"Insidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... their talk, so that he wasn't going to need any assistant, or that he had found some one in New York better qualified for the work, was, really, a little artificial. She encouraged it as a defense against another which was, in its insidious way, much ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... imparted to the nights the brightness of day and streamed upon them her soft blue rays, upon the fragrant terrace, in front of the house, where the faithful slaves carefully watched the little group close one to another and guarded their masters from the approaches of poisonous serpents, that insidious progeny of the night. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... have been in close touch with people who know what goes on, and what has gone on, since the year 1870, after the Franco-German war, can realize how insidious this German influence is, and so I say to you who love peace (and who does not love peace?) if you take part in any of these peace movements you are playing the German game and helping Germany. [Loud applause.] They talk ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... wardrobe—the young creature in the picture confined itself to a ribonny dress which floated charmingly about it—and discharged her flowers. She was prepared for astonishment in her audience, and her reception was all she could ask; but what she was not prepared for was the insidious decay which had set in among the blooms, and which robbed them entirely of their natural colour and fragrance, transforming them into a composition recognized by polite people only upon their lawns. It had been Mary's first encounter with the baffling thaumaturgy of chemistry; and to the end of her ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Savanna Indians for selling their countrymen, contrary to former regulations established among the different tribes; and begged the governor to restore their relations, and protect them against such insidious enemies. Governor Smith declared to them, that there was nothing he wished for more than friendship and peace with the Cherokee warriors, and would do every thing in his power for their defence: that the prisoners were already gone, and could not ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... Jevons would tell you, it is of such small things that tragedies are made—the bitterest, the most insidious. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... But that, unto the vulgar, symbols still The orbit of the everlasting sun, That fills and glorifies a universe—of clay. Where is the mind that should have overtopp'd, Saul-like, the level of the multitude? Where the bold front that in the breach of wrong Stemm'd the fierce current of insidious foes, Flashing Truth's falchion in the van of Time? Shame! it hath rusted in its scabbard, till The nerveless arm can scarce withdraw it thence. O Earth! rejoice that at his side there comes An undimm'd light to beacon on the world; One who upholds the honour of ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... heaviest to lift. To the man of the house, poverty is a bulky dragon with gripping talons and a poisonous breath; but he bellows in the open, and it is possible to give him knightly battle, with the full swing of the angry arm that cuts to the enemy's vitals. To the housewife, want is an insidious myriapod creature that crawls in the dark, mates with its own offspring, breeds all the year round, persists like leprosy. The woman has an endless, inglorious struggle with the pest; her triumphs are too petty for applause, her failures too mean for notice. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question.... Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... worn any of them myself. This day I had for the first time indulged myself with wearing a pair of yellow slippers, the only finery I had reserved for myself out of all the tempting goods. Convinced by my wearing these slippers that I could have had no insidious designs, since I shared the danger, whatever it might be, the merchants were a little pacified; but what was my terror and remorse the next day, when one of them came to inform me that plague-boils had broken out tinder the arms of all the slaves who had worn ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... no groans were heard. As life still remained, he was again put under the care of his former surgeon; but, as he was exceedingly exhausted, a spy, in the dress of a Protestant clergyman, presented himself as if to read prayers with him. Of this offer he accepted; but when this man began to ask some insidious questions, he cast on him a look of contempt and never spoke to him more. At last, seeing no means to obtain any information from him, a mameluke last week strangled him in his bed. Thus expired a hero whose fate has excited more compassion, and whose character has received more ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... was now embarking, our spirited leather-merchant was beyond all reproach. But, happily for the investor, forgery is an affair of practice. And as Morris sat surrounded by examples of his uncle's signature and of his own incompetence, insidious depression stole upon his spirits. From time to time the wind wuthered in the chimney at his back; from time to time there swept over Bloomsbury a squall so dark that he must rise and light the gas; about him was the chill and the mean disorder of a house out of commission—the floor bare, the sofa ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... should make a still more ambitious flight and dine at Randolph's new table. He sat in a dark corner of the room and tried to get, as best he might, the essential hang of the situation: the soft, insidious insistence of Amy; the momentum and bravado of his sister-in-law; the veiled disparagement of Cope in which George F. Pearson, seated on a sofa between Carolyn and Hortense, indulged for their benefit, or for his own relief; above all, he listened for tones and undertones from Cope himself. ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... someone who can't do anything right. It has been observed that many American hackers tend to favor the British pronunciation /kret'in/ over standard American /kree'tn/; it is thought this may be due to the insidious phonetic influence ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... man her life will henceforth be passed, reading the books he reads and writes, and, what is worse, listening to his insidious conversation, to his subtle sophistries, for, no doubt, he is an ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... all was the fear that Grafton had reaped the advantage of the opportunity the illness gave him, and by his insidious arts had worked himself back into the good graces of his father. You must not draw from this, my dears, that I feared for the inheritance. Praised be God, I never thought of that! But I came by nature to hate and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... however are sadly cracked, and numerous young peepul trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining. Probably he is descended from ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Ainslie stood beside the bed of her only brother and watched the sharp, short struggle which he made with their hereditary enemy, consumption. Weakened by wounds and exposure, he was but ill-prepared to resist the advances of the insidious foe, and when she reached his side she saw that the hope, even of delay, was gone. So she took her place, and with ready hand, brave heart, and steady purpose, brightened ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Isom, blind and deaf and money-mad, set with his own hand and kindled with his own breath, the insidious spark which trustful fools before his day have seen leap into flame and strip them of honor before the ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... been away from England for five years; and in that time a curious change, long silently proceeding, had made itself openly felt—becoming manifest, like an insidious disease, only when every limb and every organ were infected. A new spirit had been in action, eating into the foundations of the national character; it worked through the masses of the great cities, unnerved by the three ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... was no question of money, but of obliging a client whom Crespi could ill afford to disappoint. Emma curtly declined the offer. The St. Michael was valued for personal reasons and was not for sale. Six weeks later came a more insidious suggestion. The Director of the Uffizi, learning that she possessed a masterpiece of a school sparsely represented in the first Italian gallery, pleading that such an object should not pass from Italy, and representing a number of generous art-lovers who desired to add it to the collections ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... government supposed that the Americans would be blind to their own interests. This much, indeed, was admitted by the leaders among the Whigs, that once the tea was on sale Yankee principle might be sorely tempted by Yankee thrift. Indignant at the insidious temptation, determined that no such test should be made, and resenting the establishment of a practical monopoly throughout the colonies, the leaders resolved that the tea ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... make me strong where I am most weak—Let not my gratitude and my compassion be a snare to me; and while I strive to discharge the duties which thankfulness imposes on me, save me from the evil tongues of men—and save—oh, save me from the insidious devices ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... tryst after a period behind prison walls. His Waziri, at marrow, were more civilized than he. They cooked their meat before they ate it and they shunned many articles of food as unclean that Tarzan had eaten with gusto all his life and so insidious is the virus of hypocrisy that even the stalwart ape-man hesitated to give rein to his natural longings before them. He ate burnt flesh when he would have preferred it raw and unspoiled, and he brought down game with arrow or spear when he would far rather have leaped upon it ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... whose culture fortunately for Rome had only a very moderate influence, because the Etruscan culture had already lost much of its virility, possibly also because it was distinctly felt to be foreign, and hence could effect no insidious entry, and probably because Rome was at this time too strong and young and clean to take anything but the best from Etruria. The other lay to the south, the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, separated from Rome for the present by many ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... Brother came to "destroy the works of the devil." That is the entire ministry of destruction. Nothing beautiful does He destroy, nothing winsome: only the insidious presences which are the foes of these things. He will destroy only the pestiferous microbes which ravage the vital peace of the soul. Our Lord is the enemy of the deadly, and therefore of "him that had the power ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... die ihr vom Sang der Liebe, von Mondschein und Trnen euch nhrt," etc., etc.[52] In these few words he discriminates between the man and his influence, and outlines his intentions to satirize and chastise the insidious disease which had fastened itself upon the literature of the time. This passage, with its implied sincerity of appreciation for the real Yorick, is typical of Timme's attitude throughout the book, and his concern lest he should appear at any time to draw the English novelist into his condemnation ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... rotten twig, a broomstraw, against the insidious weapons of the Master Philologist. But keep it if you like, my dear, and give it to your next Prince Consort. I am ashamed to have trifled with such toys," says Jurgen, in fretted disgust. "And besides, the Master Philologist assures me I shall ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... always express what the eyes view; but Mabel saw enough, even in that moment of fear, to blend for ever in her mind the pictures presented by the plunging canoe and the unmoved steersman. She admitted that insidious feeling which binds woman so strongly to man, by feeling additional security in finding herself under his care; and, for the first time since leaving Fort Stanwix, she was entirely at her ease in the frail bark in which she travelled. As the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... any signs of Indians, Baldy occasionally ascending the side of the ravine, and scanning the plains in every direction, on the constant lookout for the insidious ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... borderman. What transports of sweet hope and fear were hers then! How shame had scorched her happiness! Yet still she gloried in the act. By that kiss had she awakened to a full consciousness of her love. With insidious stealth and ever-increasing power this flood had increased to full tide, and, bursting its bonds, surged over ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... free. If we dare to look closely enough, may we not observe that the moral force of character and the higher intellectual capacities in parents seem often to wear out mysteriously in the course of transmission to children? In these days of insidious nervous exhaustion and subtly-spreading nervous malady, is it not possible that the same rule may apply, less rarely than we are willing to admit, to the bodily gifts ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... ecstasies of the after-languour. I withdrew, to place her on her hands and knees for the next bout, but took advantage of her position to gamahuche her again into spending twice before I withdrew my insidious tongue. Then turning round, and gazing in rapture on that most noble and massive bottom, which, as I have before remarked, I never saw equalled by any woman, I stooped, and closely embraced and kissed its divine orifice, tickling her into wild excitement by thrusting my tongue therein, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... only hope of the decaying empire. Like them, he had a boundless contempt for empty and passing pleasures, for all the plaudits of the devotees to fashion; and he appreciated their trials and temptations, and pointed out, with more than fraternal tenderness, those insidious enemies that came in the disguise of angels of light. Only a man of his intuitions could have understood the disinterested generosity of those noble women, and the passionless serenity with which they contemplated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... regardless of my remonstrances, and paying no attention whatever to my questions. He was evidently becoming stupefied by the deadly chill, which struck through the heaviest furs, and which was constantly making insidious advances from the extremities to the seat of life. He probably would not live through the night unless he could be roused, and might not live two hours. Discouraged by his apparently hopeless condition, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 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 ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... weeks, weeks to months, but though unflinchingly watched by night and day, no further message was received. I had become weaker, pale and lifeless. The terrible malady made its inroads upon a frame unable to meet its savage or insidious attacks. This weakness was aggravated by the excitement produced by the singular experience I had passed through. My nerves had undergone a strain quite unusual, and the interior sense of elation, reacting its fits of extreme mental despondency dislocated ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Though heavy is the stroke, And thou must early learn indeed To bear affliction's yoke. Yet weep not, for you all have heard, Oft from these lips, in health, How Death will often snatch away Mothers by mystic stealth. How often, when within the home The sun of joy doth glow, Some deed of his insidious hand Will fill ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... unjust, and in strict disaccordance with the views of the Gleaner, that these thousands should be locked up for one man's pleasure, while starvation levied its toll upon the many. Moreover, he nurtured a temperamental distaste for the whole Semitic race—a Western resentment of that insidious Eastern power. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... very quiet, and must probably have been felt to be dull by Lady Cantrip, in spite of her old age and desire for retirement. But the place itself was very lovely. May of all the months of the year is in England the most insidious, the most dangerous, and the most inclement. A greatcoat cannot be endured, and without a greatcoat who can endure a May wind and live? But of all months it is the prettiest. The grasses are then the greenest, and the young foliage of the trees, while it has all the glory and all ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... them thieves and pillagers; but know, They are the winged wardens of your farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, And from your harvest keep a hundred harms. Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat-of-mail, And crying havoc ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could contrive to keep my path illuminated through the ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... taken on behalf of the people in general against the malignant influence supposed to be exercised by strangers, it is no wonder that special measures are adopted to protect the king from the same insidious danger. In the middle ages the envoys who visited a Tartar Khan were obliged to pass between two fires before they were admitted to his presence, and the gifts they brought were also carried between the fires. The reason assigned for ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... gentlemen of the pen! Cowardly, malicious, insidious in their anonymity. How this band will triumph now, and over me! How they will laud their editor to the skies! There lies the contemptible sheet! In it stands my defeat, trumpeted forth with full cheeks, with scornful shrugs of the shoulders—away with it! [Walks up and down, looks at ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... his lips continued to move uncertainly. His face was transfigured, his eyes filmed with dreams. He was looking beyond Yen Sin now, and on the lost yellow millions. The tea, untasted, smoked upward into his face, an insidious, narcotic cloud. I can think of him now as he sat there, wresting out of his easeless years one moment of those seminary dreams; the color of far-away, the sweet shock of the alien and the bizarre, the enormous odds, the Game. The walls of Yen Sin's shop were the margins of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... obscure uses; you suffer your allies to perish in time of peace, whom you preserved in time of war; and, to sum up all, you yourselves, by your mercenary court, and servile resignation to the will and pleasure of designing, insidious leaders, abet, encourage, and strengthen the most dangerous and formidable of your enemies. Yes, Athenians, I repeat it, you yourselves are the contrivers of your own ruin. Lives there a man who has confidence enough to deny it? let him arise, and assign, if he ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... did say that," he admitted, "and he said many other very different things, like all great thinkers. His doctrine is one of pride, but of individual pride, not that of a nation or race. He always spoke against 'the insidious ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... prince, heretic in his faith, limited in the exercise of his boasted power, their enemy when he dared to show himself such, and the friend of those only among their number, who were able to compel him to be so; and who, though to them an obsequious ally, was to the others, when occasion offered, an insidious ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... are, really, that it make no demand upon the reader's imagination, and that it rigorously refrain from assuming its reader to possess any particular information on any subject whatever. The author who writes over the head of the public is the most dangerous enemy of his publisher—and the most insidious as well, because so many publishers are in private life interested in literary matters, and would readily permit this personal foible to influence the exercise of their vocation were it possible to do so upon the preferable ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... man felt lonely and wanted to talk and he sympathized. There was something insidious and daunting about the African coast. He walked round the deck and then returning to his room presently went ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... popular eye, to the popular eye—but I knew when I was dropping information and when I was letting drive at the court with an insidious argument. But the court knew it, bless you, and weakened every time! And Brabant knew it. I just reminded him of it in a quiet way, and its final result, and he said in a whisper, 'You did it, Colonel, you did it, sir—but keep it mum for my sake; and I'll tell you what you do,' says he, 'you ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... these the only ones who need information upon the subject. Thousands of young men are to-day being treated for seminal troubles who will never be cured, because they are entirely ignorant of the existence of a Varicocele of the Cord, that most insidious and dangerous of all forms of Varicocele, or, if aware of it, do not understand the terrible influence it has on their Sexual Powers, and how great and persistent a stumbling-block it will be in ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... drive them out. Better still, in the month which witnessed the sinking of the Lusitania we read this panegyric of the Teuton in Die Welt: "Clad in virtue and in peerless nobility of character, unassailed by insidious enemies either within or without, girded about by the benign influences of Kultur, the German, whether soldier or civilian, pursues his ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... fickle fabric of sleep; and as 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 ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... religious blasphemies Burns attacked were evils insidious and poisonous, eating to the very heart of the religious life of the country, and they required a desperate remedy. Let us be thankful that the remedy was applied in time; and, looking to the righteousness he wrought, let us bless the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... her? Men did not hurt the women they loved. And because she was hurt, she was rather less than just. He had not asked her to marry him. He had said that he loved her, but that was different. And the insidious poison of Harvey's letter about foreigners began to have ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Ah, the insidious appeal of that man! He knew the crack in my armor, and with neatness and despatch he pierced it, and ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... there was, down in the brown water, a pound of savagely fighting weight. Deeper went the big fish and further, but ever the taut line yielded by fractions, and the nearly doubled rod kept up a steady insidious strain. As the bass dashed back, the bishop recovered his nearly spent line while his lips pressed tight and the light of battle shone in his large eyes. For a quarter of an hour the fight lasted, till the great fish floundered once or twice with ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... precaution when a person can no longer stand. The fact was, that my honoured mother, although her virtue was unimpeachable, was frequently seduced by liquor; and although constant to my father, was debauched and to be found in bed with that insidious assailer of female uprightness—gin. The lighter, which might have been compared to another garden of Eden, of which my mother was the Eve, and my father the Adam to consort with, was entered by this serpent who tempted ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... agony was as nothing to the mental anguish which he suffered. Death was before him if he lay there—death in a painless, insidious form, no doubt; but still, death in all its horror to one ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... what they used to call 'religion,' Court? 'Hit the trail,' as it were?" Tennelly asked as if he were delicately inquiring about some insidious tubercular or cancerous trouble. He seemed half ashamed to connect such a perilous possibility with his ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Princess keeps such a brave heart under conditions that might well have broken it, her spirit is powerless against the insidious disease that is working such havoc with her body. In her damp, noisome cell consumption makes rapid headway. Her strength ebbs daily; the end is coming swiftly near. She makes a last dying appeal to Catherine ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... that soaring strength assails, And strives to drag it from its place of pride, And, after cruel conflict, faints and fails. Sometimes it seems the air's strong monarch vails His crest awhile, as, hampering coil on coil, Insidious knot on pinion proud prevails; Yet towering greatness crawling hate shall foil, Nor shall the Bird of Jove ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... independence by voicing her determination to hold to the whole corpus of international sanctions on which her independence finally rests. In the last analysis, then, the Chinese note of the 9th February to the German Government was a categorical and unmistakable reply to all the insidious attempts which had been made since the beginning of the war to place her outside and beyond the operation of the Public Law of Europe; and it is solely and entirely in that light that her future actions must be judged. The leaders who direct the destinies of China became fully prepared for ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... likewise expressed his determination to preserve in the new councils the presence and power of the landlord and ex-officio element. This was, in the circumstances, with the Land Question unsettled and landlordism still an insidious power, a rather gratuitous surrender ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... neighbours are contented with the scantiest clothing, the coarsest food, and the poorest dwellings, he is very apt to fall into the same slothful habits. Even if he himself has innate energy enough to ward off the insidious foe, he will see his children growing up exposed to all the temptations to lead an easy life that a tropical climate offers, and without any example of industry or enterprise around them to arouse or ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... river an' know what's comin'?" muttered Bostil, darkly. And that question showed him how he was lost. All this strife of doubt and fear and horror were of no use. He meant to doom Creech's horses. The thing had been unalterable from the inception of the insidious, hateful idea. It was irresistible. He grew strong, hard, fierce, and implacable. He found himself. He strode back to the cables. The knots, having dragged in the water, were soaking wet and swollen. He could not untie them. Then he cut ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... the vision of life, he has received the baptism of fire. Henceforth he is to fight his way through the storms of life and passion—to pass onward and upward and at last to rise to 'higher spheres'; and amidst the fierce and insidious assaults of flesh and devil we shall see that he looks for strength and guidance to this Spirit that appeared to him in the blinding vision ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... infamous practice of paying assiduous court to old people for the purpose of obtaining a legacy under their wills. "Later, childlessness conferred advantages in the shape of the greatest authority and Lower; undue influence became very insidious in its quest of wealth, and in grasping the joyous things alone, debasing the true rewards of life; and all the liberal arts operating for the greatest good were turned to the opposite purpose, and commenced to ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... them. After it is all over, after he has passed through the first pangs of strangeness and homesickness, yes, even after he has got beyond the stranger's enthusiasm for the metropolis, the real fever of love for the place will begin to take hold upon him. The subtle, insidious wine of New York will begin to intoxicate him. Then, if he be wise, he will go away, any place,—yes, he will even go over to Jersey. But if he be a fool, he will stay and stay on until the town becomes all in all to him; until the very streets are his chums and certain buildings and corners ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... intruder 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 was so reduced by the untoward ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... English; but, after we were married, we lived long abroad—in Italy. She liked the country, and I liked what she liked. She liked to draw, too, and I got her a master. He was an Italian. I will not give his name. We always called him 'the Master.' A treacherous insidious man this was, and, under cover of his profession, took advantage of his opportunities, and taught my wife ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... unwise handling. I think I can promise you that I will not spoil it. I feel that Betty is my vocation; and I shall set myself up as a rival of Wordsworth's 'nature,' of whose methods I have always had a decided distrust, in spite of his insidious verses." ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at work among most of the chiefs was arrested for a moment. But the spearmen and multitude above, excited by the tidings of safety to life, and worn out by repeated defeat, and the dread fear of famine, too remote to hear the King, were listening eagerly to the insidious addresses of the two stealthy conspirators, creeping from rank to rank; and already they began to sway and move, and sweep slowly ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... preached it in a language that will not permit of indifference. He has succeeded in surrounding his doubtful idealism with a vigour that commands attention, even if not respect. Right in the heart of London he is turning out insidious propaganda which is being seized upon by every neutral American who has his own reasons for wanting us to keep out of war. It would be absurd to say that one man's writing could in itself sway a great nation, but nevertheless it is a vehicle which is being used ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... powers—magicians, sorcerers, &c. About the Reformation period, these persons were considered to be in the actual service of the devil, who was then thought to be raising a more determined opposition than ever to the spread of the kingdom of God, and adopting the insidious means of enlisting men and women into his service by conferring upon them supernatural powers; so that by this contract they were bound to do mischief to all good Christian people; and the more mischief they could do the greater would be the ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... known the insidious approach and temptation of diffuse poetic melancholy. The Northern poems are corrupted by the vanity of metaphor. To evade the right term for everything has been the aim of many poetic schools; it has ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... 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, ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Geinig we are going now," said his companion, who appeared quite to ignore the insidious appeal conveyed in these touching sentiments. "I promised to leave all the Aivron pools to Mr. Lestrange. But we may take the Junction Pool, for he won't have time to come beyond the Bad Step; and, by the way, Mr. Moore, if you feel stiff after yesterday, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... with any girl like this. So accustomed had she been to the rough, give-and-take, direct associations of a seafaring life that she misinterpreted well-meant politeness—the only respect he knew how to pay her—to mean insidious advances. She was suspicious of him—distrusted him utterly, and openly ridiculed his abortive seamanship. Pretty she was not, but she soon began to have a certain amount of attraction for Wilbur. He liked her splendid ropes ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... in Yorkshire. His father was well, but more than ever silent, sunk in prophetic brooding; Mrs. Otway kept the wonted tenor of her life, apprehensive for the purity of the Anglican Church (assailed by insidious papistry), and monologising at large to her inattentive husband upon the godlessness of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... are behind, and are slowly but surely catching up your opponent, that when you do draw level you do not relax your efforts. This danger is most insidious, and must be fought against. The strain and anxiety involved in catching up, and the great relief when you are games all, provoke a reaction unless you are on your guard. A rest is taken, often involuntarily. It is ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... its promulgation to the world on the 20th of May, 1775. And yet, in the face of this strong phalanx of unimpeachable testimony, there are a few who have attempted to rob North Carolina of this brightest gem in the crown of her early political history, and tarnish, by base and insidious cavils the fair name and reputation of a band of Revolutionary patriots, whose memories and heroic deeds the present generation and posterity will ever delight ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... be immediately struck off, and to agree to enter upon negotiations for his ransom. Longchamp was immediately despatched to England with a letter to the council of regency, and the result was, that, notwithstanding the insidious efforts both of John and his friend, Philip of France, to prevent the conclusion of the treaty, Richard was at last liberated, on February 4, 1194, after seventy thousand marks had been actually paid to the emperor, and hostages given for the payment of thirty thousand more. The English ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... situation, in the midst of vineyards and woods: it was very shabby inside, and the windows were loose in their frames: there was a moldy smell in it, a smell of ripe fruit, of cold shadow, and resinous trees warmed by the sun. Living constantly in Jacqueline's company for days together, a sweet insidious feeling crept into Christophe's veins, without in the least disturbing his peace of mind: he took an innocent, though by no means immaterial, delight in seeing her, hearing her, feeling the contact of her beautiful body, and sipping the breath of her mouth. Olivier ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... 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 ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... account of that insignificant number of men of German origin who, misguided or corrupt, dare by insidious and underground processes to attempt to weaken or oppose the resolute will of the Nation. There are too few of them to count and their manoeuvres are too clumsy to be effective. But let them be warned. There is sweeping through the country a mighty wave of stern and grim ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... "You have a great deal to do with all our lives. You are a dear old insidious sapper-and-miner, looking at first very inoffensive, and then working your way into our affections, and spoiling us with coaxing. How you behave about ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... preferment through the favour of Her Majesty Queen Adelaide, to whom he had been presented, and who had evinced some interest on his behalf. But his prospects were soon clouded by the slow but certain progress of an insidious malady. He was seized with pulmonary consumption, and died at Edinburgh on the 16th May ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... between I and me, he and him, we and us, has been too great for any serious possibility of form leveling. It does not follow that the case distinction as such is still vital. One of the most insidious peculiarities of a linguistic drift is that where it cannot destroy what lies in its way it renders it innocuous by washing the old significance out of it. It turns its very enemies to its own uses. This brings us to the second of the major drifts, the tendency to fixed ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Mr. Turley's book after a year's interval we are more than ever taken by its quiet, unassuming merits and a certain insidious charm. Thinking over other school books we can recall nothing nearer to boy nature than this, nor any that has greater interest ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... for him, yields in about two hours. Karl Albert publishes his Manifesto, 'in forty-five pages folio' [Adelung, ii. 426.] (to the effect, 'All Austria mine; or as good as all,—if I liked!'); and fortifies himself in Passau. 'Insidious, nefarious!' shrieks Austria, in Counter-Manifesto; calculates privately it will soon settle Karl Albert,—'Unless, O Heavens, France with Prussia did mean to back him!'—and begins to have ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... displeasure, an echo of color crept slowly into her cheeks. For it is a curious fact that, while stern and self-denying people may be found who are impregnable to the fiercest attacks of passion, indifferent to the most insidious lures of avarice, unmoved by the most convincing whispers of jealousy, and impartial in every act toward fellowman—all, all will yield an inch ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... necessary, and a continual lopping of trees and shrubs. It was an edifice built in times when human constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the boisterous was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, the insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an ocular reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the fragility to which these have declined. The highest architectural cunning could have done nothing to make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and ruthless ignorance ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... these insidious speculations Lady Harman found herself trying to imagine how one sold jewels. She tried to sound Peters by taking up the story of the necklace again. But Peters was uninforming. "But where," asked Lady Harman, "could ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... our retiring. I spoke in Italian; he replied in English, observing that he supposed the fear of contracting the malaria fever had induced us to seek the shelter of the shade: but it is too early in the season to have much reasonable fear of this insidious enemy; yet, he added, this bottle which you may have observed here at my breast, I carry about with me, as a supposed preventive of the effects of malaria, and as far as my experience, a very limited one, however, has gone, it is effectual. I ventured to ask him what the bottle might ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... incendiary documents and promoting the escape of fugitives from a neighboring State and the organization of an armed force for the purpose of invasion? Sir, a State relying securely on its own strength would rather court the open invasion than the insidious attack. And for what end, sir, is all this aggression? They see that the slaves in their present condition in the South are comfortable and happy; they see them advancing in intelligence; they see the kindest ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... gratified by the insidious censure. His portrait, amiably regarding its original from the wall, listened approvingly to Burr, and smiled acquiescence. "Does the mild-eyed thing recollect me?" mused Burr. The picture betrayed no sign of recognition and ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... I spoke of danger, I meant such open danger as—in short, not such insidious lurking abomination as ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... some patience to bring the Tarantula who has bitten into the insidious spikelet to the entrance of the burrow. The following method is quicker: I procure a supply of live Bumble-bees. I put one into a little bottle with a mouth just wide enough to cover the opening of the burrow; and I turn the apparatus thus baited over ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... amused ourselves pretty well; but if we occasionally opened our mouths, we took good care not to shut our eyes, and were constantly on the alert. There is a far from pleasant feeling attached to lying in an open boat, in a night as dark as pitch, expecting a momentary attack from an insidious enemy, and wholly in a state of uncertainty as to from what quarter it may be made, or as to what odds you may be exposed. Under these circumstances, we remained in watching and silence during a night which appeared interminably long; and daylight ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... we'll wear them out yet. Let them pour their troops into Cuba by the thousand. Disease, our insidious ally and insurgent bullets will take care of all ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... myself—the subdued, yet secretly-cherished hope, that Diana Vernon might—by what chance I knew not—through what means I could not guess—have some connection with this strange and dubious intimation conveyed at a time and place, and in a manner so surprising. She alone—whispered this insidious thought—she alone knew of my journey; from her own account, she possessed friends and influence in Scotland; she had furnished me with a talisman, whose power I was to invoke when all other aid failed ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... supposed that Charles was all at once prepared to drop the little intrigue—so united to his already corrupted character, into which he had been led by Benoist's insidious suggestions, acting upon a mind always anxious for excitement, and predisposed by the talk of the deceased groom-of-the-chamber. But the danger which he had incurred was a warning in the opposite direction. Benoist was in hiding, and appeared no more in the castle; lastly, ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... and his almost clairvoyant foresight, in Hamilton Burton an insidious change was taking place and the brain which so astutely cooerdinated many things was totally unconscious of its own transitions. Egotism had made him. A self-faith which took no account of difficulties, had carried him to the apex of his ambitions. Now it was ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... proposals, saying she had chosen the Lord Jesus, the Redeemer of mankind, for the Spouse of her {346} soul, and had devoted herself to his service in the state of virginity. But her greatest victory was over the insidious attempts of Werbode, a powerful, wicked knight of her father's court. The king was greatly indebted to the valor and services of this knight for his temporal prosperity, and entertained a particular affection for him. The knight, sensible of this, and being passionately fond ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... had nothing else to do except this second work of this Commandment, he would yet have to work all his life-time in order to fight this vice and drive it out, so common, so subtle, so quick and insidious is it. Now we all pass by this good work and exercise ourselves in many other lesser good works, nay, through other good works we overthrow this and forget it entirely. So the holy Name of God, which alone should be honored, is taken in vain and dishonored through our own cursed name, self-approval ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther |
