"Insensibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I came insensibly to do the same thing during my set time of prayer, which caused in me great delight and consolation. This practice produced in me so high an esteem for GOD, that faith alone was capable to satisfy me in ...
— The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life • Herman Nicholas
... love 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 Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... pardons. I have fallen insensibly into my Sunday-school style. Most inappropriate in such a record as this. Let me try to be worldly—let me say that trifles, in this case as in many others, led to terrible results. Merely premising that the polite stranger was Mr. Luker, of Lambeth, we ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... natural, in fact, if Louis XIV. was determined to seize this prey, that he should allow it to escape; the young lion was already accustomed to the chase, and he had bloodhounds sufficiently ardent to allow him to depend upon them. But insensibly all the fears were dispersed; the surintendant, by hard traveling, placed such a distance between himself and his persecutors, that no one of them could reasonably be expected to overtake him. As to his position, his friends had made it excellent for him. Was he not traveling ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Actor] This brief discussion of the relation between public and playwright will suffice for our purposes. In the course of it we have insensibly encroached upon the next topic: the relation of public and actor. Who after all is the chief factor in the success or failure of a drama, in spite of the oft misquoted adage, "The play's the thing?" The actor! The actor, who can mouth and tear a passion to tatters, or swing a piece ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... are going to unionize themselves and join the A.F. of L. The word "author" carries no sanctity with me: I have read too many of them. If their forming a trade union will better the output of American literature I am keen for it. I know that the professional reader has a jaundiced eye; insensibly he acquires a parallax which distorts his vision. Reading incessantly, now fiction, now history, poetry, essays, philosophy, science, exegetics, and what not, he becomes a kind of pantechnicon of slovenly ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... made 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 unfounded ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... nature, as they have been styled, have so much delighted to describe. There was something in this scene, particularly as succeeding to the active exertions of intellect, that soothed the mind to composure. Insensibly a confused reverie invaded my faculties; I withdrew from the window, threw myself upon the bed, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... thus conscious of their false position; they have a vague sort of feeling that, in recognizing the military authority of the Convention, they admit its authority in full; insensibly they glide down this slope, from concession to concession, until they reach complete submission. From the 16th of June, at Lyons,[1164] "people begin to feel that it ought not break with the Convention." Five weeks later, the authorities of Lyons "solemnly recognize that the Convention ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... mayors, aldermen, and in other capacities of local and limited but real power, many thousands must have taken a part in public affairs. National government was remote from the ordinary man; local government came close to him. The political institutions which surrounded him on all sides, insensibly controlling every action and forming the world to which his outward life conformed, were familiar to him and affected his habits and ideas, whether he remained at home or emigrated to the colonies, far more directly than did the ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... vegetation; the earth is so generous, nature so kind and loving, that without entertaining any aspiration for a residence, or a wish to breathe the baleful atmosphere longer than is absolutely necessary, one feels insensibly drawn towards it, as the thought creeps into his mind, that though all is foul beneath the captivating, glamorous beauty of the land, the foulness might be removed by civilized people, and the whole region made as healthy ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... act closed the ceremonies, and was a moving surprise. It may be that you have discovered, before this, that the rigors of military law and custom melt insensibly away and disappear when a soldier or a regiment or the garrison wants to do something that will please Cathy. The bands conceived the idea of stirring her soldierly heart with a farewell which would remain in her memory always, ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... on placid waters play;— Drifting dreamily, insensibly, on fragrance-laden breeze— Floating onward on the wavelets, without hurry or delay, I reach some blissful haven in the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... or excitement is not only disagreeable but painful. While the rest were at Capo di Monte, I stood upon my balcony looking out upon the lovely scene before me, with a kind of pensive dreamy rapture, which if not quite pleasure, had at least a power to banish pain: and thus hours passed away insensibly— ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... the emperor's daughter, Bertha; and as the protection thus afforded, joined to the advantageous nature of the position, caused the fortress, within a short time, to be surrounded by the cottages of the neighboring fishermen, an establishment insensibly grew up, which acquired ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... suspect any ulterior motive beneath the plan, and when Buck rode off about one o'clock, leading his pack-horse, his spirits rose insensibly at the ease with which things ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... "True passion insensibly leads to the joy, And grateful esteem bids its pleasures ne'er cloy. Yet here you should stop-but your whimsical sex Such romantic ideas to passion annex, That poor men, by your visions and jealousy worried, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... a greatest happiness principle. But we find that utilitarians do not agree among themselves about the meaning of the word. Still less can they impart to others a common conception or conviction of the nature of happiness. The meaning of the word is always insensibly slipping away from us, into pleasure, out of pleasure, now appearing as the motive, now as the test of actions, and sometimes varying in successive sentences. And as in a mathematical demonstration ...
— Philebus • Plato
... feats of their ancestors, which I believe to be handed down inviolate from father to son, for many generations, although no doubt, had a copy been taken of them at the end of every fifty years, there must have been some difference, which the repeaters would have insensibly fallen into merely by the change of terms in that period. I believe that it is thus that many very ancient songs have been modernised, which yet to a connoisseur will bear visible marks of antiquity. The Maitlen, for instance, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... 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 dust-clouds of old literature, with clear grey eyes ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... victory only displace each other by turns, and on the mistaken zealots who have repeated from generation to generation the bloody history of Cain and Abel; and, saddened with these mournful reflections, I walked on as chance took me, until the silence all around insensibly drew me out ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Panama, however, was the last great land expedition successfully undertaken by the buccaneers. A few other land expeditions, it is true, were begun by chiefs of lesser note; but the indifferent success which attended these, induced the freebooters insensibly to confine their operations more exclusively to the water, and there was no sea left untraversed by them, from the Atlantic to the Indian ocean. The commerce of almost all nations was annoyed by them, although their depredations continued more particularly to be directed against the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Not ill boding Raven Shrieks, Nor midnight Cries of murder'd Ghosts, are more Ungrateful, than thy faint and dull Excuses. —Be gone! and trouble not the silent Griefs, Which will insensibly decay my Life, Till like a Marble Statue I am fixt, Dropping continual Tears upon her Tomb. [Kneels ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... 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 ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... practice and receive instructions in singing. Camilla's instrument was the violin. She could sing with more than ordinary skill and in perfecting her phrasing and in improving her style in vocal music Madam Sontag insensibly improved her violin music. All of Camilla's music was examined by the great singer and in those stray hours picked up between the demand of concerts and travel much of art and happiness ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... expected to bow to the hostess and to each guest on coming to the table, and also on leaving it. Odd as this seems at first, it soon becomes a habit rather pleasant than burdensome, and one grows insensibly to admire the outward politeness of this German custom. Greetings and farewells are more ceremonious, even between intimate friends, than with us; and to omit a ceremonious leave-taking or to substitute a light bow and ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... position. It was on my account, I know, you refused the emperor, and I am 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 ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... I was cast away for ever. Such was my feeling for Susannah Temple, who, perfect as she was, was still a woman, and perceived her power over me; but unlike the many of her sex, exerted that power only to lead to what was right. Insensibly almost, my pride was quelled, and I became humble and religiously inclined. Even the peculiarities of the sect, their meeting at their places of worship, their drawling, and their quaint manner of talking, became no longer a subject of dislike. I found out ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... and agreeably at first, but insensibly led the conversation to the subject of money in general and at last to the question of Beatrice's marriage settlement in particular. He was very tactful and would probably have reached this desired point in the conversation in spite of the Marchesa, had she avoided it. But ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... companion looked confounded, and I believe had scarce recovered the consciousness of his own existence, when Johnson came back, and drawing his chair among us, with altered looks and a softened voice, joined in the general chat, insensibly led the conversation to the subject of marriage, where he laid himself out in a dissertation so useful, so elegant, so founded on the true knowledge of human life, and so adorned with beauty of sentiment, that no one ever recollected the offence, except to rejoice ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... add that, in my opinion, many men fall into this reticence because as they grow older the question seems to settle itself without argument, and they cease by degrees to worry themselves about it. It dies in sensible men almost insensibly with the death of egoism. At twenty we are all furious egoists; at forty or thereabouts—and especially if we have children, as at forty every man ought—our centre of gravity has completely shifted. We care a great deal about what happens to the next generation, we care something about our work, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lines, as if the person began all at once to speak in another language. The practice was welcomed by the actors from its serving as a signal for clapping when they made their exit. In Shakspeare, on the other hand, the transitions are more easy: all changes of forms are brought about insensibly, and as if of themselves. Moreover, he is generally fond of heightening a series of ingenious and antithetical sayings by the use of rhyme. We find other passages in continued rhyme, where solemnity and theatrical pomp were suitable, as, for instance, in the mask, [Footnote: I shall take ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... his arguments there lurked, unrecognized and unsuspected, the natural man's fear of the thing not of nature, of its dominion, coming between him and her, slackening, perhaps sundering the tie of flesh. Through the tie of flesh, insensibly, he had come to look on ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... aside to discuss Lady Ogram, and did so in such detail, with so much mutual satisfaction, that time slipped on insensibly, and, ere they had thought of parting, the train began to slacken down for the junction where Miss Tomalin would ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... him when they had been parted from him. This friendliness of theirs was, you may be sure, the source of most of Mr. Tebrick's happiness at this time. Indeed he lived now for nothing but his foxes, his love for his vixen had extended itself insensibly to include her cubs, and these were now his daily playmates so that he knew them as well as if they had been his own children. With Selwyn and Angelica indeed he was always happy; and they never so much as when they were with him. He was not stiff in his behaviour either, ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... and burning zeal the table for the lofty guest, who in the mean time chatted with evident satisfaction with Elise and Jacobi, directing often also his conversation to Louise as if insensibly to test her; and from their inmost hearts did both mother and bridegroom rejoice that with her calm understanding she could stand ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... liberty, a new atmosphere, and though the French protested bitterly and could not but believe the mother country would make some strenuous effort to recover the territory as they temporized with the Indians and held out vague hopes, yet, as the years passed on, they found themselves insensibly yielding to the sway, and compelled now and then to fight for their homes against a treacherous enemy. Mayor Gladwyn had been a hero to them in his bravery ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... The public would bear half a cent on each paper. The publisher could make his readers insensibly pay the tax, and improve both paper and issue by receiving another half cent: and so add one ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... advantage of others contributes to our own. A kind of habit is thus formed, by which we come at last to seek the happiness of others for their own sake;—so that, by this process, actions, which at first were considered only as inexpedient, from being opposed to self-love, at length and insensibly come to be considered as immoral. This can be considered as nothing more than an ingenious play upon words, and deserves only to be mentioned as a historical fact, in a view of those speculations by which this important subject ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... that according to his Observations, the way of the Comet should go neerer the 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, &c. However, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... intended to give a full detail of the funeral customs of the English peasantry, but merely to furnish a few hints and quotations illustrative of particular rites, to be appended, by way of note, to another paper, which has been withheld. The article swelled insensibly into its present form, and this is mentioned as an apology for so brief and casual a notice of these usages after they have been amply and learnedly investigated in ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... listen to these stories, sometimes listlessly turning the leaves of a book, and again smiling scornfully as she thought how impossible it was that the fastidious Arthur Carrolton should have been at all pleased with a girl like Anna Jeffrey; and positive as Maggie was that she hated him, she insensibly began to feel a very slight degree of interest in him; at least, she would like to know how he looked; and one day when her grandmother and Theo were riding she stole cautiously to the box where she knew his picture ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... of the Ode to Thrasidaeus the Theban, in which the Poet is insensibly led from one digression to another, until his readers lose sight of the principal subject which is dropped almost ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... dressed like a respectable servant. She came in leading Lucilla by the hand. My first look at my darling told me the horrible truth. As I had seen her in the corridor at the rectory on the first day we met, so I now saw her once more. Again, the sightless eyes turned on me, insensibly reflecting the light that fell on them. Blind! Oh, God, after a few brief weeks ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... to be religious," while men had a right to read everything and think as they would, provided that they were upright and honourable in their lives. But the result of his liberal and unorthodox thought was to insensibly modify and partially rationalise her own beliefs, and she put on one side as errors the doctrines of eternal punishment, the vicarious atonement, the infallibility of the Bible, the equality of the Son with the Father ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... woods, because the foot of the fort stands much higher than the trees. On the same side with the fort, the country holds at a pretty equal height, and declines only by a gentle and almost imperceptible slope, insensibly losing itself from ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... accepted, so to speak, under protest; for not an Arab would consent to moisten his lips with a beverage which he thought came straight from Shaitan's kitchen; but, insensibly seduced by the perfume of their favorite liquor, and urged by the interpreters, some of the boldest decided on tasting the magic liquor, and all soon ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... equitation, as I said; for I would needs make a word too. It is remarkable, that my noble, and to me most constant friend, the Earl of Pembroke[415], (who, if there is too much ease on my part, will please to pardon what his benevolent, gay, social intercourse, and lively correspondence have insensibly produced,) has since hit upon the very same word. The title of the first edition of his lordship's very useful book was, in simple terms, A Method of breaking Horses and teaching Soldiers to ride. The title of the second edition ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... both sides, but it may not be 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 of ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... other humorous postulates, the idea that good colorists are better men than bad colorists. Without any guide, I think, these painters may be studied and understood, up to a certain point, by one who lives in the atmosphere of their art at Venice, and who, insensibly breathing in its influence, acquires a feeling for it which all the critics in the world could not impart where the works themselves are not to be seen. I am sure that no one strange to the profession of artist ever received a just notion of any picture by reading the most ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... he gradually ceased doing it. Then came a few sad reproaches from her, and their correspondence ceased. Meanwhile, having had his youthful fling, he settled down as a steady young man of business. One day he was surprised to observe that he had of late insensibly fallen into the habit of thinking a good deal in a pensive sort of way about Ida and those German days. The notion occurred to him that he would hunt up her picture, which he hadn't thought of in five years. With misty eyes ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... in the genuineness of the people who indulge in such pathos. Sitting at such plays, we do not believe: we make-believe. And the habit of make-believe becomes at last so rooted that criticism of the theatre insensibly ceases to be criticism at all, and becomes more and more a chronicle of the fashionable enterprises of the only realities left on the stage: that is, the performers in their own persons. In this phase the playwright who attempts to revive ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... supreme; of General Surety, as subaltern: these like a Lesser and Greater Council, most harmonious hitherto, have become the centre of all things. They ride this Whirlwind; they, raised by force of circumstances, insensibly, very strangely, thither to that dread height;—and guide it, and seem to guide it. Stranger set of Cloud-Compellers the Earth never saw. A Robespierre, a Billaud, a Collot, Couthon, Saint-Just; not to mention still meaner Amars, Vadiers, in Surete Generale: these are your Cloud-Compellers. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... our evening meal to propitiate the river gods, and whet our vision for the sights it was to behold. The sun was setting on the one hand, while our eminence was contributing its shadow to the night, on the other. It seemed insensibly to grow lighter as the night shut in, and a distant and solitary farm-house was revealed, which before lurked in the shadows of the noon. There was no other house in sight, nor any cultivated field. To the right and left, as far as the horizon, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... her to give. If that was what she wanted, why, nothing, nothing could take it away. And it was truly . . . in this hour of silence and searching . . . she saw that it was truly what she wanted. It was something in her which had grown insensibly to life and strength, during all those uncounted hours of humble service to the children. And it was something golden and immortal in ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... mild, courteous, and refined people he had ever known, Jack insensibly altered and improved. His loud voice grew softer, his boisterous laugh less explosive, and his rough ways gave place to a clumsy imitation of Samoan good manners. Little by little the uncouth sailor patterned himself on the model of his new ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... house stood solitary, and the hour was an unlikely one for any passenger upon the road, King and she conversed in whispers only. There was something dismal, something of the sick-room, in this perpetual, guarded sibilation. The apprehensions of our hostess insensibly communicated themselves to every one present. We ate like mice in a cat's ear; if one of us jingled a teaspoon, all would start; and when the hour came to take the road again, we drew a long breath of relief, and climbed to our places in the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of my time, I had set my barque on a great circle, and almost before I realized it the barque was burdened with a wife and family and the steering had insensibly become more difficult; for Maude cared nothing about the destination, and when I took any hand off the wheel our ship showed a tendency to make for a quiet harbour. Thus the social initiative, which I believed should have been the woman's, was thrust back on me. It was almost incredible, yet indisputable, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... case. In company which he either disliked or despised, few could be more reserved than he; but when he was warmed in discourse, and got over a hesitating manner, which sometimes he was subject to, it was rapture to hear him. His meager visage seemed insensibly to gather beauty; every muscle in it had meaning, and his eye beamed with unusual brightness. The person who writes this memoir," continues he, "remembers to have seen him in a select company of wits of both sexes at Paris, when the subject ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... housemate. I suppose the explanation is that when we throw open the doors to the new importunate visitor, it is virtually a ceremony, since the real event has been already accomplished, the guest having stolen in by some other way and made himself at home in the sub-conscious mind. Insensibly and inevitably I had become an evolutionist, albeit never wholly satisfied with natural selection as the only and sufficient explanation of the change in the forms of life. And again, insensibly and inevitably, the new doctrine has led to modifications ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... companions, a jolly set of fellows also, with a stiff glass of grog. He afterwards drank to a fair wind, to a continuance of the breeze, and repeated this operation so often, that what little knowledge and judgment he could boast of when he left the wharf, insensibly oozed away; and for nearly a week his mental faculties were a great deal below par. In the meantime the wind blew a fresh breeze from the westward without intermission, and the old schooner rolled and wallowed along with nearly all sail set, at a tremendous rate, and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... read to me, and I feel as if I had spent the last half-hour in a magnificent sepulcher. Yes, it is a tomb in which hope, joy and the power of acting nobly lie buried. Every beautiful description, every deep thought glides insensibly into the same mournful chant of the brevity of life, of the slow decay and dissolution of all earthly things. The poet's bright, fond memories of love, youth and beauty are but the funeral torches shedding their light on this tomb, or to modify the image a little, they are the flowers that ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... letting the most active part of your life insensibly glide away. A day, a moment, ought not to be lost. And you should not suffer your thoughts to be diverted by any other object, or even improvement of this [model], but only the speediest and most effectual manner of executing an engine of a proper size, according ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... my inner life had meanwhile insensibly drawn me little by little quite away from the study of languages, and led me towards the deeper-lying unity of natural objects. My earlier plan gradually reasserted itself, to study Nature in her first forms and elements. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... rocks, and Alpine lake basins—were seen to be due to this altogether distinct cause. There was no breach of continuity, no sudden catastrophe; the cold period came on and passed away in the most gradual manner, and its effects often passed insensibly into those produced by denudation or upheaval; yet none the less a new agency appeared at a definite time, and new effects were produced which, though continuous with preceding effects, were not due to the same causes. It is not, therefore, to be assumed, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the Gardes Mobiles had calmed down, she became more charming than ever, and Frederick insensibly glided into the habit ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... seated himself by her side. It was one of those delicious nights which are so common between the tropics, and the beauty of which no pencil can trace. The moon appeared in the midst of the firmament, curtained in clouds which her beams gradually dispelled. Her light insensibly spread itself over the mountains of the island, and their peaks glistened with a silvered green. The winds were perfectly still. We heard along the woods, at the bottom of the valleys, and on the summits of the rocks, the weak cry and ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... certain number of men, thus governed, to be expelled their native soil, united by a common danger and common suffering, to land on a foreign shore, to fix themselves with pain and labour in a new settlement—it is quite clear that a popular principle would insensibly have entered the forms of the constitution they transplanted. In the first place, the power of the prince would be more circumscribed—in the next place, the free spirit of the aristocracy would be more diffused: the first, because the authority of the chief would ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vulgar boastfulness and detraction which is to be met with in less educated society. Most of the gentlemen whom I met, and many of the ladies, had travelled in Europe, and had brought back highly cultivated tastes in art, and cosmopolitan ideas, which insensibly affect the circles ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... dim in his mind, and he dallied with the forgotten memories as he stood shaking in an archway watching the Burman cross the street. Insensibly the Burman's mania had waned in the last few hours, and he had grown silent and preoccupied, a fact that escaped Leh Shin's notice. His owl eyes blinked with the strain of staring through the wavering light, and his memories strove with him as though in physical combat. Mhtoon Pah was no longer ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... largest liberty. There are no longer any sumptuary laws; but it is impossible to say why ladies of the highest fashion in New York do not still make it a gala-day. The multiplicity of other entertainments, the unseen yet all-powerful influence of fashion, these things mould the world insensibly. Yet in a thousand homes, thousands of cordial hands will be extended on the great First of January, and to all of them we wish a ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... 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 into tyranny ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... attack him, but on the contrary lived in constant fear of him, but as a band, of envious and truculent conspirators who could only be kept in order by the sudden stamp of the jackboot and the menacing clatter of the sabre. He insensibly imbibed the Nietzsche doctrine that the immorality of the Superman may be as colossal as his strength and that the slave-evangel of Christianity was superseded by a sterner law. Thus, when he saw acts which his reason must have ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... pleasant face that looked out on him in the moonlight, and there was more than mere conventionality in the accents in which the pleasant voice acknowledged his opportune courtesy. Insensibly George and the lady drifted into conversation. She was very lonely, poor thing; a friendless girl coming out to be governess in the family of a burra sahib at Chupra. Now Chupra is only across the Gunduck from Tirhoot, so George told his new acquaintance ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... woke up his master who dressed himself and went to take a walk. His feet insensibly carried him to the river side, when he heard a voice calling out: "Avenant! Avenant!" He looked about him, but seeing no one, was proceeding on his way, when Cabriole, who was looking at the water, cried: "Why, master, as I'm alive, ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... crowd of merry faces came smiling in upon her fancy, and her thoughts passed insensibly into dreams; kindly sleep touched her heart with its gentle hand, and its breath swept every shadow of trouble from her soul. She slept, smiling and untroubled as a child whose eyes some guardian angel softly kisses, while her strange protector now turned the flickering ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Independents or Congregationalists, not clergy of the Established Church of Old England. Both the civil and the religious governments which they had were the best for the people. But what was suited to Massachusetts would not be fit for England or France. See how our government has insensibly drifted towards a strong central power. What must be the future necessities of such great cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago,—where even now self-government is a failure, and the real government is in the hands of rings of politicians, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... the long night conquered even my brain, the steady splash of the paddles becoming a lullaby. Insensibly my head rested back against the pile of blankets, the glint of sunshine along the surface of the water vanished as my lashes fell, and, before I knew it, I slept soundly. I awoke with the sun in the western sky, so ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... 