"Insidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the slow torture of these days and weeks, the first insidious doubts, the increasing fears, that seemed to be corroborated day by day? Yes, it was not my fancy; Etta was right; he was certainly changed; ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the sweetly pensive mein Is the soft gentle Nature seen, And chaste reserve, and modest fear, And artless innocence appear—- There—-the little fly coquet Aiming her insidious glances: For trapping hearts each feature set, From the canvass makes advances, 240 Nay—-if we credit the delusive face, She seems just springing ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... examination, of which there is printed an account not unentertaining, behaved with the boisterousness of men elated by recent authority. They are represented as asking questions sometimes vague, sometimes insidious, and writing answers different from those which they received. Prior, however, seems to have been overpowered by their turbulence; for he confesses that he signed what, if he had ever come before a legal judicature, he should have ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... mysterious processes, complicated rites and terrifying ceremonies; and thirdly, the crowd of nobles and plebeians who flocked to the doors of the sorcerers and filled their pockets in return for magic potions, philtres, and, in certain cases, insidious poisons. Thus La Voisin must be placed in the second category; "in spite of her luxury, her profits, and her fame," she "is only a subaltern agent in this vast organization of criminals. She depends entirely for her great enterprises on the intellectual chiefs ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... bizarre, almost unbelievable. Phil Abingdon had experienced in her own person the insidious power of Ormuz Khan. She now found herself under the spell of a personality at least as forceful, although in a totally different way. She found herself running through a winding path amid bushes, piloted by this ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... fears of the good people of these States, so as to create divisions among them, and a defection from the common cause, now by the blessing of Divine Providence drawing near to a favourable issue. That they are the sequel of that insidious plan, which from the days of the Stamp-act down to the present time, hath involved this country in contention and bloodshed. And that, as in other cases so in this, although circumstances may force them at times to recede from the unjustifiable claims, there can be no ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... the Government to protect the integrity of the elections of its own officials is inherent and has been recognized and affirmed by repeated declarations of the Supreme Court. There is no enemy of free government more dangerous and none so insidious as the corruption of the electorate. No one defends or excuses corruption, and it would seem to follow that none would oppose vigorous measures to eradicate it. I recommend the enactment of a law directed against bribery and corruption ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... which had shown as wisdom a couple of hours ago, showed now as selfishness and pusillanimity. If she wanted him, he was there joyfully to do her bidding, at whatever cost to himself in subsequent unrest of mind seemed but a small thing. If heartache and insidious provocations of the flesh came later, let them come. He was strong enough to bear the one and crush out the other, he hoped. It would give him something to do—he told himself, a little bitterly—and he ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the abundant 'sweetness' of the book cannot make beautiful this monstrous perversion of reason, this insidious attack on the very distinction ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... straightforward, honest Yankees was complete and embarrassing. And by way of keeping it within the bounds of political orthodoxy, they were informed that the Germans had conspired to hoodwink them by selling at undercost prices, in order to turn them against the French. It was an insidious form of German propaganda! ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... treated; many joined to discuss these who otherwise would hold their tongues. One small knot had no better occupation than to worm out of me my name; and the more they tried, the more obstinately fixed I grew to baffle them. They assailed me with artful questions and insidious offers of correspondence in the future; but I was perpetually on my guard, and parried their assaults with inward laughter. I am sure Dubuque would have given me ten dollars for the secret. He owed me far more, had he understood life, for thus ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... relaxed. A man must be very careful, as Mr. Gladstone once incisively observed, to prevent his religion from damaging his morality. The simpleminded people with whom this sharp-witted and fresh-spirited young Englishwoman met had not fortified themselves against that insidious peril. One woman told a lie and the offense was sheeted home to her. 'Ah, well,' she replied, in a nonchalant and easy way, 'I do not feel that I have grieved the Spirit much!' George Eliot was horrified. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... within the past five years, agricultural colleges have been prevented from adding advisers on cooperative organization to their extension staffs, retail merchants' associations have prevented cooperative organization legislation, and insidious attempts have been made to prevent popular education ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... of autumn came on apace, and by-and-by the Manor was deserted. The Bruce-Errington establishment removed again to town, where business, connected with his intending membership for Parliament, occupied Sir Philip from morning till night. The old insidious feeling of depression returned and hovered over Thelma's mind like a black bird of ill omen, and though she did her best to shake it off she could not succeed. People began to notice her deepening seriousness and the wistful melancholy ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... royal order. Of these new members some six or seven were leading persons of Bunyan's congregation. But, with all his ardent desire for religious liberty, Bunyan was too keen-witted not to see through James's policy, and too honest to give it any direct insidious support. "In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird." He clearly saw that it was not for any love of the Dissenters that they were so suddenly delivered from their persecutions, and placed on a kind of equality with the Church. The king's object was ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... The ravages of the insidious disease with which she was afflicted soon came to an end; and after a term of wedlock as brief as it was prosperous, Mrs. Edgeworth's dying couch was spread.—"I have every blessing," she wrote, "and I am happy. The conversation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... was praised as possessing a subtle and mysterious talent very different indeed from the hesitating smile of La Jaconde. There is a picture of the Holy Family by him in the Louvre, and of it Harding wrote—"This canvas exhales for us the most delicious emanations, sorrowful bewitchments, insidious sacrileges, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... was it known that watch and ward was closely kept from beneath those dark tents, that to the eyes within had the air of couching beasts of prey. Yes, couching to devour what could not fail to be theirs, in spite of the mighty walls of rock and impregnable keep, for those deadly and insidious foes, hunger and thirst, were within, gaining the battle for the Saracens without, who had merely to wait in patience ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... girls of the bush are natural, jolly, unconventional, but not loose. So far and no farther is their attitude to mankind. And they've got an independence of character which knocks you fellows sick when you meet them. They don't want any of these insidious palavers and hollow attentions, and they'll tell a man pretty quick what they think. My word! can't ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... democracy than anarchy is snobbery. The former is violent, while the latter is insidious. Both poison the source of the stream of democracy. If the home instills into the minds of children the notion of inherent superiority, they will carry this into the school and it will produce a discord. A farmer ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... mother. She had two able generals, Aetius and Boniface, whose discord was fatal in its effects. At the same time in the East, the government was managed by Pulcheria for her brother, Theodosius II., who had succeeded Arcadias in 408. Aetius, who was a Hun, by insidious arts persuaded Placidia to recall Boniface, who was governor of Africa, at the same time that he advised Boniface to disobey the order which he represented as a sentence of death. Boniface sent to Gonderic, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... own heart Ferris cared not a whit whether Clayton had been waylaid by accidental thugs, betrayed at the bank, duped by some insidious woman, or slain by an inner conspiracy ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... bigot, a fanatic, a temperament governed by jealous fears and by the morbid revengefulness of the man of feeble physique. It was Robespierre who always stood for the worst side of terrorism, for all that was most insidious and deep seated in it; and after its failure and the reaction in the summer of 1794, it was his name that was deservedly associated with ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... inevitable outcome of the play of the sexual impulse. No doubt it may often become morbid, and is never a healthy process when indulged in to excess, as it is liable to be by refined young people with artistic impulses, to whom it is in the highest degree seductive and insidious.[230] As we have seen, however, day-dreaming is far from always colored by sexual emotion; yet it is a significant indication of its really sexual origin that, as I have been informed by persons ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... may fancy him as visited by compunctions and mortifications due to his consciousness of his own futility. Or you may fall back upon the simple and general promptings that are smoothly current in the minds of us all. My own notion, however, is this: he never would have married at home; only an insidious whiff of romance, encountered in France or Italy, ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... "It is an insidious counsel to violence, revolution, Bolshevism and utter anarchy to say to people that they should disregard any law formed by all ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... just once upon a hideous burrow, dank and haired with grass; Fixed upon me eyes perfidious As a fiend's are, yet insidious— Questioned if I dared to pass. "I will search all Hell To find ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... have related to you as one acquainted with ancient history. It follows that all should lay aside, as unworthy of him, the love of plunder, which has often been the insidious bane of the Roman soldier, and that every one should keep steadily to his own troop and his own standard, when the necessity for fighting arises, knowing that should he loiter anywhere he will be hamstrung and left to his ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... that the artificially induced ecstasy, which is desired on account of the intense pleasure which is said to accompany it, nearly always contains elements the recognition of which would shock and distress the contemplatives themselves.[29] There are, however, other elements, of a less insidious kind, which make the ecstatic trance seem desirable. These are, according to Professor Leuba, the calming of the restless intellect by the concentration of the mind on one object; the longing for a support and comfort more perfect than man can give; and, thirdly, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... in those days. While I believe that some men will be drunkards in spite of almost everything that can be done for their relief, others there are, no matter how surrounded, who never will be drunkards, but solely because they abstain from ever tasting the insidious poison. Temperament has much to do with the matter of drink, and could it be known and properly guarded against, I believe that a majority of those having the strongest predisposition to drink, if steps were taken ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... of these high power rays, as well as of inorganic minerals, is very slow and insidious, manifesting only in the course of many years. This new field of therapeutics, therefore, has not yet passed ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... paragraphs in Gibbon's History. He ought either, with manly courage, to have denied the moral reformation introduced by Christianity, or fairly to have investigated all its motives; not to have confined himself to an insidious and sarcastic description of the less pure and generous elements of the Christian character as it appeared ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... could think of merely as such, regarding them as blank negative forces, hateful black devils, whose existence might make life difficult but could not confuse the ideal of life. No one sought to understand these enemies of his, nor even to conciliate them, unless under compulsion or out of insidious policy, to convert them against their will; he merely pelted them with blind refutations and clumsy blows. Every one sincerely felt that the right was entirely on his side, a proof that such intelligence ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... Braddock had impressed itself on all the army, and inspired a caution that was but too much needed; since, except Washington's men and a few others among the provincials, the whole, from general to drummer-boy, were total strangers to that insidious warfare of the forest in which their enemies, red and white, had no rival. Instead of marching, like Braddock, at one stretch for Fort Duquesne, burdened with a long and cumbrous baggage-train, it was the plan of Forbes to push on by slow ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know, what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry, for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss! Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations, which cover our waters and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... enigma to us like him who is broadly our antipodes in moral being, and whether ours is the good or the bad nature does not affect the saying. His feelings the while were strangely diverse. The election of the evil genius to the first place in the insidious movement was well done for the Academy; there would be no failure with him in control; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... organs. When a healthy brain is transmitted to children, and their treatment from infancy is judicious and rational, its health becomes so firmly established that, in after life, its power of endurance will be greatly increased, and it will be enabled most effectually to ward off the insidious attacks of disease. On the other hand, where this organ has either inherited deficiencies and imperfections, or where they have been subsequently induced by early mismanagement, it becomes peculiarly susceptible, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... invariably act with the strictest honour towards those who never attempt to impose upon them. It is natural for a deceitful person to take advantage of the credulity of others. The genuine Indian never utters a falsehood, and never employs flattery (that powerful weapon in the hands of the insidious), in his communications with ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... I said. I tried to make my voice indifferent, for I was on guard against insidious friendliness. I had bludgeoned my mind into an attitude of safe hostility towards her, and I saw the old chaos ahead if I allowed myself ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... eloquence, and a courage equal to any undertaking, that quailed before no opposition and suffered no abatement in defeat, and they only marvelled the more that a statesman of the first rank should accept at the hands of an insidious rival a fifth-rate mission—insidious rival not named but easy to identify. The fact that Mr. Gladstone had hired a house at Corfu was the foundation of a transcendent story that Mr. Disraeli wished to make him the king of the Ionian ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Protestants, are warned by a great missionary that we must not be deluded by these insidious compliments; we must not forget that the work of the Jesuits in China "overtops all other forms of superstition and error in danger, and stands forth an organised conspiracy against the liberties of mankind. The schemes of the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... of the younger "spenders" irritated the group of nerves appropriated by his class-consciousness almost beyond endurance; but he managed to stand it by reminding himself that irritation of all such was a healthy sign and vastly preferable to insidious tolerance. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... and most intelligent of women, and by whom I beg of thee to let thy own life be regulated. Allow not thyself to be led away by pleasures; shun, like the plague, the foolish familiarities thou seest between some men and women; harmless enough at first, but which by insidious degrees corrupt the heart, and thence lead it to negligence, and then into the vile slough of vice. Credit me, the greatest safeguard to female chastity is sobriety of demeanour. I beseech and direct that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... diminution in their number. The great enemy they have to contend with is fire, and modern conveniences and luxuries, electric lighting and the heating apparatus, have added considerably to their danger. The old floors and beams are unaccustomed to these insidious wires that have a habit of fusing, hence we often read in the newspapers: "DISASTROUS FIRE—HISTORIC MANSION ENTIRELY DESTROYED." Too often not only is the house destroyed, but most of its valuable contents is ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... lake—ah, you don't remember, but I—Shall I ever forget it!—the first day my heart went out to him I tried to call it back, to laugh at my weakness, to call myself a fool! And I thought I had succeeded in driving the insidious feeling away. But I was wrong. It was there in my heart already, and day by day, as I saw him, as I heard him speak, the thing grew until I could not see him cross the lawn, hear him speak to the dog, without thrilling, without shivering, shuddering! Father, have pity ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Dutchman, for, in good truth, not only he and his kindred, but all the people of the colony, were most unjustly blamed and unfairly treated by the Government of that day. Nevertheless Conrad was wrong about the Union Jack. The wisest of plans are open to the insidious entrance of error. The fairest flag may be stained, by unworthy bearers, with occasional prostitution. A Secretary of State is not the British nation, nor is he even, at all times, a true representative of British feeling. Many a deed of folly, and sometimes ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... are an insidious poison, sapping the vitality of our civilization, blighting woman ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... I feel, as swift, Insidious ravager, I saw thee fly Through fair Lucina's breast of whitest snow, Preparing swift her passage to the sky. Though still intelligence beam'd in the glance, The liquid lustre of her fine blue eye; Yet ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... to fight the Black-Horse Cavalry, as the gang of "strike" legislators was called. One of the most insidious bills pushed by these rascals aimed at reducing the fares on the New York Elevated Railway from ten cents to five cents. It seemed so plausible! So entirely in the interest of the poor man! Indeed, the affairs of the Elevated took up much of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... In the short compass of one page the Marquess of Argyle is designated as "the diabolical Scotch Cromwell," "the vile vindictive persecutor," "the base traitor," and "the Argyle impostor." In another page he is "the insidious Campbell, fertile in villany," "the avaricious slave," "the coward of Argyle" and "the Scotch traitor." In the next page he is "the base and vindictive enemy of the House of Maclean" "the hypocritical Covenanter," "the incorrigible traitor," "the cowardly and malignant ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... made an effort to hold his theory together. He approached the bunk, and with an insidious craft sought to draw the old man out. But Clenk was now on his guard. His comrades had bitterly upbraided him with his self-betrayal, that indeed threatened the safety of all. In fact, their courage ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of the Plains Indians are few, and in large part of modern origin, belonging properly to the so-called "transition period." That period must be held to begin with the first insidious effect upon their manners and customs of contact with the dominant race, and many of the tribes were so influenced long before they ceased ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... of the whole people is colored by what they read. Whenever the editorials of reputable papers work toward a specific goal, they usually achieve it. Have we not had a striking example of that during the present war? The insidious power of propaganda is incalculable. Fortunately our national papers are high-minded and patriotic and have directed their influence on the side of the good, quieting fear, promoting loyalty, encouraging honesty, and strengthening the nobler impulses that ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... desolating warfare of a fell savage foe—it is that the midnight and sleeping couch of our infants may not be awakened to death by the tremendous yell of an Indian warwhoop —it is that the gray hairs of our fathers may not become the bloody trophies of a cruel and insidious foe. Cruelty and a thirst for blood are the inmates of an Indian's bosom, and in the neighborhood of two contending powers they are never peaceful. If the strong hand of power does not bend them down they will raise the tomahawk and bare the scalping ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... kindred some of us, deviating towards it, become like wolves, faithless and insidious and mischievous; others like lions, wild and savage and untamed; but most of us like foxes, wretches even among brutes. For what else is a slanderous and ill-natured man than a fox, or something ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... it can only be dealt with in detail; it must be nibbled into here and there; discredited piecemeal; subjected to the ravages of the white ant. He has seen that the lives of the great Victorians lend themselves to this insidious kind of examination, because what was worst in the pretentiousness of their age is to be found enshrined in the Standard Biographies (in two volumes, post octavo) under which most of them are buried. Mr. Strachey has some criticism ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... with people whose every word, as likely as not, may be an insidious falsehood. Thinking over what she had heard from Dymes, Alma was inclined to believe him; on the other hand, she knew it to be quite possible that he sought her with some interested motive. The wise thing, she knew, would be to disregard ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... glad to think I had not said it when tea came up, and saved a dangerous situation by breaking an insidious spell. ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... if the momentary trance—this fugitive beguilement of my wo—had been conceded by a demon's subtle malice only with the purpose of barbing the pang, by thus forcing it into a stronger relief through the insidious peace preceding it. It is a well known and most familiar experience to all the sons and daughters of affliction, that under no circumstances is the piercing, lancinating torment of a recent calamity felt so keenly as in the first moments of awaking in the morning from ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... unguent to clear out auld rannell-trees and our beds o' the English bugs as they ca' them, than we wad gie a plack to rid the land of the swarm of Arminian caterpillars, Socinian pismires, and deistical Miss Katies, that have ascended out of the bottomless pit, to plague this perverse, insidious, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that it would be his portion not to fall manfully in the thick of the combat and the press of battle, but to die poisoned in the tent of Chryseis. For who could foresee a tragedy so needless, so blind, so brutal in its lack of dignity, or know that such strength could perish through such insidious weakness, that so great a man could be stung to death by a mania born ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... The silent and insidious increase of their obligations, by reason of the enhanced and steadily enhancing value of gold, has ruined many thousands of business men who are even now unconscious of the real cause or of the power that has ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... order to dash onward to another. This is rather hard upon the health, because it requires the deglutition of innumerable potions. I have always maintained that tea is an admirable entity if it be considered merely as a time of day, but that it is insidious if it be considered as a beverage. At Chautauqua, tea is not only an hour but a drink; and (though I am a sympathetic soul) I can only say that those who like it like it. For my part, I preferred the concoction sold at rustic soda-fountains, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... time met Tyler Rountree, villain. I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate Went mad about me—so another fortune. He died one night right in my arms, you know. (I saw his purple face for years thereafter. ) There was almost a scandal. I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman, Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich. My sweet apartment near the Champs Elysees Became a center for all sorts of people, Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, Where we spoke French and German, Italian, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... throwing out crumbs to the workers long proved successful. But it was supplemented by other methods. To draw the labor leaders away from a hostile stand to the established political parties, and to prevent the massing of workers in a party of their own, the politicians began an insidious system of bribing these leaders to turn traitors. This was done by either appointing them to some minor political office or by giving them money. In many instances, the labor unions in the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... tortured eyes the slender drooping figure move slowly upward, battling with himself, praying for strength to let her go—for he knew that if she even turned her head his self-control would shatter. It was weakening now and the sweat broke out in heavy drops on his forehead as he strove to crush an insidious inward voice that bade him forget the past and take what was his. "Only one life," it seemed to shout in mocking derision, "live while you can, take what you can! What is done, is done; only the present matters. Of what use is regret, of ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... from all temptation. If leaning, perchance, over the side of the vessel, and looking down on the troubled water, my mind grows troubled also with agitated thoughts, I start from the insidious posture. I find something to tug—to haul. A rope is thrown to me, and I am saved! Or I seize the rudder—I grasp its handle, grown smooth by its frequent intercourse with the human palm—and, believe me, there is a magic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... the duties of the bishopric he saw a means of asceticism—a kind of courageous purification. He would load himself of his own will with so many anxieties and so much work that he would have no time left to listen to the insidious voice of his "old friends." Could he manage to silence them at once? This unheard-of grace—would it be granted to him? Or would not rather the struggle continue in the depths of his conscience? What comes out as certain is that those ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... defence; may discompose our minds with vexatious passions; may, by false reports, odious suggestions, and slanderous defamations, blast our credit, raise a storm of general hatred, and conjure up thousands of enemies against us; may, by insidious practices, supplant and undermine us, prejudice our welfare, endanger our estate, and involve us in a ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... there is something precious, to be guarded as a chief treasure in the instinct of nationality, as I assume, there are grave dangers in too much friendly commercial "infiltration" from the outside. The indirect influences of commercial exploitation with foreign capital are the insidious, the dangerous ones. The dislike of the foreign trader, the foreign creditor, may voice itself crudely as mere envy, know-nothingism, but it has a healthy root in national self-preservation. For an Italian ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... reformers. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor, literature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres. His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age. From an armchair in the office of his Tarrytown estate he directed against the enormous hypothetical enemy, unrighteousness, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... children fair; Of wolves' insidious arts beware; And, as you pass each lonely wood, Ah! think of small red ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... brought into port to rent. If she will not submit to be fastened to the dock, stripped of her rigging, and scrutinized by unwashed artificers, she may spring a leak when riding most proudly on the subject wave. Norway fir nor English oak can resist forever the insidious assaults of the seemingly conquered ocean. The man who clears the barnacles from the keel is more essential than he who hoists the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... regular soldier, whose trade is war. With us, your yeomen whenever they have a chance, I have observed, most uncivilly poke about the lieges with but and bayonet, or thump and rump them with their chargers, and entice the ill-broken brutes with insidious prods of the spur to swish their tails, if tails they have, into the upturned phizes ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... treason, with insidious stab, Snatched from Zenobia's side her gallant lord, And threw into her hand the exigencies Of an unstable and capricious throne. Yet was her genius not inadequate. The precepts of experience, intertwined With intellectual power of lofty grade, Combined to raise Palmyra's ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... simultaneous insurrection. A double mystery of villany saved us, probably, at that time from the shocks and horrors of war in which we have been recently involved. The deposed Kurruck Singh suddenly expired—a victim, it was whispered, to the insidious efficacy of slow and deadly poison, intermingled, as his son knew, in small quantities every day with his food. The lightning-flash of retribution descended. On the return from the funeral of Kurruck, the elephant which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... times the invincible belief in the reality of existence would come back, insidious and inspiring. He squared his shoulders, held himself straight, and walked with a firmer step. He felt a glow within him and the quickened beat of his heart. Then he calculated in silent excitement ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... into rebellion, under the insidious advice of the French king's agents, advanced and took the town of Tongres, killed some few people, and made prisoner there the bishop of Liege and the lord of Humbercourt. The fugitives who brought this news to Peronne made the matter even worse than this, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... him. Unfortunately, just as he started, news was brought him at the railway station that his second daughter, whose brilliant gifts and happy marriage seemed to promise everything for her future, had been stricken by the beginnings of an insidious and, as he too truly feared, hopeless disease. Nothing could have more retarded his own recovery. It was a bitter grief, referred to only in his most intimate letters, and, indeed, for a time kept secret even from the other members of the family. Nothing ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... chiefly in the form of spirits, is often given to procure sleep and to relieve pain, such as that of neuralgia, dyspepsia, colic and diarrhoea. It is as a sedative that alcohol is so insidious and seductive in cases of chronic disease, as, if frequently resorted to, the drink craving is almost certainly developed. Hence the importance in many cases of rather bearing the ills we have than of ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... it was necessarily more sincere. We do not think so much of that sincerity which affronted the fear of persecution; because, after all, the searching persecutions were rare and intermitting, and not, perhaps, in any case, so fiery as they have been represented. We think more of that gentle but insidious persecution which lay in the solicitations of besieging friends, and more still of the continual temptations which haunted the irresolute Christian in the fascinations of the public amusements. The theatre, the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... no high form of thought or action, and to the everlasting credit of the French people be it said, they not only resented it, but stood loyally by their Emperor and their country until they were overpowered by the insidious poison of treason and ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... only the first means that occurred to him of getting another advance; and that advance—L500 on account—he did actually get. But if it was the suggestion of the publisher, Griffin must have been a bold man. A writer whose acquaintance with animated nature was such as to allow him to make the "insidious tiger" a denizen of the backwoods of Canada,[2] was not a very safe authority. But perhaps Griffin had consulted Johnson before making this bargain; and we know that Johnson, though continually remarking on Goldsmith's extraordinary ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... in one town working at full time, and those of an adjacent town shut out, must be explained as one of the insidious methods of the Trust to ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... been so insidious and successful, however," my informant concluded, "that even his own soldiers were convinced that he had sold out to Austria and when the King attempted to rally them as they were falling back from the positions on Mount Lovtchen they jeered in his face, shouting that he had betrayed ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... preferr'd, admired, caress'd, They first invade your table, then your breast; Explore your secrets with insidious art, Watch the weak hour, and ransack all the heart; Then soon your ill-placed confidence repay, Commence your lords, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... at the Cabin at this early hour of the morning, nor would Beth be able to see him until late this afternoon—perhaps not until to-night. Meanwhile, the note upon the mantel was burning its way into her consciousness. It was endued with a personality feminine, insidious and persuasive. No ladies of London affecting heliotrope envelopes had any business writing scented notes to Peter now. He was ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... the burden of naval preparation. When an English society proposed in 1895 that Canada should contribute money to a central navy and share in its control, Sir Charles Tupper attacked the suggestion as 'an insidious, mischievous, and senseless proposal.' He urged that, if Canada were independent, 'England, instead of being able to reduce her army by a man or her navy by a ship, would be compelled to increase both, ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... with foam. Our boat had a "drooping nose," and was extremely partial to what the men termed "drinking;" in other words, it shipped a good deal of water over the bows. Now it happened that while we were straining our eyes ahead, to catch a sight of our haven, an insidious squall was creeping fast down behind us. The first intimation we had of its presence was a loud and ominous hiss, which made us turn our heads round rather smartly; but it was too late—for with a howl, that appeared to be quite vicious the wind burst upon our sails, and buried ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... of enteric fever, though the attack usually runs a mild course. The sugar temporarily disappears during the fever. But the most serious complication of all is known as diabetic coma, which is very commonly the final cause of death. The onset is often insidious, but may be indicated by loss of appetite, a rapid fall in the quantity of both urine and sugar, and by either constipation or diarrhoea. More rarely there is most acute abdominal pain. At first the condition is rather that of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... was mentioned, Willy thought of this incident, so very typical did it seem to him of the man, and he liked to twit his father with it. But Mr. Brookes could not be brought to see the joke, and he fell back on the plausible and insidious argument that, notwithstanding his manners, Berkins was ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... only impressed with this threat, went off at once to obey the insidious tiger, who of course was ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... sacrifice to Heaven would be offered, and he determined to wait and see whether the 1 費. 2 郈. 3 成. 4 In connexion with these events, the 'Narratives of the School' and Sze-ma Ch'ien mention the summary punishment inflicted by Confucius on an able but unscrupulous and insidious officer the Shaou chang, Maou (少正卯). His judgment and death occupy a conspicuous place in the legendary accounts. But the Analects, Tsze-sze, Mencius, and Tso Ch'iu-ming are all silent about it, and Chiang Yung rightly rejects it as one of the many narratives invented to exalt the ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... It might seem insidious if I were to praise his ode entitled Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, as an effusion of high poetical enthusiasm, and strong political feeling. His Sonnet to Schiller conveys a fine compliment to the author of the Robbers, and an equally fine idea of the state of youthful enthusiasm ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... a flight. It was clear he loved her, as she loved him; what then were a few words five years old, to keep them apart? She tried honestly to arm her breast by thinking of the laws that separated them; but the insidious part of it was, they were worldly laws; and here the world was thrust out of sight. Why did he not take her in his arms, and let her heavy head fall on his shoulder? her heart reiterated; and that was the only voice she could hear then. Yet if Garth had betrayed ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the house, it is hydrogen and not water gas which will form its basis. With carbureted water gas and 20 per cent. of carbon monoxide we are still below the limit of danger, but a pure water gas with over 40 per cent. of the same insidious element of danger will never be tolerated in our households. Already a patent has been taken by Messrs. Crookes and Ricarde-Seaver for purifying water gas from carbon monoxide, and converting it mainly into hydrogen by passing it at a high temperature through a mixture of lime ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... it. If a man can carry his neighbours with him, he may say what he likes; but if not, what insult can be more gratuitous than the telling them what they do not want to know? A man should remember that intellectual over-indulgence is one of the most insidious and disgraceful forms that excess can take. Granted that every one should exceed more or less, inasmuch as absolutely perfect sanity would drive any man mad the moment he reached it, but . ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... thought how, in all likelihood, the details of his defeat could not be suppressed in the clubs and cafes. This anticipated publicity he took in ill part, fanning his mental disorder with brandy, mellow and insidious with age. But beneath the dregs of indulgence lay an image which preyed upon his mind more than his defeat beneath the Oaks: a figure, on the crude stage of a country tavern; in the manor window, with an aureole around her from the sinking sun; in the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... printed in italics, for it is the essence of patriotism. The "fuss and tumult" in America were due, for the time being, to the apple of discord which Douglas had cast into the Senate, by his Kansas-Nebraska bill. Hawthorne was too far away to distinguish the full force and insidious character of that measure, but if he had been in Concord, we believe he would have recognized (as so many did who never had before) the imminent danger to the Union, from the repeated concessions to the slave power. After he had become disenthralled from his allegiance to party, we find him ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... the unknown, the unexperienced, is a more haunting, insidious fear than any other, and sometimes one positively longs to hasten the advent of an unwelcome ordeal, in order that the worst may be known and the menace of the future be transformed into a memory ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... in particular, was singularly wise and dignified-looking, with an aspect which was either bland or severe, one could scarcely say which. Another resembled strikingly the typical diplomatist of romance, having a manner suave and infinitely deferential, but oh! so under-handed and insidious and diabolical! The duc de Broglie was the French ambassador in London at the time of my visit, and of all the corps his person and countenance possessed much the most distinction. His was a distinction of spirit and intellect: the distinction of the other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... showed signs of attack: scallops cut out, holes bored, stains of fungi, wreaths of moss, and the insidious mazes of leaf-miners. But, like an old-fashioned ship of the line which wins to port with the remnants of shot-ridden sails, the plant had paid toll bravely, although unable to defend itself or protect its tissues; and if I did not now destroy it, which I should assuredly not do, this weed ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... a correct judgment, as he feared he might be seduced by the excellence of our execution. Besides these, Liszt's Symphonic Poems were played on two grand pianos. At the feast, a dispute arose about Heinrich Heine, with respect to whom Liszt made all sorts of insidious remarks. Frau Wesendonck responded by asking if he did not think Heine's name as a poet would, nevertheless, be inscribed in ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... in the glow of Papal sunshine, to figure in Allocutions from the Vatican as "the pure and shining light of the house, the glory of her husband, the education of her family, a bond of peace, an emblem of piety;" and to let Monsieur Duruy and his insidious Professors alone. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... situation was at once novel, unprecedented, and in more senses than one, alarming. Without its due and timely solution there was danger of still farther disturbance of a far different and more alarming character than that of arms but lately ceased; and of a vastly more insidious and dangerous complexion. The war had been fought in the open. The record of the more than two thousand field and naval engagements that had marked its progress and the march of the Union armies to success, ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... cursed by Heaven's decree, 385 How ill exchanged are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasure only to destroy! Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown, Boast of a florid vigor not their own. 390 At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe; Till sapped their strength, and ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... so ill, he was obliged to quit his work, and for a month I did not see him, though only a short square separated us. He was slowly yielding to an insidious disease, some said; and I had to bear the pain of this uncertainty, as well as the secret agony of my own crushed ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... the Council of State took place on Monday, the 10th of May. A communication was made to them, not merely of the Senate's consultation, but also of the First Consul's adroit and insidious reply. The Council regarded the first merely as a notification, and proceeded to consider on what question the people should be consulted. Not satisfied with granting to the First Consul ten years of prerogative, the Council thought it best to strike the iron while it was hot, and not to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... His style seems to have been constructed entirely for their tastes; his topics are admirably selected, and his mode of communicating excellent lessons of enterprise, truth, and self-reliance might be called insidious and ensnaring if these words did not convey an idea which is only applicable to lessons of an opposite character and tendency taught in the same attractive style. The popularity of this book, "Self-Help," abroad has made it a powerful instrument of good, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... born in a tent in 1162, son of a petty Mongolian chieftain, succeeded his father when only thirteen years old. Many of the tribes immediately rebelled, but Temuchin held his own in battle and in counsel against open enemies and insidious traitors, until his empire extended from the China Sea to the frontier of Poland—an empire larger than modern Russia, the largest the world ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... new ways of satisfying the lust of liberty and overstimulated desire. The poor are growing poorer, and to "keep in the ring," to live and dress beyond their means as many do, it is necessary to have an unexacting standard of morals. In this way the promiscuous libertine is evolved,—the most insidious and dangerous product of present day civilization, and the most pernicious factor in the spread of immoral impulses ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... was her custom she glided, a glorified young creature, in and out amongst the shrubbery, until the envious chapel door hid her from my sight. No living thing was in view. The sound of no discordant voice broke the holy peace of God. Temptation came never to our first erring mother in more insidious guise than this. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... not a word during our drive home, and I, leaning back, shut my eyes and lived the evening over again. Eugen's friend had laughed the insidious whisper to scorn. I could not deal so summarily with it; nor could I drive the words of it out of my head. They set themselves to the tune of the waltz, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... a hurried glance over her shoulder. Alas, they had not calculated on the insidious levels of the terraced plain, and the faithful Pedro had suddenly disappeared; the intervention of six inches of rising wild oats had wiped him out of the prospect and their possible salvation ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the remaining typhoid must be in the direction of the improvement of milk supplies, precautions against secondary infection, and attention to a large number of details surrounding the individual, which may effectively protect him against the insidious attack of the disease favored by ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... efforts they make to do right. Doubtless there is a danger to be guarded against. To adopt the practice of noticing and commending what is right, and paying no attention whatever to what is wrong, would be a great perversion of this counsel. There is a danger more insidious than this, but still very serious and real, of fostering a feeling of vanity and self-conceit by constant and inconsiderate praise. These things must be guarded against; and to secure the good aimed at, and at the same ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... presence of Dominie Sampson, from whom, in his own juridical style of wit, he contrived to extract great amusement both for himself and one or two friends whom the Colonel regaled on the same occasion. The grave and laconic simplicity of Sampson's answers to the insidious questions of the barrister placed the bonhomie of his character in a more luminous point of view than Mannering had yet seen it. Upon the same occasion he drew forth a strange quantity of miscellaneous and abstruse, though, generally speaking, useless learning. The lawyer afterwards compared his ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott |
