster of mortal sin. We sway to and fro in our ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... the days of my pupilage, he was wont to regard the black-board chalk, "is a very remarkable object. It presents a combination of properties that makes it singularly difficult to conceal permanently. It is bulky and of an awkward shape, it is heavy, it is completely incombustible, it is chemically unstable, and its decomposition yields great volumes of highly odorous gases, and it nevertheless contains identifiable structures of the highest degree of permanence. It is extremely difficult to preserve unchanged, and it is still more difficult ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... over the complete crushing of Edith, with whom he felt himself quite even in the contest that had endured so long. Next morning it would be Sonia's turn. Ah, what a despicable thing is man's love, how unstable and profitless! No wonder Honora valued it so lightly. How Horace Endicott had raved over this whited sepulcher five years ago, believed in her, sworn by her virtue and truth! And to-day he regarded her without feeling, neither love nor hate, perfect indifference ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... comprehensible that worlds which appear more and more stable as they cool could become so unstable as to afterward dissociate entirely. To explain this phenomenon, we will inquire whether astronomical observations do not allow us ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... latitudinarian scheme prevails among the majority, the greater part, with the Athenians, spending their time only to hear and see something new, gadding about to change their ways, going in the ways of Egypt and Assyria, to drink the waters of Shichor and the river, unstable souls, like so many light combustibles wrapt up by the eddies of a whirlwind, tossed hither and thither till utterly dissipated.—The doctrine of original sin[14] is by several denied, others are pulling down the very hedges of church government, refusing all church-standards, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... usurper, who was not of the royal family, was short and unfortunate: he was defeated by the West Saxons, and killed by his own subjects, the East Angles [q]. Ludican, his successor, underwent the same fate [r]; and Wiglaff, who mounted this unstable throne, and found every thing in the utmost confusion, could not withstand the fortune of Egbert, who united all the Saxon kingdoms into one great monarchy. [FN [o] Ingulph. p. 6. [p] Ibid. p. 7. Brompton, p. 776 [q] Ingulph. p. 7. [r] Ann. Beverl. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... more faithful, more loving, than the consciousness that springs into being from the very deepest thought. Acts of this nature bring, above all, a special knowledge of happiness. Strive as we may, our loftiest thoughts are always uncertain, unstable; but the light of a goodly deed shines steadily on, and is lasting. There are times when deep thought is no more than merely fictitious consciousness; but an act of charity, the heroic duty fulfilled—these are true ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... homogeneity in the social aggregate is an unstable one. The primary political differentiation originates from the primary family differentiation. Men and women very early respectively form the two political classes of rulers and ruled. The slave class acquires separateness ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... expressed through countless forms, on the lower planes of existence. The sacrifice of its angelic innocence, the imperious defiance and deathless courage, symbolized by Leo, have obtained the victory over the lower kingdoms; which will be incorporated into his vast empire. Yet, unstable as water, it cannot excel; or, in other words, cannot rise to a higher state within this ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... supreme in him. Let an animal live for sense; it is its nature; but for man another law is ordained, which bids him think last of enjoyment, and to partake only of that in obedience to the law of the mind. The modern evangel of the apotheosis of the unstable we understand to convey the teaching, "Live in accordance with sense, or the feeling of the moment". Be like the dame du monde whom Mrs. Ward has so accurately drawn in Madame de Netteville, who did not hold herself ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... new blizzard theory on this. He supposes the surface air intensely cooled over the continental and Barrier areas, and the edge of this cold region lapped by warmer air from the southern limits of Lockyer's cyclones. This would produce a condition of unstable equilibrium, with great potentiality for movement. Since, as we have found, volumes of cold air at different temperatures are very loath to mix, the condition could not be relieved by any gradual process, but continues until the stream is released by some minor cause, when, the ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... digestions or unstable nervous systems are especially harmed by these poisons. A family history of nervously inclined people calls for rigid ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... elaborate (perhaps because of this character), the Siouan organization was highly unstable; with every shock of conflict, whether intestine or external, some autocrats were displaced or slain; and after each important event—great battle, epidemic, emigration, or destructive flood—new combinations were formed. The undoubtedly rapid development ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... in all countries, an unstable possession, is in France infinitely more so; and Louis-Philippe must have more luck, as well as more wisdom, than falls to the lot of mankind, to retain this fleeting good when the novelty of his ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... said for even so stringent a policy as this. An unstable home, with a worthless father an intermittent member of the household, is as bad an environment as children can have—its very fluctuations making for nervous instability and a wrong point of view later ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... with the unstable lilac-bushes, his world spun about him; it drew in and darkened. He had the sensation of a grain of dust sucked down a vast ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... your country nor your kindred; you have given what you had to your parents, and disappointed the poor; you do not deserve to be received into the company of those who make profession of holy poverty. You commenced by the flesh, which is an unstable foundation for a spiritual edifice." This carnal and animal man returned to his parents, resumed his property, and rather than give it to the poor, he gave up the good ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... have no words—alas!—to tell The loveliness of loving well! Nor would I now attempt to trace The more than beauty of a face Whose lineaments, upon my mind, Are—shadows on th' unstable wind: Thus I remember having dwelt Some page of early lore upon, With loitering eye, till I have felt The letters—with ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... carried through with absolute decisiveness. He could not gauge how far his threat of the divorce court had intimidated Matheson. Beyond that, he was not at all sure that Olive would side with him in the matter. She was unstable, unreliable. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... let him ask in faith, nothing wavering; for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind, and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted; but the rich in that he is made low; because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... as master of the situation; Pulteney was not unnaturally inclined to believe that he had a much better understanding of the existing political conditions; he complained that Wyndham submitted too much to Bolingbroke's dictation. The whole alliance was founded on unstable and unwholesome principles; it was sure to crumble and collapse sooner or later. There can be no question but that Walpole's invective precipitated the collapse. With consummate political art he had ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Chambers was waited upon and remonstrated with by some old slaveholders, for allowing an abolitionist to write for his journal. "Such sentiments," they said, "would destroy the Union." "If your Union," replied he, "is based upon a foundation so unstable that one woman's breath can blow it down, in God's name let her do it. She shall say her say while I live and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... her immediate group should grow as a man's business does in the outer circle where he naturally operates. It will become stable or unstable exactly as trade or profession becomes stable or unstable. Every year it should take on new elements, ramify, turn up new obligations, knit itself more firmly into the life of the community. With every year it should become necessarily more complicated, broader ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... Bamberg, and bears him off to his castle at Jaxthausen. The contrasted characters of the two chief personages in the play are now brought before us—Gottfried the rough soldier, honest, resolute, and Weislingen, more of a courtier than a soldier, weak and unstable. Overborne by the stronger nature of Gottfried, Weislingen agrees to break his alliance with the Bishop, and, as a pledge for his future conduct, betroths himself to Gottfried's sister Marie, who, weakly devout, is a counterpart to Gottfried's wife Elizabeth, ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... for granted in ancient and scholastic philosophy that a being dwelling, like man, in the immediate, whose moments are in flux, needed constructive reason to interpret his experience and paint in his unstable consciousness some symbolic picture of the world. To have reverted to this constructive process and studied its stages is an interesting achievement; but the construction is already made by common-sense and science, and it was visionary insolence in the Germans to propose to make that construction ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... innovation, and that secular increase in population that security permits. The imperfection of the means of communication rendered political unions of a greater area than that swept by a hundred-mile radius highly unstable. It was a world of small states. Lax empires came and went, at the utmost they were the linking of practically autonomous states under a common Pax. Wars were usually wars between kingdoms, conflicts ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the unstable, foolish ruler. He sacrificed his wife Vashti to his friend Haman-Memucan, and later on again his friend Haman to his wife Esther. (49) Folly possessed him, too, when he arranged extravagant festivities for guests from afar, before ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Sea, have for centuries grown cacao of excellent quality. The criollo (creole) bean is generally used as seed, and for it high prices are obtained. Owing, however, to the unsettled state of the republics and their unstable governments, its cultivation has gone back rather than forward during the past decade. With better administration and settled peace, great developments might easily be achieved. The British Royal Mail Steam Packet Company provides a ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... the mind gives no conscious attention; just as when I say—"any thing," I may imagine a poker or a plate; but I pay no attention to its being this rather than that; and the very image itself is so wandering and unstable that at this moment it may be a dim shadow of the one, and in the next of some other thing. In this sense, idea is opposed to image in degree instead of kind; yet still contra-distinguished, as is evident by the sequel, "much less can a painter's pencil do it:" ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... loyal to his pledges than most of his contemporaries or their successors. He gave something like order and rest to a distracted land, and raised her again to a position at least respectable among the nations, securing himself on a most unstable throne without resorting to the usual methods of the tyrant. Had he died when Morton died, the baser aspects of his reign would never have achieved so unlovely a ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... country recently dismembered by the Emperor Alexander with the consent of Napoleon, there was preparing at this time an event which was soon to assure to the fifth European coalition one of its most useful supports. The King of Sweden, Gustavus IV., unstable, violent, and eccentric enough to warrant doubts as to the soundness of his reason, had been deposed on the 10th of May, 1809, by the assembled States, as the result of a military conspiracy. His uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, elevated to the throne under the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... because of continuous residence and insects of diabolical activity pestered its occupants, the camp would shift to another site; but there existed proofs that the bin-gum-tree localised the thoughts of those aimless, unstable wanderers to whom a few bushes stuck in the sand as a screen from prevailing winds represent the home of the hour and all that the word signifies and embodies. Many a one was laid to rest beneath its spreading branches, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... what I am here to say. The time is come to give up the shifts and unstable expedients that we needed, or thought we needed, in our early beginnings. Let us pull down all these scaffoldings and stages that have helped us to build, and let us see whether our fabric will stand upon its base, erect, without the paltry support ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... salts of silver is that, being very unstable, i. e., ready to undergo a molecular change, the undulations produced in the ether, which pervades all space, and the potential action or moving power of light is sufficient to disturb their normal chemical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... foreign foe,—this very day (April 13th) turned in self-defence against the children of those who once fought for liberty at Fort Moultrie! It is a sad thought that there are truths which can be got out of life only by the destructive analysis of war. Statesmen deal in proximate principles,—unstable compounds; but war reduces facts to their simple elements in its red-hot crucible, with its black flux of carbon and sulphur and nitre. Let us turn our back on this miserable, even though inevitable, fraternal strife, and, closing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... royal hand had written to the Duke of Parma;" and how much his honour was interested "by the disavowing of his dealings about the peace begun by her Majesty's commandment." He adjured her with much eloquence to think upon the consequences of stirring up the common and unstable multitude against their rulers; upon the pernicious effects of allowing the clergy to inflame the passions of the people against the government. "Under the name of such as have charge over the people," said Buckhurst, "are understood the ministers and chaplains of the churches ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... slaked-lime. The dioxide was obtained as the hydrate, CaO2.8H2O, by P. Thenard (Ann. Chim. Phys., 1818, 8, p. 213), who precipitated lime-water with hydrogen peroxide. It is permanent when dry; on heating to 130 deg. C. it loses water and gives the anhydrous dioxide as an unstable, pale buff-coloured powder, very sparingly soluble in water. It is used as an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... is because she cannot bear to be unstable, and to desert the work to which she was almost pledged; but she says she is ashamed to perceive how much the sacrifice would cost her. She adds, that decide as she may, he concurs with her in devoting everything to the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge |
