"Insensibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being formless blobs, insensibly begin to look like lace-work. Presently the heavens and the earth are bathed in liquid blue that casts a spell so potent on the soul of him that sees it that he yearns for something he knows not what, except that it is utterly ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... Jesuits. "The five pleasant walks, of which the central one has nine terraces, with a pyramid at each extremity, and leads to the Casa de Recreio, or pleasure-house of the governor-general, erected in 1817 by Governor Vice-Admiral Luiz da Motta Feio," have insensibly faded away; the land is a waste, poor grazing ground for cattle landed from the south coast, whilst negrokins scream and splash ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... a tiny house, but spotlessly clean and tidy, and the long, low, dainty drawing-room into which they were shown had a sense of rest and repose which insensibly affected even the ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... Insensibly my rapid footsteps slackened. When I reached that part of the Mile End Road in which the Jewish tailors live, and found myself listening to a foreign language which I afterwards knew to be Yiddish, and looking ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... hand grasped hers again very vitally, very reassuringly. Almost insensibly she yielded herself to his control. Quiveringly she began to tell him of the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... kind of deception, it may be stated that navigators, whose actual experience has not extended to the tropical regions, are very apt, in poring over the voyages of others, to acquire, insensibly, a very confident notion that each of the great Trade-winds blowing on different sides of the Line (the North-east and the South-east by name), are quite steady in their direction; and that, in the equatorial interval ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... height. To begin with, our impression of displeasure will but increase with the hillock itself, which will the more strike the sight, and which will be the more repulsive. But continue; raise it up twice as high as a tower, and insensibly the displeasure will efface itself to make way for quite another feeling. The hill has at last become a mountain, so high a mountain that it is quite impossible for our eyes to take it in at one look. There ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... did not succeed in bringing a smile to Eleanor's pale lips, his cheery manner insensibly comforted her, and she turned and walked back to the house with him and Maud, feeling that the load of her trouble was somewhat lightened by ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... passed; then another; dumb, dreary despair had settled upon his mind. Insensibly he fell into a half-frozen stupor. He was beginning to think, in a numb way, that it did not make any particular difference to him ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... grouse's nest among the dead fern, and, contrary to the most solemn injunctions of uncle and keeper, enforced by the direst threats, had purloined and broken an egg; and still dinner-time delayed. Perhaps, too, the cold blighting wind, which soon made her look blue and pinched, tamed her insensibly. At any rate, she got up after about an hour, and coolly walked ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in his History of Scotland, relates that Duffus, king of that country, falling ill of a disorder unknown to the physicians, was consumed by a slow fever, passed his nights without sleep, and insensibly wasted away; his body melted in perspiration every night; he became weak, languid, and in a dying state, without, however, his pulse undergoing any alteration. Everything was done to relieve him, but uselessly. His life was despaired of, and those about him began ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... I had insensibly imbibed a notion, or rather a feeling, that I was Lily's only pet and favourite, and that nothing else had a right to attract her notice. Of course I allowed her to pay proper attention to human beings; I knew that I could not come into competition with them, and therefore I never ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... seated herself. Catherine knelt now, and took one of her mother's hands between her own. Insensibly the cold hand was comforted by the warm ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... wife, discovered that Christian influence, good example, and kind words, were so attractive and powerful as to induce them, insensibly, to begin a process of imitation, which ended, quite naturally, in a flourishing ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... intention of buying many books, the dreary loneliness of the tavern where I supped drove me out upon the streets, and insensibly I drifted towards my favourite second-hand book-shop, where the little maiden behind the mountains of Welsh theology reminds me of someone I know. My Welsh Divinity I call her, hovering bright-winged above the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... their own natural reason, improved by a general conversation with books, to enlarge on points which they are supposed already to understand. If a rational man reads an excellent author with just application, he shall find himself extremely improved, and perhaps insensibly led to imitate that author's perfections, although in a little time he should not remember one word in the book, nor even the subject it handled: for books give the same turn to our thoughts and way of reasoning, that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... honor that you have conferred on me. If he, who was bred and passed his whole life amongst you,—if he, who, through the easy gradations of acquaintance, friendship, and esteem, has obtained the honor which seems of itself, naturally and almost insensibly, to meet with those who, by the even tenor of pleasing manners and social virtues, slide into the love and confidence of their fellow-citizens,—if he cannot speak but with great emotion on this subject, surrounded as he is on all sides with his old friends,—you will ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... philosophic guides of humanity, and to lay down, with the serene logic of truth, the bases of moral and political progress. The inevitable sympathy between the editor and his daily readers—the action and reaction which constantly take place and insensibly lead the journalist into the paths of popular opinion and passion—these are too apt to render him altogether unfit to be an oracle in the great work of social organization and government. The common sense of the multitude is often an invaluable corrective of speculative ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... time. That topic had led them, next, to his business errand at Grailsea—an errand of kindness, as usual; undertaken for the benefit of the miller, who had been his old farm-servant, and who was now hard pressed by serious pecuniary difficulties. From this they had glided insensibly into a subject often repeated among them, and never exhausted by repetition—the praise of Mr. Vanstone himself. Each one of the three had some experience of her own to relate of his simple, generous nature. The conversation seemed to be almost painfully interesting ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... that he knew her. It wasn't till he knew her that he was seized by an astonishment which almost made him laugh. It wasn't till he almost laughed that he went forward with the words, which insensibly bridged some of the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... away from a child unless it is positively vicious; that they should learn how to read a book and read it quickly is the great point; that they should get a habit of reading, and feel a void without it, is what should be cultivated. Never mind if it is trash now; their tastes will insensibly alter. I like a boy to cram himself with novels; a day will come when he is sick of them, and rejects them for the study of facts. What we want to give a child is 'bookmindedness,' as some one calls it. They will read a good deal that is bad, of course; but innocence is as slippery ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... home except at dinner, after which meal he went out, returning very late at night. He went to balls and other social festivities by himself, precisely as if he were still a bachelor. Thus the two women were always alone together. Celeste insensibly fell into a passive attitude, and became what Brigitte wanted her,—a helot. The Queen Elizabeth of the household then passed from despotism to a sort of pity for the poor victim who was always sacrificed. She ended by softening her haughty ways, her cutting speech, her contemptuous tones, as soon ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... worthy to have reigned over a far larger state. With the pattern of this admirable mother before their eyes, with all that was choicest in art and fairest in nature around them, Leonora's daughters grew up to womanhood, and insensibly acquired that enthusiasm for beauty in all its varied forms, that fine taste and perception which distinguished them above their contemporaries, which made Isabella at the end of her long life still the most attractive woman of her day, and which caused the bravest soldiers and ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... runs insensibly into one or other of the forms of naked Atheism to which we have already referred. Ignoring the existence of mind, or of any spiritual Power distinct from Nature and superior to it, it must necessarily ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... and the medium for this was found in the rapidly growing madrigal, which soon ruled the realm of secular music. In it the frottola, raised to an art form and equipped with the wealth of contrapuntal device, passed almost insensibly into a new life. Berlioz says that it takes a long time to discover musical Mediterraneans and still longer to learn to navigate them. The madrigal was a musical Mediterranean. It was the song of the people touched by the culture of the church. ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... bridge, lined on each side with rows of trees, adorned with festoons of various flowers, and illuminated with coloured lights. We advanced at a great rate along the bridge, which was so very extensive that we could scarcely perceive the ascent, but proceeded insensibly until we arrived on the centre of the arch. The view from thence was glorious beyond conception; 'twas divine to look down on the kingdoms and seas and islands under us. Africa seemed in general of a ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... sometimes in thinking of it, and though I can never repent of the share you have in my heart, I know not whether I gave it you willingly or not at first. No; to speak ingenuously, I think you got an interest there a good while before I thought you had any, and it grew so insensibly and yet so fast, that all the traverses it has met with since have served rather to discover it to me than ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... states, as its clerical discipline was settled on a democratic basis, and as the countries which adopted that form of government were chiefly poor, the preachers having lost the rank and opulence enjoyed by the Roman Church, were gradually thrown on the support of the people. Insensibly they became occupied with the ideas and tenets natural to the common people, which, if they have usually the merit of being honestly conceived and boldly expressed, are not the less often adopted with credulity ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... together, and almost insensibly his hand seeks and finds hers. It was lying idle on her lap, and lifting it, he would have raised it to his lips, but with a sharp, violent action she wrests it from him, and, as a child might, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... beauty and grace; then will our youth dwell in the land of health, amid fair sights {213} and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will visit the eye and ear, like a healthful breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul even in childhood into harmony with ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... had visited. His most clear impression of the whole thing was how easy everything had been made for him. His oddness of speech, his gaucheries, his ignorances and nervousness had all been so lightly treated that they had been brushed away almost insensibly. He had been able to do so little that was wrong—his mistakes were ignored or admired as originality, and yet in some delicate way the right thing had been made clear to him. Ernestine had stood by his side, always laughing at this swift fulfilment of her prophecy, always encouraging him, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... curious interview between Eberhard Ludwig and his deserted wife; strained, unnatural, terrible, this meeting after long years, and insensibly they fell into their old attitudes: he wearied, irritated, coldly courteous; she tearful, imploring, tiresome. He told her that she was nothing to him, and that she had no further claims upon him; he provided residence, appanage, everything to which she had a right. She responded that she claimed ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... aratro; equus nasciter ad pacem. Nulla erunt bella; nulla captivitas. Aeternes thesauros haberet Romana respublica." But scarcely had the paeans escaped him, before, in his turn, he was assassinated in a mutiny of his own troops—a man of virtue and abilities, although his austere temper insensibly, under military power, subsided ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... far for those who are gone that they should be impervious alike to our indifference and our grief, for the truest grief will be insensibly deadened by time, and could not long console the least exacting ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... with his converts. He taught his workmen to associate more closely with one another, he brought their minds and their hearts together, and let them act one upon another. He lived and moved and had his own being among them like a father, and in this way insensibly they came by degrees to regard each other as members of a family. He has always felt, and his whole life has shown it, that the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," whatever the motives of its authors may have been, put the weak of this world at the mercy of the strong, and set Capital ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... impulse to fold her to her bosom? Not even her anxiety to retain undivided possession of her son's heart restrained her. So Alice lived, quiet, affectionate, but undemonstrative, as was natural after the trials she had passed. Insensibly she became "the angel in the house"; mother and son felt drawn to her by an irresistible attraction. By every delicate kindness, by attention to every wish and whim, by glances full of admiration and tenderness, both showed the power which her beauty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... historian, who endeavors honestly to record the progress of research, and to trace the influence of the work of some individual on the times in which he lived, is by no means an easy one; for, in scientific work one discovery frequently passes so insensibly into another that it is often difficult to know just where one stops and the other begins, and much difficulty constantly arises as to whom the credit should be given, when, as is too often the case, these discoveries are made by different individuals. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... ferns was loud, like the sweep of scythes. We sat down to supper in this kitchen about nine, my mother, my father, two men from the boat, and myself, and after supper we gathered about the fire here and talked. The talk in these parts, however it may begin, slides insensibly to that one element of which the noise is ever in our ears; and so in a little here were we chattering of wrecks and wrecks and wrecks and the bodies of dead men drowned. And then, in the thick of the talk, came the knock on the door—a light rapping of the knuckles, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... give out smoke rather than light. Pure glory and innocent riches were his, which were more precious in the sight of good men, and he showed himself incorruptible, and not to be bought at any price. It were easy for him to have turned a deluge of wealth into his house; but he knew that gifts insensibly corrupt,—that the specious pretext of gratitude is the snare in which the greatest souls allow themselves to be caught,—that a man covered with favors has difficulty in setting himself against injustice ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... the chalk from his clothes. Through force of habit, he looked up to the crest of the Hill of the Muses as he locked the door. The red ribbon fluttered like an oriflamme against the blue-and-white of the April sky. His heart quickened its beat a little as he saw it, and his steps insensibly hastened as he ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... up, and pursued their walk through gardens separated from one another only by small ditches, which marked out the limits without interrupting the communication, so great was the confidence the inhabitants reposed in each other. By this means the African magician drew Aladdin insensibly beyond the gardens, and crossed the country till ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... misunderstandings and tears and many hard lessons to be learned still ahead. But Hugh would never again be a stranger with her respect and love yet to be won. She could admire his strength of will and purpose whole heartedly and as she contrasted them with Aunt Trudy's characteristics, Rosemary insensibly found her aunt wanting. ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Edith's child. Pshaw! he had to pull himself together and take himself to task. For even in these few days he had grown to think of that little brown-faced, dark-eyed baby as his grandchild, instead of Martin Blake's brat. Insensibly and naturally, too, the child had brought back the memory of its mother, first as baby, then as sweet and winsome little child; then as bright, wilful, coaxing girl, and, lastly, unless he kept his thoughts well in check, there followed ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... statement—and had expressed a lively sense of his courage, and perhaps implied (for I suppose the arts of ladies are the same as those of men) a modest consciousness of his good looks, our bear began insensibly to soften; and it was already part as an apology, though still with unaffected heat of temper, that he volunteered some ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... constitution, public and private worth, are primarily due to heredity, and if they are taught to realize the fact that one marries not an individual but a family, the eugenist believes that better matings will be made, sometimes realized, sometimes insensibly. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... at the time, charitable man as he was. Rather another idea. Because observing so singular a haggardness combined with a dark eye, averted as in trouble and shame, and then again recalling Don Benito's confessed ill opinion of his crew, insensibly he was operated upon by certain general notions which, while disconnecting pain and abashment from virtue, invariably ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... disposition of their inhabitants and their impatience of constraint never allowed any foreign rule to be established over them: conquest, to be permanent, would have to be preceded by a long period of alliance on equal terms, and of discreet patronage which might insensibly accustom them to recognise in their former friend, first a protector, and then a suzerain imbued with respect for their laws and constitution. Gyges endeavoured to conciliate them severally, and to attach them to himself by treaties favourable to their ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... not half an hour before, now sent up the merriest cheer to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the daylight kept flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... do harm, and great harm, to their bodies. The brain will give them such an advantage over all other animals that they will insensibly be led to rely too much on it, to give it too free a rein, and to find the mirrors in it too fascinating. This organ, this outgrowth, this new part of them, will grow over-active, and its many fears and fancies will naturally injure the body. The interadjustment is delicate ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... in the companionship of a girl of her own age. And Elsli, too, profited by the intercourse; she was of a yielding nature and easily took new impressions, and now that she passed all her time in refined society, she insensibly grew into its likeness; and her voice, her manners, her way of speaking, all seemed assimilated to those of a very different way of life from that to which she had been accustomed. Was it that this new way was really more suited to ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... security and future affluence may be purchased by them; as tender bodies shrink from severe operations, though they are the certain methods of restoring health and vigour. The effects of this timidity are the same in both cases, the estate is impaired insensibly, and the body languishes by degrees, till no remedy can ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... Beauclerk at his house at Windsor, where he was entertained with experiments in natural philosophy[737]. One Sunday, when the weather was very fine, Beauclerk enticed him, insensibly, to saunter about all the morning. They went into a church-yard, in the time of divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of the tomb-stones. 'Now, Sir, (said Beauclerk) you are like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... infinitely obliged to you for doing so. I know by this that you would rather be guilty of incivility toward the emperor than violate the union we have sworn to each other. You judge right, for if you had once gone you would insensibly have been engaged to devote yourselves to him. But do you think it an easy matter absolutely to refuse the emperor what he seems so earnestly to desire? Monarchs will be obeyed in their desires, and it may be dangerous to oppose them; therefore, if to follow my inclination I should ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... he had, for no sun happened to shine at the moment. He then hastened forward, muffling himself in his cloak, and assuming a stooping and slouching gait, which diminished his apparent height. He was soon involved in the deep and dim alleys of the wood, into which he had insensibly plunged himself, and was traversing it at a great rate, without having any distinct idea in what direction he was going, when suddenly his course was arrested, first by a loud hello, and then by a summons to stand, accompanied by what seemed still more startling and extraordinary, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... John Effingham had insensibly imbibed the sentiments of his particular sect, though the large fortune inherited from his father had left him too independent to pursue the sinuous policy of trade. He had permitted temperament to act on prejudice to such an extent that he vindicated ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... permitted. He, however, was subdued by her calmness; and she, with ten times the weight of brain, was manoeuvred by the wonderful dash of General Rose Jocelyn. For her ladyship, thinking, 'I shall get the blame of all this,' rather sided insensibly with the offenders against those who condemned them jointly; and seeing that Rose had been scrupulously honest and straightforward in a very delicate matter, this lady was so constituted that she could not but applaud her daughter in her heart. A worldly woman would have acted, if she had not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... iron bars alternated with pigs of tin brought from the Cassiterides over the Dark Sea; gums from the country of the Blacks were running over their bags of palm bark; and gold dust heaped up in leathern bottles was insensibly creeping out through the worn-out seams. Delicate filaments drawn from marine plants hung amid flax from Egypt, Greece, Taprobane and Judaea; mandrepores bristled like large bushes at the foot of the walls; and an indefinable odour—the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Few days passed unmarked by fresh arrests. The phrase "the Queen" had almost insensibly passed from Jane to Mary. But for a little while yet the crisis was political, not religious. When the danger was over, and before Mary reached her metropolis, the scene was shifted, and the first Protestant arrest took place. And so sudden and unexpected was the blow, that it fell upon the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... forth I would not see her more, But many weary moons I lived alone— Alone, and in the heart of the great forest. Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea All day I watched the floating isles of shade, And sometimes on the shore, upon the sands Insensibly I drew her name, until The meaning of the letters shot into My brain: anon the wanton billow wash'd Them over, till they faded like my love. The hollow caverns heard me—the black brooks Of the mid-forest heard me—the soft winds, Laden with ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... presentation, for the national domains which represented them. Their sale was very extensive, and in this way was completed the revolutionary mission of the assignats, of which they were the second period. They procured the directory a momentary resource; but they also lost their credit, and led insensibly to bankruptcy, which was the transition ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... they were, the one with the other, they had insensibly relaxed their pace, becoming mere strollers on the outside edge of the throng. The sense of being watched came to both of them at once, and, looking up at the same moment, they saw, approaching at a snail's pace, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... roots of her hair and pulled her needle rapidly twice or thrice through her work, insensibly drawing the end of it away from him. "I suppose it was Ruth and Ned," she said in a low voice, as though he had ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... when I came out of the club. Quite by accident, a week or so later, I discovered that he still saw me home, lurking across the street among the shadows of the mango trees. What could I do? I know what I did do. Insensibly I began to keep better hours. On wet and stormy nights, in the thick of the folly and the fun, the thought would come to me of Otoo keeping his dreary vigil under the dripping mangoes. Truly, he made me ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... same table about a week after his disappearance, and as our eyes rested on his vacant chair, we insensibly fell into a train of meditation on the subject of his retirement from public life. We were wondering whether he had hung himself, or thrown himself off a bridge—whether he really was dead or had only been arrested—when ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... started in four columns, but so dense was the forest, so obstructed with undergrowth, that they could scarcely make their way, and, after a time, even the guides became confused in the labyrinth of trunks and boughs, and the four columns insensibly drew ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... a different set has insensibly varied into a different air.—To a Scots critic, the pathos ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... her father and mother, and sat quietly with them all the evening. She was beginning insensibly to rather hold herself aloof from the young people, and avoid joining in their games. She felt older. People had wondered if she would not wear the dress she had had made for her own wedding, but she did not. She wore her old purple ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... employed, many of the natives got together in parties, on several parts of the shore, all armed with bows, spears, etc. Some swam off to us, others came in canoes. At first they were shy, and kept at the distance of a stone's throw; they grew insensibly bolder; and, at last, came under our stern, and made some exchanges. The people in one of the first canoes, after coming as near as they durst, threw towards us some cocoa-nuts. I went into a boat and picked them up, giving them ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... pleasant evenings when, seated alone in my room with a favourite author, I had read and tickled Dumps under the chin and behind the ears to such an extent that I had thoroughly gained his heart; and as "love begets love," I had been drawn insensibly yet powerfully towards him. In short, Dumps and ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... has insensibly run on. You are yourself to blame, if you are much fatigued. I congratulate you on the auspicious opening of your session. Surely Great Britain and Ireland ought to join in wreathing a never-fading garland for the head of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a moment. It was seldom, indeed, that his grandfather spoke in a voice so tender and so yearning. Almost insensibly his arm stole round the old ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... the monastic life, the use of the sign of the cross, of holy oil, and even of images, the invocation of saints, the worship of relics, the rudiments of purgatory in prayers for the dead, and the tremendous mystery of the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, which insensibly swelled into the prodigy of transubstantiation. In these dispositions, and already more than half a convert, I formed an unlucky intimacy with a young gentleman of our college, whose name I shall spare. With a character less resolute, Mr. —— had imbibed the same religious ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... yet. I certainly had no "proposed" to Theodosia. In fact, to the very best of my recollection I never did "propose" to her—or "pop," as the hideous phrase is—any decisive question at all. We seem, to my recollection, to have come gradually, insensibly, and mutually to consider it a matter of course that what we wanted was to be married, and that the only matter which needed any words or consideration was the question, how the difficulties in the way of our wishes were to ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... in public opinion, and Honor, who at Kilmore had lived according to a model of her own choosing, now found herself insensibly falling in with the general tone of the College, and acquiring the mental shibboleths of her schoolfellows. Naturally all this was not accomplished at once, and "Paddy Pepper-box", as she was still nicknamed, had many outbreaks and relapses; but by the time the half-term ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... fourth in the strength and situation of the city. As touching the goodness and security of the port I shall first speak. Nature hath so formed this port that no storm from the sea can enter it in any direction. Within the haven the sea is so quiet, and runs so insensibly, that scarcely can we perceive it to have any tide. The ground is mud. The road in all places has five or six fathoms, and seven in some places; and is so large that two hundred ships may ride commodiously at anchor, besides rowing-vessels without number. The water is so clear ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... of his words as soon as they were uttered, but he would not humble himself to say so. Alexina had taken Stephen's part and her manner to Josie assumed a tinge of coldness. Josie quickly noticed and resented it, and the breach between the two girls widened almost insensibly, until they barely spoke when they met. Each blamed the other and cherished bitterness in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... accidents have been occasioned by the use of copper in kitchen requisites. The eating of fruit especially that has been prepared in a copper stewpan, where some of the oxide was insensibly imbibed, has been known to produce death; or if coffee grounds are suffered to remain long in a copper coffee-pot, and afterwards mixed with fresh coffee, for the sake of economy, the effects will be highly injurious, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... of "Dinner is upon the table," dissolved his reverie, and we all sat down without any symptoms of ill humor.... Mr. Wilkes placed himself next to Dr. Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and politeness, that he gained upon him insensibly. No man ate more heartily than Johnson, or loved better what was nice and delicate. Mr. Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to some fine veal. "Pray give me leave, Sir—It is better here—A little of the brown—Some fat, Sir—A little of the stuffing—Some gravy—Let ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... she had never advanced beyond the fearless and primitive innocence of a child. Ah, if ever there was a sacred charge confided to any mortal creature, here surely was a sacred charge confided to Me! I could not endure to see the poor pretty blind face turned so insensibly towards mine, after such words as I had just said to her. She was standing within my reach. I took her by the arm, and made her sit on my knee. "My dear!" I said, very earnestly, "you must not go to him ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... country of cone-bearers there is usually a good strip of swardy sod along the canon floor. Pine woods, the short-leafed Balfour and Murryana of the high Sierras, are sombre, rooted in the litter of a thousand years, hushed, and corrective to the spirit. The trail passes insensibly into them from the black pines and a thin belt of firs. You look back as you rise, and strain for glimpses of the tawny valley, blue glints of the Bitter Lake, and tender cloud films on the farther ranges. For such pictures the pine branches make a noble frame. Presently they close in wholly; they ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away—ever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas—and never came back any more! How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... special condition of circumstances, in which it may originate. Hence a horror arises for that class of offences, which is (philosophically speaking) exaggerated; and by daily use, the ethics of a police-office translate themselves, insensibly, into the ethics even of religious people. But I tell that sycophantish fanatic—not this only, viz., that he abuses unfairly, against Kate, the advantage which he has from the inevitably distorted bias of society; but ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... deem it so applicable to the system. It does not debilitate the liver by over-stimulation, nor irritate the stomach and bowels by disturbing the delicate processes of digestion, neither does it act with severity upon the blood, but it operates so gently, insensibly, and yet with so much certainty, that it excites the surprise and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... heather, over which blocks of granite are scattered in all directions; and, as in all similar districts, each valley has its own clear mountain stream, which receives the innumerable waterfalls descending from the hill-sides. The whole country has a solitude, and an impressive grandeur, which insensibly carries back the mind to an earlier and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... on their coarse manners, to boast of their heroism, and to give utterance to feelings of revenge against the enemy. All this is injurious to young and impressible minds. If you admire such things, you will insensibly imitate them, and imitation will work gradual but certain detriment to your character. Other men are refined without being affected. They can relax into occasional pleasantries without violating modesty. They can be loyal to their government without indulging private hatred against ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... My collections insensibly assumed the proportions of the volume now submitted to the public; and in the process of seeing the sheets through the press certain supplementary Notes suggested themselves, and form an Appendix. It has been my endeavour to render the ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... desolate apartments to an inner room, which had escaped the general wreck. After partaking of some refreshments, we seated ourselves; and, with fresh lamentations, he began to tell me that the gray, withered old man whom he had met with my shadow had insensibly led him such a zig-zag race, that he had lost all traces of me, and at last sank down exhausted with fatigue; that, unable to find me, he had returned home, when, shortly after, the mob, at Rascal's instigation, assembled violently before the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... figure, his warmly flushed face. War did strange things. There was a new light in the rector's once worldly if kindly eyes. He had the strained look of a man who sees great things, as yet far away, and who would hasten toward them. Insensibly he quickened his pace. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... labyrinth, imperfectly lighted, and exhibiting objects which irritate our curiosity, only because they acquire a mysterious interest from being undefined and dubious. My eyes became habituated to the gloomy atmosphere to which I directed them, and insensibly my mind became more interested in their discoveries than in the metaphysical subtleties which the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... words, came forward, and pressed his offer in a manner not to be denied;-so the phaeton was ordered! And indeed, my dear Sir,-I know not how it was;-but, from that moment, my coldness and reserve insensibly wore away! You must not be angry,-it was my intention, nay, my endeavour, to support them with firmness: but when I formed the plan, I thought only of the letter,-not of Lord Orville!-and how is it ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... it was what Sister Soulsby had said about Catholics which had insensibly guided his purposeless stroll in this direction. What a woman that was! Somehow the purport of her talk—striking, and even astonishing as he had found it—did not stand out so clearly in his memory as did the image of the woman herself. She must have ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... be a sight worth seeing! Abe opened his mouth and began to snore. What disgusting, hideous creatures men were, reflected Samuel. Six months' living with an unusually high-bred woman had insensibly raised his standards. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... these wicked Kitats, who came to us weeping, to solicit our charity. We allowed them, through pure compassion, to cultivate a few patches of land. The Mongols insensibly followed their example, and abandoned the nomadic life. They drank the wine of the Kitats, and smoked their tobacco on credit; they bought their manufactures on credit, at double the real value. When the day of payment came, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... And then, insensibly, evil thoughts glided one by one into her brain. She sought for subjects of bitterness, for excuses for ingratitude to her mistress. She compared with her own wages the wages of which the other maids in ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... the light of Count Ottaviano's personality the story had a tinge of opera bouffe; but the next morning, as Wyant mounted the stairs of the House of the Dead Hand, the situation insensibly assumed another aspect. It was impossible to take Doctor Lombard lightly; and there was a suggestion of fatality in the appearance of his gaunt dwelling. Who could tell amid what tragic records of domestic ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... went on, however, the stride insensibly slackened into an unaccustomed saunter. How well he remembered that old road, although it was forty years since he had last traversed it, a set-lipped boy of fifteen, cast on the world by the indifference ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... insensibly led, by the general complexion of the times, from the particular case of Geneva, to those to which it bears no similitude. Of that we hope good things. Its inhabitants must be too much enlightened, too well experienced in the blessings ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the most poignant anguish, taking his almost expiring daughter in his arms, for a while supported her head upon his breast, and wiped away the tears that trickled down her cheeks. 26. He most tenderly embraced her, and drawing her insensibly to some shops which were on the side of the forum, snatched up a butcher's knife: "My dearest lost child," cried Virgin'ius, "thus, thus alone is it in my power to preserve your honour and your freedom!" So saying, he plunged the weapon ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the story, growing insensibly out of the range work. Luck, more at ease now in his mind, studied it critically. There was the quarrel between old Dave and Andy, his son. He saw the old man out with his men, standing his shift of night-guard, stubbornly resisting the creeping years and his load of trouble; riding around ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... not that there is any necessary or strictly logical connection between these studies and Materialism, for some of their ablest expounders, including Cabanis, Gall, and Spurzheim, have explicitly disavowed that theory; but simply that, in prosecuting such inquiries, the mind is insensibly led to bestow an undue, if not exclusive, attention on the phenomena and laws of our material organization, so as to become comparatively unmindful of what is mental, moral, and spiritual in the constitution of man. For these reasons, and considering, especially, the close connection of Materialism ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... would have been better if I had remained so. I think it's partly your fault that I haven't," Nick went on. "At Oxford you were very bad company for me—my evil genius: you opened my eyes, you communicated the poison. Since then, little by little, it has been working within me; vaguely, covertly, insensibly at first, but during the last year or two with violence, pertinacity, cruelty. I've resorted to every antidote in life; but it's no use—I'm stricken. C'est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee—putting Venus for 'art.' It tears me to pieces as ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... but that, within ourselves, we each knew who was nearest to her heart. She was, indeed, a saintly woman, yet of a merry wit, and she had great pleasure in reading of books, and in romances. Being always, when I might, in her company, I became a clerk insensibly, and without labour I could early read and write, wherefore my father was minded to bring me up for a churchman. For this cause, I was some deal despised by others of my age, and, yet more, because from my mother I had caught the Southron trick of the tongue. They called me "English Norman," and ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Where a government is popular, even to no greater extent than this, it behooves every individual, if he values the power delegated to him and would retain it, to use it, otherwise it is by degrees and insensibly lost; and once absorbed into the hands of the few, it is not easily, if at ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... thy looks and call them rays, Takes wing, Leaving behind him as he flies An unperceived dimness in thine eyes. His minutes, whilst they're told, Do make us old; And every sand of his fleet glass, Increasing age as it doth pass, Insensibly sows wrinkles there Where flowers and roses do appear. Whilst we do speak, our fire Doth into ice expire, Flames turn to frost; And ere we can Know how our crow turns swan, Or how a silver snow Springs there where jet ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... much on this subject, into which I have been led insensibly, by reflecting on what I had read of these philosophers, and shall therefore conclude with inserting the remark of a Savoyard peasant, who, according to M. Lantier, being asked his opinion of them, answered, "I think that Voltaire has done a great ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... with the greatest wisdom and the justest harmony of parts, degenerate, however insensibly, into disorder and the most destructive licentiousness. These judges, who by the lawful execution of their power were a terror to transgressors, and the great pillars of justice, abusing their almost unlimited authority, became so many petty tyrants. (M98) We shall see this verified ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... swimmer till you can place confidence in the power of the water to support you. I would therefore advise the acquiring that confidence in the first place, as I have known several who, by a little practice necessary for that purpose, have insensibly acquired the stroke, taught as if it were by nature. The practice I mean, is this—choosing a place where the water deepens gradually, walk coolly in it until it is up to your breast, then turn your face towards the shore and throw an egg into the water between you and ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... contains all such infected Persons, as without perceiving any Emotion, or there appearing any Trouble or Lesion of their natural Function, have Buboes and Carbuncles, which rise by little and little, and easily turn to Surpuration, becoming sometimes scirrhous, or which is more rare, dissipate insensibly, without leaving any bad Effect behind them; so that without any loss of Strength, and without changing their manner of Living, these infected Persons went about the Streets and publick Places, only using themselves a simple Plaister, or ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... sunny hours of a Saturday afternoon insensibly slipping away, as we youngsters are exploring the length and breadth of a trout stream, or chasing gray squirrels, or building mud milldams in the brook. The sun sinks lower and lower, but we still think it does not want half an hour to sundown. At last, he so evidently is really going ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... when he could hope to have some Return. And all he expected from this her tender Age, was by his daily Converse with her, and the Presents he made her suitable to her Years, to ingratiate himself insensibly into her Friendship and Esteem, since she was not yet capable of Love; but even in that he mistook his Aim, for every day he grew more and more disagreeable to Atlante, and would have been her absolute Aversion, had she known she had every Day entertained a Lover; but as she grew in Years ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... devotion or for actions forbidden to their sex, with a greater expiation than did this lady when, seated on that wayside rock, she was forced to admire the young leader's noble disdain and loyalty to principle. Insensibly she dropped into reverie. Bitter memories made her long for the innocence of her early years, and regret that she had escaped being a victim of the Revolution whose victorious march could no longer be ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... topics of conversation had been exhausted, the behaviour of Damon became insensibly more particular, he pressed her hand with the most melting ardour, and a sigh ever and anon escaped from his breast. He paid her several very elegant compliments, though they were all of them confined within the limits of decorum. Delia, on the other hand, ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... tan head, then another, receiving eager caresses from rough, pink tongues in return, and insensibly she had moved step by step further into the yard to reach this or that hound as it caught ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... movement, that chiefly holds either Thackeray's attention or ours who read; the narrative is steeped in the suffusion of the general tone, the sensation of the place and the life that he is recalling, and it is out of this effect, insensibly changing and developing, that ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... of John, with Grace and Jane, enlivened not only the family but the neighborhood. Mr. Haughton and his numerous friends poured in on the young couple with their congratulations, and a few weeks stole by insensibly, previously to the commencement of the journeys of Sir Edward and his son—the one to Benfield Lodge and the ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... forming in correspondence with the desires. In its fully developed form in adolescence," Venturi continues, "masturbation has an almost hallucinatory character; onanism at this period psychically approximates to the true sexual act, and passes insensibly into it. If, however, continued on into adult age, it becomes morbid, passing into erotic fetichism; what in the inexperienced youth is the natural auxiliary and stimulus to imagination, in the degenerate onanist of adult ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with her almost at once; insensibly but thoroughly. There had been an hour in which he had flung himself, metaphorically, at her feet (one never does the real thing now, because it spoils one's trousers so), and offered his heart, and all the fortune ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... his bed, his brow surmounted by his scanty locks, with his long white beard, and his hands crossed upon his breast, the King of Naples looked like one of those aged anchorites who spend their lives in mortifying the flesh, and whose souls, absorbed in heavenly contemplation, glide insensibly from out their last ecstasy into eternal bliss. Some time he lay thus with closed eyes, putting up a silent prayer to God; then he bade them light the spacious room as for a great solemnity, and gave a sign to the two persons who stood, one at the head, the other at the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... may escape from the perplexity of opposite claims, and not run the risk of losing all genuine moral principles through the equivocation into which it easily falls. Thus, when practical reason cultivates itself, there insensibly arises in it a dialectic which forces it to seek aid in philosophy, just as happens to it in its theoretic use; and in this case, therefore, as well as in the other, it will find rest nowhere but in a thorough ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... loss of stock, enmities, emulations, frequent invitations, losses, suretyship, sickness, death of friends, and that which is the gulf of all, improvidence, ill husbandry, disorder and confusion, by which means they are drenched on a sudden in their estates, and at unawares precipitated insensibly into an inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... legend of the Van Pool. It has a number of variants, both in Wales and elsewhere, the examination of which I postpone for the present. Hitherto I have been guided in the mention of variants of this myth chiefly by the desire of showing how one type insensibly merges into another. The only type I have now left for examination may be called the "Nightmare type." It is allied not so much to the stories of Melusina and the Lady of the Van Pool as to stories like that of the Croatian wolf-maiden. According to German and Slavonic belief the ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... of the late trial, our excellent farmer considered his cure of a love of praise, which had grown insensibly upon him, and commenced already to make him unhappy, by warping his independence, and making him almost a slave to the vain opinions of men. As another effect in which he discovered a blessing, it weakened his worldly cares, and taught him to set ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... masculine who must always be dear to some woman, who floats on the strongest current of fascination or sympathy. It has been the former, it is now the latter. The many frank allurements of youth in Violet charm him insensibly. She has a secret sympathy and a curious misgiving that she cannot overcome,—it grows upon her, indeed,—that Madame Lepelletier is ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... before God, and receive fresh communications of his grace. Our hearts are so much affected by sensible objects, that, if we suffer them to be engaged long at a time in worldly pursuits, we find them insensibly clinging to earth, so that it is with great difficulty we can disengage them. But, by all means, fix upon some stated and regular seasons, and observe them punctually and faithfully. Remember they are engagements ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... merely deciding that, whatever you may do with your life, your chin must remain single. When one's chin begins to lead a double life one's own opportunities for depravity are insensibly narrowed. You needn't tell me that you haven't any hankerings after depravity; people with your coloured eyes ...
— When William Came • Saki
... marvellous art of the Middle Ages has been treated in nearly every country, especially in France. One can distinguish on its ruins three sorts of lesions, all three of which cut into it at different depths; first, time, which has insensibly notched its surface here and there, and gnawed it everywhere; next, political and religious revolution, which, blind and wrathful by nature, have flung themselves tumultuously upon it, torn its rich ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... insensibly changes into an elliptical one. The side walls become lower, at each yard their height is diminished by the thickness of a brick, and finally they disappear about the middle of the total length. At the point shown in our Fig. 94 the arch has lost its supports and rests directly upon the pavement ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... hot,—white hot,—clear through. I have little doubt that the sharpness and ruggedness of my writing is due, in some degree, to the curt, sharp statements of that period. When men were feeling so intensely, and speaking with a force and earnestness unknown in these later years, a reporter would insensibly take on something of the spirit of the hour, otherwise his reports would be limp and lifeless. I was induced to study stenography, but the system then in use was complex and inadequate,—hard to learn. I was informed ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... is an excursus: I would that my hand were wielding a stout horsewhip rather than a pen! Let me return to the point of deviation, and say that a human being, if he be true-hearted, by living in a family, insensibly and constantly is gently turned from his own stiff track; and goes through life sinuously, so to speak. But the lonely man settles into his own little ways. He is like the man who walks through the desert without a soul to elbow him ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the centuries; the oak floor, the gothic windows, the ponderous chimney-piece,—all were reminders of the past. But the prosaic landlord was an obstacle to the complete working of the spell. At last, however, a change came over mine host, or so it seemed to the dreaming chronicler. "He insensibly began to alter his appearance; his cravat seemed quilled into a ruff, and his breeches swelled out into a farlingale. I now fancied him changing sexes; and as my eyes began to close in slumber, I imagined my fat landlord ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... to grasp and define them. Of course, the explanation of the mystery was, that history, poetry, and fiction, books of travel, and the talk of tourists, had given me pretty accurate preconceptions of the common objects of English scenery, and these, being long ago vivified by a youthful fancy, had insensibly taken their places among the images of things actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, that I almost doubted whether such airy remembrances might not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a recollection in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with fainter and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not a thicket but has its analogy with the labyrinth of human thought. Who is there among those whose minds are cultivated or whose hearts are wounded who can walk alone in a forest and the forest not speak to him? Insensibly a voice lifts itself, consoling or terrible, but oftener consoling than terrifying. If we seek the causes of the sensation—grave, simple, sweet, mysterious—that grasps us there, perhaps we shall ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... inclosing all, is the general impalpable effect, like good air, or the subtle presence of good spirits, wordless but more potent far than words. As, in the superbest person, it is not merely what he says or knows or shows, or even how he behaves, but the silent qualities, like gravitation, that insensibly but resistlessly hold us; so in a good poem, or in any other expression ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing. At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... characteristics, each province has its own, founded on the government, climate, mode of husbandry, customs, and peculiarity of circumstances. Europeans submit insensibly to these great powers, and become, in the course of a few generations, not only Americans in general, but either Pennsylvanians, Virginians, or provincials under some other name. Whoever traverses the continent must easily observe those strong differences, which will grow more evident in ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... uninteresting to state that, during the discussion, both the palefaces and the red men became so intensely absorbed in contemplation of the vast region of comparatively new thought into which they were insensibly led, that they forgot for the time being the main object of the meeting, namely, the ultimate fate ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... is in the first place the best promoter of health. Repining and secret murmurs of heart give imperceptible strokes to those delicate fibres of which the vital parts are composed, and wear out the machine insensibly; not to mention those violent ferments which they stir up in the blood, and those irregular disturbed motions, which they raise in ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... can pretend to, but in proportion to the assistance which it affords to the public, it cannot be judged to have set up a new legislative, but to have restored the old and true one, and to have rectified the disorders which succession of time had insensibly, as well as inevitably introduced: For it being the interest as well as intention of the people, to have a fair and equal representative; whoever brings it nearest to that, is an undoubted friend to, and establisher of the government, and cannot miss the consent and approbation ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... long "omnibus" resolutions, proposed and carried more or less automatically at every annual session, it turned away from the old exponents of constitutional agitation to the fiery champions of very different methods, and almost insensibly favoured the dangerous growth both inside it and outside it of the new forces, and of the old forces in new shapes, which were to explode into the open with such unforeseen violence after the Partition of Bengal ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... "Instructions for Writing History," and then caricatured in his "True History," wherein is contained the account of a trip to the moon, a piece which must have been enjoyed by Rabelais, which suggested to Cyrano de Bergerac his Voyages to the Moon and to the Sun, and insensibly contributed, perhaps, directly or through Bergerac, to the conception of "Gulliver's Travels." I have added the Icaro- Menippus, because that Dialogue describes another trip to the moon, though its satire is more especially directed against ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... arrived at his journey's end for the day at noon, he had since insensibly walked about the town so far and so long that the lamplighters were now at their work in the streets, and the shops were sparkling up brilliantly. Thus reminded to turn towards his quarters, he was in the act of doing so, when ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... regularity and faultlessness of his verse that sometimes jars. It is the work of a man many-sided in his nature, many-sided in his moods. He can find himself in the atmosphere of a Coleridge, a Wordsworth, a Keats, a Rossetti, a Beranger, and often his form insensibly glides into that of the precursor whose spirit he for the moment assimilates. He is by no means a mere imitator. His feeling is his own; but his genius seems to be rather assimilative than strictly creative. Scores of ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... this be true of different colours, it must be no less so of the different shades of the same colour, that each of them produces a distinct idea, independent of the rest. For if this should be denied, it is possible, by the continual gradation of shades, to run a colour insensibly into what is most remote from it; and if you will not allow any of the means to be different, you cannot without absurdity deny the extremes to be the same. Suppose therefore a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Ecliptick than he hath marked it, even without having any great regard to the Refractions: but since he would subject himself to others, he hath made it pass a little higher, which, he saith, was almost insensibly so, in those few days that he was observing and writing, but that this may perhaps become sensible hereafter; which if it be so, he affirms that it will cut the Ecliptick and Equator sooner, than he hath marked it, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... That, by containing their Views within the Bounds of Nature and Reason, they may be sweetly, but insensibly, drawn to preserve a proper Dignity of Behaviour, whereby to awe the Presumption of the Bold and Forward: So that, while we behold them as Angels of Light, they would be pleased not to give too convincing Evidence ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... Insensibly the crime became again the subject of conversation. It was agreed, that, the first thing in the morning, M. Tabaret should install himself at Bougival. He boasted that in eight days he should examine all the people round about. On his side M. Daburon promised to keep him advised of the least ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... this last observation she smiled graciously, and stole her eyes almost insensibly round to seek those of the Earl of Leicester, to whom she now began to think she had spoken with hasty harshness upon the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... of every conceivable kind, the copyist, the law stationer, the usurer, all sorts of money lenders, suitors of every description, haunters of the Chancery court and their victims, are for ever moving round about the lives of the chief persons in the tale, and drawing them on insensibly, but very certainly, to the issues that await them. Even the fits of the little law-stationer's servant help directly in the chain of small things that lead indirectly to Lady Dedlock's death. One strong chain of interest holds together Chesney Wold and its inmates, Bleak House and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and especially ridiculing Faizi and Abulfazl, to whom he applied nicknames expressing his sense of their pretensions. But at a later period he had occasion to make the pilgrimage to Mekka, and there he was so fleeced by the priests that his attachment to Islam insensibly cooled down. On his return to Agra, he became a member of the Divine Faith. He wrote poetry well, and was remarkable for the ease of his address and his intelligence. One of his many aphorisms has descended to posterity. It runs as follows: 'A man should marry four wives—a Persian ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... wuz astoundin' in the extreme. But when I would draw nigh the subject would be turned and the attention of the pillows would be drawed off onto yots, summer hotels, Tabernacles, etc., etc. Well such is life. But anon the waves of excitement floatin' out insensibly from the vortex in which we had so lately revolved round in, gradually abated and went down, and the calm placid surface of life in Jonesville wuz all we could see as we looked ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... one half of the masses raised by the second upheaval, having the same general direction, are granitic. But, as we advance towards the north-east, the granites insensibly resolve themselves into ophiolitic rocks,—a name given by French geologists to certain volcanic eruptions of the cretaceous era,—which are also found in the Morea.[21] There are but few traces remaining of this second upheaval, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... to protect travellers and missionaries and such Liberians as may settle among them. This is in itself an advance; and in addition various forms of knowledge, improved implements and methods of agriculture must enter in and insensibly raise these tribes to ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... carriages, and, having sent to New York for his books and pictures and several articles of furniture which he had stored there, began housekeeping in his own establishment. Succumbing willingly to the charm of old associations, and entering more fully into the social life of the town, he began insensibly to think of Clarendon as an established residence, where he would look forward to spending a certain portion of each year. The climate was good for Phil, and to bring up the boy safely would be henceforth his chief ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt |