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 ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... included, was more than four feet long; the blade four good digits wide, thick in proportion, insensibly diminishing in thickness and width to the point, which was very small. The handle appeared to me of worked enamel, long and very large; as well as the pommel; the crossed piece long, and the two ends wide, even, worked, without branch. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... length of time in the eye of the world, particularly if, by the industrious exercise of vigorous or brilliant talents, he has contributed more than his share to the happiness, the improvement, or the innocent pleasure of society. In that case a mixed sentiment of admiration and gratitude insensibly fills the public mind, from which there arises a lively interest in all that concerns the person and an eager curiosity to learn his origin, his early education, private opinions and habits, the fortunes and incidents of his life, and, above all, the singularities of his ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... that important day passed prosperously through. It was our policy to keep the enemy in view, and I took my turn to be his watchman with the rest. I think his spirits rose as he perceived us to be so attentive, and I know that mine insensibly declined. What chiefly daunted me was the man's singular dexterity to worm himself into our troubles. You may have felt (after a horse accident) the hand of a bone-setter artfully divide and interrogate the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Inside to the Outside, the Wrist should turn a little more towards Quart, than in the Guard which I have recommended: The Point should fall and rise and the same Instant, and the Hand should turn insensibly in Tierce, as ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... universe into carefully guarded groups, and the allocation of certain prominent Laws to each, it must never be forgotten, and however much Nature lends herself to it, are artificial. We find an evolution in Botany, another in Geology, and another in Astronomy, and the effect is to lead one insensibly to look upon these as three distinct evolutions. But these sciences, of course, are mere departments created by ourselves to facilitate knowledge—reductions of Nature to the scale of our own intelligence. And we must beware of breaking up Nature except for this purpose. Science ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... senseless dread of spirits present from some unknown world that very young children often feel? "Fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake," says Job in one of his most dismal moments; and now to Dysart this strange, unaccountable chill feeling comes. Insensibly, born of the hour and the silence only, and with no smallest dread of ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... Carlisle, as much at home, and sharing with her in filial offices as a matter of rule, and associating with her as already one of the family. It is true, in his manner to Eleanor herself he did not so step beyond bounds as to give her opportunity to check him; yet even over this there stole insensibly a change; and Eleanor felt herself getting deeper and deeper in the toils. Her own manner meanwhile was nearly perfect in its simple dignity. Except in the interest of third party measures, which led her sometimes further than she wanted to go, Eleanor kept ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Insensibly I began to keep better hours. On wet and stormy nights, in the thick of the folly and the fun, the thought would persist in coming to me of Otoo keeping his dreary vigil under the dripping mangoes. Truly, he made a better man of me. Yet he was not strait-laced. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... 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, if not fatal. The best antidote in such cases, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... difficulty. They glance on my imagination and ferment till they discompose, heat, and bring on a palpitation; during this state of agitation I see nothing properly, cannot write a single word, and must wait till all is over. Insensibly the agitation subsides, the chaos acquires form, and each circumstance takes its proper place. Have you never seen an opera in Italy where during the change of scene everything is in confusion, the decorations are intermingled, and any ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... passed through my mind was that we had lost our one hope of escape from Hurricane Island. Insensibly I had come to look on the Sea Queen as the vehicle of our rescue, and there she was before my eyes adrift on a tide that was steadily drawing her seawards. There could be no doubt as to that, for, even as I gazed, she made perceptible ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... of Preussen are luxuriantly grassy, frugiferous, apt for the plough; and the soil generally is reckoned fertile, though lying so far northward. Part of the great plain or flat which stretches, sloping insensibly, continuously, in vast expanse, from the Silesian Mountains to the amber-regions of the Baltic; Preussen is the seaward, more alluvial part of this,—extending west and east, on both sides of the Weichsel (VISTULA), from ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... our January number. I have fought on the Executive Committee of the Spelling Board against publishing anything of the English S.S.S.'s proposed improvements, for fear of arousing such prejudice as yours; and yet in our first number, I was insensibly led into, myself, publishing things that looked ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... my son," wrote Louis XIV. in his Memoires of the year 1661, "that those who were for employing violent remedies against the religion styled Reformed, did not understand the nature of this malady, caused partly by heated feelings, which should be passed over unnoticed and allowed to die out insensibly, instead of being inflamed afresh by equally strong contradiction, which, moreover, is always useless, when the taint is not confined to a certain known number, but spread throughout the state. I thought, therefore, that the best ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a strange stillness in the brooding air—that mysterious hush, which is the music of night's gentle footsteps, and insensibly its soothing influence stole over the unquiet of his restless thoughts—the warring powers of soul and sense grew ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... Insensibly both sides drew apart, leaving a space between Tatar and Apache. The faces of the Amerindians were grim, those of the Mongols bewildered and then harsh as they eyed their late opponents with dawning reason. What had begun ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... constitutional delicacy of temper, &c. &c., as I hinted above, will temporize and make smooth work, from an honest conviction that a full disclosure of the truth would alienate their hearers. The bitter revilings of base men have been gradually and insensibly leading Calvinistic ministers to hide their colors, and recede from their ground. Dr. Spring's Church, at Newburyport, Park Street, especially in Dr. Griffin's day, and a few others, have stood like ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... that such an undertaking would be altogether beyond my powers, with only Billy to assist me. No doubt I was helped to this conclusion by the conviction I then felt that something would certainly heave in sight within the next month or two to take us off. But with the lapse of time my confidence had insensibly waned, and I had accordingly set to work to make our stay upon the group as comfortable as might be. Now, however, I felt constrained to reconsider my original conclusion; and as a preliminary I took pencil and paper, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... kiss from her! What bliss! How heroic of me! How exquisitely romantic! In the moonlight the hero beguiles the fair maid with burning words and kisses! Bah! what rubbish! In such a cursed little hole as this one insensibly becomes a shallow fool." ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... the case in cities in respect to good magistrates, and neighbours, and connections by marriage; for beginning at first to associate with one another from necessity and propriety, they afterwards go on to love almost insensibly, reason drawing over and persuading the emotional ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... indeed from that for which it was intrusted to him) brooked not of a divided power and still less of an authority superior to his own. To be the sole master of the will of his troops, he must also be the sole master of their destinies; insensibly to supplant his sovereign and to transfer permanently to his own person the rights of sovereignty, which were only lent to him for a time by a higher authority, he must cautiously keep the latter out of the view ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... longevity, a sound 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
... immeasurably in importance. Comment rained upon them. Conflict swirled about them. Expectations centered upon them. And they had the air of those upon whose footsteps the goddess, Success, is following. Gillier began to lose his regret for his lost opportunity. He was insensibly drawn to the Heaths by the spell of united effort. Now that Claude did not seem to care twopence for him, or for anyone else, Gillier began to respect him, to think a good deal of him. In Charmian he had always been aware of certain faculties which ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the hall and ascending the stairs, look where he might, his notice was insensibly won by proofs of the taste which is not to be purchased, and the wealth which uses, but never exhibits, its purse. Conducted by a man-servant to the landing on the first floor, he found a maid at the door of the boudoir waiting to announce ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... elevated objects as unpractical, or at least too remote from realisation to be more than a vision or a theory: and if, more fortunate than most, they retain their higher principles unimpaired, yet with respect to the persons and affairs of their own day, they insensibly adopt the modes of feeling and judgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the company they keep' (p. 228). That a man loses something, nay, that he loses much, by being deprived of animating intercourse with other men, Mr. Mill would probably have been the first to admit. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... from me, for all this, to value myself upon hitting the words of cant in which my drolling author is so luxuriant; for though such words have stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself unhappy in having insensibly hoarded up so much gibberish and Billingsgate trash in my memory; nor could I forbear asking of myself, as an Italian cardinal said on another account, D'onde hai tu pigliato tante coglionerie? Where the devil didst thou rake ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais |
