"Insensibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... maintenance of vast establishments within their walls, to the employment of a great variety of independent trades abroad. Their influence is lessened; but a mode of accommodation, and a style of splendour, suited to the manners of the times, has been increased. Royalty itself has insensibly followed; and the royal household has been carried away by the resistless tide of manners: but with this very material difference;—private men have got rid of the establishments along with the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... aware that it was not the deepest love of which her nature was susceptible she yet clung to him, shutting her eyes to his ill-disguised defects, striving to clothe him with the graces which she had at first supposed him to possess, and, insensibly to himself, refining and purifying by slight degrees his ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... from the others. As they climbed together over uneven ground she gave him her hand to hold, and there was very little to say and no need of saying it until they came to the hill overlooking the pasture, yellowing toward the end of summer, full of late bloom and misty colour passing insensibly into light. Threads of gossamer caught on the ends of the scrub or floated free, glinting as they turned and bellied in the windless air, to trick the imagination with the ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... enthusiasm; for each of these changes the usual tone, and makes the voice slide into a cadence; for deep sorrow has something tunable in its groans, and therefore we perceive our orators in their conclusions, and actors in their complaints, are somewhat melodious, and insensibly fall into a tune. Excess of joy provokes the more airy men to frisk and dance and keep their steps, though unskilful in the art; and, as Pindar ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... performed as great things as the most excellent lawgivers. For his odes were so many persuasives to obedience and unanimity, as by means of melody and numbers they had great grace and power, they softened insensibly the manners of the audience, drew them off from the animosities which then prevailed, and united them in zeal for excellence and virtue. So that, in some measure, he prepared the way for Lycurgus towards the instruction of the Spartans. From ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... smoke rather than light. Pure glory and innocent riches were his, which were more precious in the sight of good men, and he showed himself incorruptible, and not to be bought at any price. It were easy for him to have turned a deluge of wealth into his house; but he knew that gifts insensibly corrupt,—that the specious pretext of gratitude is the snare in which the greatest souls allow themselves to be caught,—that a man covered with favors has difficulty in setting himself against injustice in all its forms, and that a magistrate ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... after walking some time over the gardens in a scattered, dispersed way, scarcely any three together, they insensibly followed one another to the delicious shade of a broad short avenue of limes, which stretching beyond the garden at an equal distance from the river, seemed the finish of the pleasure grounds.—It led to nothing; nothing but a view at the end over a low stone wall with high ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... what this God is whose presence with us we are there asked to realize? So most Protestant services are more informative than inspirational. Their attendants are assembled to hear about God rather to taste and see that the Lord is good. They analyze the religious experience rather than enjoy it; insensibly they come to regard the spiritual life as a proposition to be proved, not a power to be appropriated. Hence our services generally consist of some "preliminary exercises," as we ourselves call them, leading up to the climax—when it is a ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... life. The like is true of the breakdown and redintegration of devout ritual after such a revulsion. The priestly office, the scheme of sacerdotal life, and the schedule of devout observances are rehabilitated only gradually, insensibly, and with more or less variation in details, as a persistent human sense of devout propriety reasserts its primacy in questions touching the interest in the preternatural—and it may be added, as the organization increases in wealth, and so acquires ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... long superintending. Having been induced during the last ten years to visit a considerable number of workshops and factories, both in England and on the Continent, for the purpose of endeavouring to make himself acquainted with the various resources of mechanical art, he was insensibly led to apply to them those principles of generalization to which his other pursuits had naturally given rise. It should be observed, that he has not attempted to offer a complete enumeration of all the mechanical principles which regulate the application ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... strange that this request should surround Fran with the chill atmosphere of a tomb. His embrace relaxed insensibly. His moment of self-abnegation had passed, and life appeared suddenly at the level. He looked at his daughter in frightened bewilderment, as if afraid she had drawn him too far from his security for further hiding. During the silence, she ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... shifts. Parvati's love-affair is the matter of the first half, Kumara's fight with the demon the matter of the second half. Further, it must be admitted that the interest runs a little thin. Even in India, where the world of gods runs insensibly into the world of men, human beings take more interest in the adventures of men than of gods. The gods, indeed, can hardly have adventures; they must be victorious. The Birth of the War-god pays for its greater unity by a ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... terminated is doubtful, if Arthur himself had not appeared upon the scene, calm, dignified, and courtly in his manner, which insensibly won upon his hearers, as in a few well-chosen and eloquent words, he proceeded to prove that though he might be peculiar in some respects, he was not mad, and that a man might repair his own house, and cut off his own water-pipes, and take up his sewer, and detect a bad ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... she began to be aware of a wonderful revolution, compared to which the fire of Mittwalden Palace was but the crack and flash of a percussion-cap. The countenance with which the pines regarded her began insensibly to change; the grass too, short as it was, and the whole winding staircase of the brook's course, began to wear a solemn freshness of appearance. And this slow transfiguration reached her heart, and played upon it, and transpierced it with a serious thrill. She looked all about; the whole face of ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Whenever I made any observation that looked like a challenge to controversy, he would smile, shake his head, and say nothing; by which I understood he could say much, if he thought proper. The subject therefore insensibly changed from the business of antiquity to that which brought us both to the fair; mine I told him was to sell an horse, and very luckily, indeed, his was to buy one for one of his tenants. My horse was soon produced, ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... of Tongataboo. By the direction of our pilots we steered for the middle of it, and for the widest space between the small isles which we were to pass, having our boats ahead employed in sounding. We were insensibly drawn upon a large flat, upon which lay innumerable coral rocks, of different depths, below the surface of the water. Notwithstanding all our care and attention to keep the ship clear of them, we could not prevent her from striking ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... human passions, that of pleasure and that of knowledge. He was loth to believe that one so wise could err, that one so lofty could stoop to deceive. Entangled in the dark web of metaphysical moralities, he caught at the excuse by which the Egyptian converted vice into a virtue. His pride was insensibly flattered that Arbaces had deigned to rank him with himself, to set him apart from the laws which bound the vulgar, to make him an august participator, both in the mystic studies and the magic fascinations of the Egyptian's solitude. The pure and stern lessons of that creed to which Olinthus ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Insensibly we wandered into one of those weird passages of psychological speculation, the border territory where reason and illusion hold contested sway,—where the relations between spirit and matter seem so incomprehensibly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... began Rabourdin, who saw the practical side, was cool. Celestine, much grieved, thought her husband narrow-minded, timid, unsympathetic; and she acquired, insensibly, a wholly false opinion of the companion of her life. In the first place, she often extinguished him by the brilliancy of her arguments. Her ideas came to her in flashes, and she sometimes stopped him short when he began an explanation, because ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... would be unnecessary. Profiting by his growing familiarity as neighbor, he went to school, as it were, at the model farm of the gentleman-farmer, and submitted to him the direction of his own domain. By this quiet compliment, enhanced by his captivating courtesy, he advanced insensibly in the good graces of the old man. But every day, as he grew to know M. de Rameures better, and as he felt more the strength of his character, he began to fear that on essential points ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Arizona could have become more significant than she realized. The thought had confronted her before. Here, as always, she fought it and denied it by the simple defense of elimination. Yet refusing to think of a thing when it seemed ever present was not going to do forever. Insensibly and subtly it might get a hold on her, never to be broken. Yet it was infinitely easier to dream than ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... tell you that insensibly we had fallen into the habit of taking our tea by my study fire. Tea, you know, is a mere nothing in itself, its only merit being its social and poetic associations, its warmth and fragrance; and the more socially and informally it can be dispensed, the more ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... This brief discussion of the relation between public and playwright will suffice for our purposes. In the course of it we have insensibly encroached upon the next topic: the relation of public and actor. Who after all is the chief factor in the success or failure of a drama, in spite of the oft misquoted adage, "The play's the thing?" The actor! The actor, who can mouth and tear a passion to tatters, or swing ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... not remain blind to the trend of events. After the fall of Tsingtao and the subsequent complications with Japan, which so greatly served to increase the complexities of a nebulous situation, certain lines of thought insensibly developed. That the influential classes in China should have desired that Germany should by some means rehabilitate herself in Europe and so be placed in a position to chastise a nation that for twenty years had brought nothing but sorrow to them was perhaps only natural; and it is primarily ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... difficulty in bringing in spiritual conversation immediately after preaching, when my bosom should be burning. Excused myself from dining out from other than the grand reason; though checked and corrected myself. Evening—Insensibly slid into worldly conversation. Let these things be corrected in me, O Lord, by the heart being more filled with love to Jesus, and ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... of individual traits and moods in character, with variety and vivacity, an ease, grace and gentleness, that diffuse their sweetness insensibly through every nook of an assembly, and call out reciprocal sweetness wherever there is any ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of Material Pantheism runs insensibly into one or other of the forms of naked Atheism to which we have already referred. Ignoring the existence of mind, or of any spiritual Power distinct from Nature and superior to it, it must necessarily hold the eternal existence of matter; and, in this respect, it coincides entirely with ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... divined the first note in Clemence's character. He decided in his own mind, at the end of a few months, that she was cold, if not heartless. This discovery, which ought to have wounded his vanity, inspired him, on the contrary, with a deeper respect for her; insensibly this reserve reacted upon himself, for love is a fire whose heat dies out for want of fuel, and its cooling off is more sudden when the flame is more on the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... near us, if there had been occasion for assistance, I insensibly led that way. She sat down on a seat over-against the great cascade; but she made no motion that gave me apprehensions. From this time she has been fonder of me than before. The day I obtained this liberty for her, she often clasped her arms ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... philosophical airs were wont to do. He was drawn without knowing it into a match of wits wherein his strokes, if they lacked the finish and subtlety of hers, showed certainly no lack of sharpness or mental resource. Madame de Netteville's tone insensibly changed, her manner quickened, her ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... first time in his life, an influence serene, natural, healthy, and sweet breathed over him from the mind of a woman,—an influence so heavenly and peaceful that he did not challenge or suspect it, but rather opened his worn heart insensibly to it, as one in a fetid chamber naturally breathes freer when the fresh ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... insensibly conforming to her manner of life. She was drifting. She did not know where. She never thought of towards what end or ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... practical shape and interest, thus applied to the actual circumstances of men; the spirit of intrigue, which seemed mean when employed on mean things, swelled into statesmanship and masterly genius to the listener when she saw it linked with the large objects of masculine ambition. Insensibly, therefore, her attention became earnest, her mind aroused. The vision of a field, afar from the scenes of her humiliation and despair,—a field for energy, stratagem, and contest,—invited her restless intelligence. As Dalibard had profoundly calculated, there was no new channel for ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... contrary to the most solemn injunctions of uncle and keeper, enforced by the direst threats, had purloined and broken an egg; and still dinner-time delayed. Perhaps, too, the cold blighting wind, which soon made her look blue and pinched, tamed her insensibly. At any rate, she got up after about an hour, and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little to be seen at St. Denis but the Abbey, on quitting that part of it devoted to education, they proceeded to visit the church, with its various objects of interest; and as De Chaulieu's thoughts were now forced into another direction, his cheerfulness began insensibly to return. Natalie looked so beautiful, too, and the affection betwixt the two young sisters was so pleasant to behold! And they spent a couple of hours wandering about with Hortense, who was almost as well informed as the Suisse, till the brazen doors were open which admitted them to the royal ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... doing it. Then came a few sad reproaches from her, and their correspondence ceased. Meanwhile, having had his youthful fling, he settled down as a steady young man of business. One day he was surprised to observe that he had of late insensibly fallen into the habit of thinking a good deal in a pensive sort of way about Ida and those German days. The notion occurred to him that he would hunt up her picture, which he hadn't thought of in five years. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... and private worth, are primarily due to heredity, and if they are taught to realize the fact that one marries not an individual but a family, the eugenist believes that better matings will be made, sometimes realized, sometimes insensibly. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... objections from Miss Fanny, that it was a low instrument, and that she detested the sound of it, the concession had been made. But it was then discovered that he had had enough of it, and never played it, now that it was no longer his means of getting bread. He had insensibly acquired a new habit of shuffling into the picture-galleries, always with his twisted paper of snuff in his hand (much to the indignation of Miss Fanny, who had proposed the purchase of a gold box for ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... her curiosity, Miss Temple appeared more inclined to attend him; and Killegrew perceiving that the other couple had insensibly proceeded some distance from them: "In the name of God," said he: "what do you mean by railing so against Lord Rochester, whom you know to be one of the most honourable men at court, and whom you nevertheless described as the greatest villain, to ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... the gardener par excellence, is nothing less than Priapus in person, the god of gardens and debauchery,—a divinity probably chaste and serious in his origin, however, like the mystery of reproduction, but insensibly degraded by licentiousness ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... childhood lay Like metals in the mine; Age from no face took more away Than youth concealed in thine. But as your charms insensibly To their perfection pressed, Fond love as unperceived did fly, And in ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... think it's partly your fault that I haven't," Nick went on. "At Oxford you were very bad company for me—my evil genius: you opened my eyes, you communicated the poison. Since then, little by little, it has been working within me; vaguely, covertly, insensibly at first, but during the last year or two with violence, pertinacity, cruelty. I've resorted to every antidote in life; but it's no use—I'm stricken. C'est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee—putting ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Catherine knelt now, and took one of her mother's hands between her own. Insensibly the cold hand was comforted by the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this it the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves, and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing. At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... bibliography would take account of three other sonnets, 'The Founder of the Feast', 1884, 'The Names', 1884, and 'Why I am a Liberal', 1886, to which I shall have occasion to refer; but we decline insensibly from these on to the less important or more fugitive productions which such lists also include, and on which it is unnecessary or undesirable that any ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and on that magnificent river, a steam-boat, piled high with bales of cotton from many a plantation, receives the party. 'Partly from confidence inspired by Mr Shelby's representations, and partly from the remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man, Tom had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such a man as Haley. At first, he had watched him narrowly through the day, and never allowed him to sleep at night unfettered; but the uncomplaining patience and apparent contentment of Tom's manner, led him gradually to discontinue these restraints; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... indeed, when I hope I have an interest in the precious Redeemer, and behold an infinite loveliness and beauty in Him, apart from anything I expect or hope. But even then how deceitful is the human heart! how insensibly might a mere selfish love take the place of that disinterested complacency which regards Him for what He is in Himself, apart from what He is to us! Say, my dear friend, does not this thought sometimes make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... contracted no sourness of temper, no spice of pedantry, no itch of disputation, or obstinate contention for the old or new philosophy, no assuming way of dictating to others, which are faults (though excusable) which some are insensibly led into, who are constrained to dwell long within the walls of a private college. His conversation was pleasant and instructive, and what Horace said of Plotius, Varius, and Virgil, might justly be applied ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... was so cast down by the prospect that he made no attempt to reply, beyond grunting something about preferring to drive a team of balky mules to making Jean do something she did not want to do. But, such is the mind trained to a profession, insensibly he drifted away into the world of his imagination, and began to draw therefrom the first tenuous threads of a plot wherein Jean's peculiar accomplishments were to be featured. Robert Grant Burns had long ago learned to adjust himself to circumstances which in themselves were not to ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... excursion we were engaged in, but a desperate and bloody war, and what the individual fate of each of us might be before it was over, no one could tell. There is nothing which, in my opinion, will so soon make a man out of a boy as actual service in time of war. Our faces had insensibly taken on a stern and determined look, and soldiers who a little over a year ago were mere laughing, foolish boys, were now sober, steady, self-relying men. We had been taking lessons in what was, in many important respects, the best school ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... an end of path or road. More than ever the camel seemed insensibly driven; it lengthened and quickened its pace, its head pointed straight towards the horizon; through the wide nostrils it drank the wind in great draughts. The litter swayed, and rose and fell like a boat in the waves. Dried leaves in occasional beds rustled underfoot. Sometimes a perfume ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Harvest Home advertised in Fraser: and I have heard from Mrs. Alfred it is so admired that Parker is to print two thousand copies of the Volume. I am glad of this: and I think, little ambitious or vain as you really are, you will insensibly be pleased at gaining your proper Station in public Celebrity. Had I not known what an invidious office it is to meddle with such Poems, and how assuredly people would have said that one had helped to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... therefore, for ought we know, be a great Mistake, and what most of us are guilty of, to tell our Dreams to one another in the Morning, after we have been disturb'd with them in the Night; for if the Devil converses with us so insensibly as some are of the Opinion he does, that is to say, if he can hear as far as we can see, we may be telling our Story to him indeed, when we think we are only talking ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... same exquisite and unrivalled beauty would have been exhibited in copying an ode of Horace, or a dictum of Quintilian. Still, however, you may say that the intention, in all this, was pure and meritorious; for that such a system excited insensibly a love of quiet, domestic order, and seriousness: while those counsels and regulations which punished a "Clerk for being a hunter," and restricted "the intercourse of Concubines,"[213] evinced a spirit of jurisprudence which would have done justice to any age. Let us allow, then, if you please, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... she were to become Mrs. Rangely, and live in Boston, it would be necessary to drop Mrs. Sampson from her calling list, and the reflection instantly followed that the sooner the process of breaking the acquaintance were begun the better. Her face insensibly, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... But insensibly her dreams changed; instead of being a Deliverer now she dreamed, in spite of herself, of a Deliverer with whom she could go hand in hand; as the mild May days drew along to a hot June the dreams varied strangely. Up on Ben Grief all alone in the wind, hungry and ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... emotions. On the other hand, there is a method of education which was never more prevalent than in the present day, which exhausts its efforts in making virtue attractive, in associating it with all the charms of imagination and of prosperity, and in thus insensibly drawing the desires in the wished for direction. As the first system is especially suited to a disturbed and military society, which requires and elicits strong efforts of the will, and is therefore the special sphere of heroic virtues, so the latter ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... regularly every evening, or several times a week, meet "for the purpose of co-operating for the safety of the commonwealth."[2334] This is a new and spontaneous organ,[2335] an cancer and a parasite, which develops itself in the social body alongside of its legal organizations. Its growth insensibly increases, attracting to itself the substance of the others, employing them for its own ends, substituting itself for them, acting by and for itself alone, a sort of omnivorous outgrowth the encroachment of which is irresistible, not only because circumstances ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in excellent order, and the chasms were so firmly bridged by the frozen mass that no caution was necessary in crossing them. Surmounting a weathered cliff to our left, we paused upon the summit to look upon the scene around us. The snow gliding insensibly from the mountains, or discharged in avalanches from the precipices which it overhung, filled the higher valleys with pure white glaciers, which were rifted and broken here and there, exposing chasms and precipices from which gleamed the delicate blue ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... fallen in love with her almost at once; insensibly but thoroughly. There had been an hour in which he had flung himself, metaphorically, at her feet (one never does the real thing now, because it spoils one's trousers so), and offered his heart, and all the fortune still left to him after his mother's reign; and Marian had refused ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... the slow eve, through paler, darker shades, Insensibly declines, until at last The lordly day is but a memory, So died he. In the hush of noon he died. The sun shone on—why should he not shine on? Glad summer noises rose from all the land; The love of God lay warm on hill and plain: 'Tis ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... as to the anxieties which we so often and so naturally feel about the future, and as to how our inclinations are insensibly changed by necessity, is a subject worthy of a book like Pascal's; nothing is so satisfying, nothing so useful as meditations of this kind. But how many people of your age think this? I know of none; ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... his conduct: and as Pompeius viewed Cato's reputation even as a nullification of his own power, he was continually setting persons on to abuse him, among whom Clodius also was one, the demagogue, who had again insensibly attached himself to Pompeius, and was crying out against Cato on the ground that he had appropriated to his own purposes much money in Cyprus, and was hostile to Pompeius because Pompeius had rejected a marriage with Cato's ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... lay out of the pale of classical learning was condemned as barbarism; in the meanwhile, however, amidst this barbarism, another literature was insensibly creating itself in Europe. Every people, in the gradual accessions of their vernacular genius, discovered a new sort of knowledge, one which more deeply interested their feelings and the times, reflecting the image, not of the Greeks and the Latins, but ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Golden, a young female friend of the Sessionses', in a small flat with gentlemen lodgers and just one bathroom. Una was saved by not having a spinster friend with whom to share her shrinking modesty. She simply had to take waiting for her turn at the bathroom as a matter of course, and insensibly she was impressed by the decency with which these dull, ordinary people solved the complexities of their enforced intimacy. When she wildly clutched her virgin bathrobe about her and passed a man in the hall, he ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... been insensibly led, by the general complexion of the times, from the particular case of Geneva, to those to which it bears no similitude. Of that we hope good things. Its inhabitants must be too much enlightened, too well experienced in the blessings of freedom and undisturbed industry, to tolerate ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... in the fondness of the loving embrace, at least to such sorrows as those of the maiden; and Queen Mary had an inalienable power of charming the will and affections of those in contact with her, so that insensibly there came into Cicely's heart a sense that, so far from weeping, she should rejoice at being the one creature left to console ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... deteriorate when he is habitually (as the phrase is) king of his company: and in his most habitual company the husband who has a wife inferior to him is always so. While his self-satisfaction is incessantly ministered to on the one hand, on the other he insensibly imbibes the modes of feeling, and of looking at things, which belong to a more vulgar or a more limited mind than his own. This evil differs from many of those which have hitherto been dwelt on, by being an increasing one. The association ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... here of successive states must also be true of simultaneous characters. They also overlap each other with their being. My present field of consciousness is a centre surrounded by a fringe that shades insensibly into a subconscious more. I use three separate terms here to describe, this fact; but I might as well use three hundred, for the fact is all shades and no boundaries. Which part of it properly is in my consciousness, which out? If I name what is out, it already ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... constraint never allowed any foreign rule to be established over them: conquest, to be permanent, would have to be preceded by a long period of alliance on equal terms, and of discreet patronage which might insensibly accustom them to recognise in their former friend, first a protector, and then a suzerain imbued with respect for their laws and constitution. Gyges endeavoured to conciliate them severally, and to attach them to himself by treaties favourable ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... this last observation she smiled graciously, and stole her eyes almost insensibly round to seek those of the Earl of Leicester, to whom she now began to think she had spoken with hasty harshness upon the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... conceive him to think so even at the moment he is doing it. To imitate another, it is not necessary to intend to do so. Every day of their lives men imitate without the intervention of the will. The manners of an admired, or much-observed individual, insensibly root themselves in a young person's habits—he draws them into his system, as he does the atmosphere which surrounds him. We doubt very much whether Mr. Cooper himself would not be surprised if he knew how much he imitates Kemble. Though seemingly a paradox, we firmly rely upon ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... to his lips, and was on the very point of opening his mouth for the reception of a piece of beef, when the hum of many voices suddenly arose in the kitchen. He paused, and laid down his fork. Mr. Wardle paused too, and insensibly released his hold of the carving-knife, which remained inserted in the beef. He looked at Mr. Pickwick. Mr. Pickwick ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... all ear, all eye, all heart; Devourer, and insensibly devoured; In whom the city over forest flowered, The forest wreathed the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to pour out your soul before God, and receive fresh communications of his grace. Our hearts are so much affected by sensible objects, that, if we suffer them to be engaged long at a time in worldly pursuits, we find them insensibly clinging to earth, so that it is with great difficulty we can disengage them. But, by all means, fix upon some stated and regular seasons, and observe them punctually and faithfully. Remember they are ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... sorts of actions: those that are good, those that are bad, and those that are doubtful; and we ought to be most cautious of those that are doubtful; for we are in most danger of these doubtful actions, because they do not alarm us; and yet they insensibly lead to greater transgressions, just as the shades of twilight gradually ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... question. Assuredly I cannot. All that can be said, for certain, is, that such movements are part of the ordinary course of nature, inasmuch as they are going on at the present time. Direct proof may be given, that some parts of the land of the northern hemisphere are at this moment insensibly rising and others insensibly sinking; and there is indirect, but perfectly satisfactory, proof, that an enormous area now covered by the Pacific has been deepened thousands of feet, since the present inhabitants of that sea came into existence. Thus there is not a shadow ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... written comparing this exquisite season when spring passes insensibly into summer with the fulfilled prophecy of girlhood, that no attempt shall be made to repeat the simile. Amy's birthday should have been in May, but it came early in June. May was still in her heart, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... station of Childe Harold's pilgrimage, but it holds no place in the ordinary European tour of to-day. It does not connect with any of the main lines of travel in such a manner as to beguile the tourist insensibly over its border: a deliberate start must be made by steamer from England in order to reach Lisbon from the north. Another and probably stronger reason for our neglect of its scenery is that it is not talked of. We ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... moment remembrance rushed upon him, cutting in twain as though with a dividing sword this exquisite moment of reunion with his wife. Insensibly his arms relaxed their clasp of the frail body they held, and Diane, sensing their slackening, looked ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the items is that his colonel's example encouraged the daily practice of hard and even excessive drinking, which gave him the gout. "The loss of so many busy and idle hours were not compensated for by any elegant pleasure," says he; "and my temper was insensibly soured by the society of rustic officers, who were alike deficient in the knowledge of scholars and the manners of gentlemen." The picture of Gibbon flushed with wine at the mess-table, with these hard-drinking squires around ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a man whose appearance was so imposing was strangely significant. Sometimes when we met him, we exchanged glances full of meaning on both sides, but they never led to any advances. Insensibly this man became the object of our secret admiration, though we knew no reason for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits, his monastic regularity, his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically mechanical labor, allowing his mind to ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... were seen in each sanctuary than the idol of its worship, there was little room and motive for innovation; and, on the other hand, there were strong inducements for adhering to the practice of antiquity. But, insensibly, piety or ostentation began to fill the temples with groups of gods and heroes, strangers to the place, and guests of the power who was properly invoked there. The deep recesses of their pediments were peopled with colossal forms, exhibiting some legendary scene appropriate ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Faroe Islands the Mermaid of popular belief merges insensibly into the Seal; and in Shetland it is believed, that, while they are distinct beings, they can only come to the surface of sea by entering the skin of some animal capable of existing in the water. This also is always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the annual consumption has become equal to the annual importation, the annual importation should gradually diminish, the annual consumption may, for some time, exceed the annual importation. The mass of those metals may gradually and insensibly diminish, and their value gradually and insensibly rise, till the annual importation becoming again stationary, the annual consumption will gradually and insensibly accommodate itself to what ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of books, in the situation in which I found myself of reticence, I could do nothing but brood upon the things I had seen. Insensibly my imagination (latent while I had been occupied with observation) began to work. I did not write, but I pictured, and my waking dreams became so vivid that I was in a fair way to treat them as the only reality, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Yet almost insensibly it began to yield to Peggy's faith and kindness. Gradually it seemed to single her out as the one being in this vast white-faced and fully clothed community that it could trust. It presently allowed her to half drag, half lead it ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... essay, Mitford remarks: "The skill of Gray is, I think, eminently shown in the superior distinctness with which he has marked those parts of his prophecies which are speedily to be accomplished; and in the gradations by which, as he descends, he has insensibly melted the more remote into the deeper and deeper shadowings of general language. The first prophecy is the fate of Edward the Second. In that the Bard has pointed out the very night in which he is to be destroyed; has named the river that ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... continued Edward, "I have suffered myself to fall, almost insensibly, into his way of doing business, until I have become an absolute cheat—taking, sometimes, double and treble profit from a customer who happened to ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... older; she noticed his cheek bones for the first time. Then, meeting her eyes, youth returned with a laugh and a touch of colour; and, without understanding exactly how, she was aware, presently, that they had insensibly slipped back to their light badinage and gay inconsequences—back to a footing which, strangely, seemed to be already an old footing, familiar, pleasant, and ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... swelling hills cultivated, with the bay flowing up among them. They want nothing but more wood, and are beautiful without it. Afterwards likewise to the left they rise in various outlines, and die away insensibly into one another. When the road leads to a full view of the bay of Donegal, these smiling spots, above which the proud mountains rear their heads, are numerous, the hillocks of almost regular circular forms. They are very pleasing from form, ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... bends every part of it infinitely little, so that the bending shall not be perceptible at any one spot, and shall yet in the whole length arch the tire to a full circle. It may be that in this paradox lies an additional charm of the curved outline. The eye is pleased to find itself deceived, lured insensibly round into a line running in a different direction from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... said Madame de Maintenon at once. "He sees, he breathes, he regards us; one might believe one heard him speak. Why do you give yourself this torture?" continued the ambassadress. "The continual presence of an unhappy and beloved being feeds your grief, and this grief insensibly undermines you. In your place, Princess, I should put him elsewhere until a happier and more ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Champney interrupted her; there was a scornful note in her voice which insensibly sharpened; "you haven't your usual common sense, Aileen, if you can't read between these lines well enough to see that Miss Van Ostend and my nephew are ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... impossible to tell how far, in Wolfe's mind, his own desperate fortunes might insensibly have mingled with the motives which led him to his present design: certain it is that wherever the future is hopeless the mind is easily converted from the rugged to the criminal; and equally certain it ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... impossible to yield to one or the other without relaxing the fibre of the soul. The temptation is always around us; and it is well to look carefully into our life from time to time, to be quite sure, lest almost insensibly its strong energetic spirit may not be in process of deterioration—as the soldiers of Hannibal in the plains of Capua. If so, resolve to do without, not for merit's sake, but to conserve the strength and ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... got the mastery over his cowardice, and as Taurus Antinor watched the twitchings of that distorted face, he could note that insensibly a resolution to follow his advice had found its way in this ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... anticipated it as eagerly as he did this morning. He had long looked upon this young girl rather in the light of a devoted daughter, than of a paid secretary. What if, unconsciously to them both, she had thus grown into her rightful place! As the time approached for her appearance, he had insensibly brought himself to face more fully the wonderful possibility which had been presenting itself to his mind during the last few hours. The nurse was surprised that, though he seemed to be even better than usual, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... in the land of health, amid fair sights and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will visit the eye and ear, like a healthful breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul even in childhood into harmony with ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... "which have determined the most remarkable changes in the number and development of the instruments of organisation are incontestably much more the consequence of the tendency, inherent in organic matter, which leads it insensibly to rise to higher states of organisation, passing through ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... introduced by the Jesuits. "The five pleasant walks, of which the central one has nine terraces, with a pyramid at each extremity, and leads to the Casa de Recreio, or pleasure-house of the governor-general, erected in 1817 by Governor Vice-Admiral Luiz da Motta Feio," have insensibly faded away; the land is a waste, poor grazing ground for cattle landed from the south coast, whilst negrokins scream and splash ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... intention of buying many books, the dreary loneliness of the tavern where I supped drove me out upon the streets, and insensibly I drifted towards my favourite second-hand book-shop, where the little maiden behind the mountains of Welsh theology reminds me of someone I know. My Welsh Divinity I call her, hovering bright-winged above the dust-clouds of old literature, with clear grey eyes and nervous mouth. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... his friendly relations with the little Vesta insensibly strengthened. He discovered that there was a real flavor of humor about Vesta's doings, and so came to watch for its development. She was forever doing something interesting, and although Jennie watched over her with a care that was in itself a revelation to him, nevertheless Vesta managed ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... proposed; as they were three, Ombre was the game, at which they played some hours, and Natura was asked to sup.—After what I have said, I believe the reader has no occasion to be told that he complied with a pleasure which was but too visible in his eyes.—The time passed insensibly on, or at least seemed to do so to the friend of Harriot, till the watchman reminding her it was past eleven, she started up, and pretending a surprize, that the night was so far advanced, told Natura that she must exact a second ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... cups were only accepted, so to speak, under protest; for not an Arab would consent to moisten his lips with a beverage which he thought came straight from Shaitan's kitchen; but, insensibly seduced by the perfume of their favorite liquor, and urged by the interpreters, some of the boldest decided on tasting the magic liquor, and all ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... that kind are not the best medicine for sleeplessness, and it was long after midnight before Mrs. Singleton Corey drifted insensibly from heartsick reflections into the inconsequent imaginings of dreams. She did not dream about Jack, which was some comfort; instead, she dreamed that she was presiding over a meeting of ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... strong. I recalled a good many pleasant evenings when, seated alone in my room with a favourite author, I had read and tickled Dumps under the chin and behind the ears to such an extent that I had thoroughly gained his heart; and as "love begets love," I had been drawn insensibly yet powerfully towards him. In short, Dumps ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... mutantur: nos et mutamur in illis. Those whom we find in fierce opposition to the popular party about 1640 we find still in the same personal opposition fifty years after, but an opposition resting on far different principles: insensibly the principles of their antagonists had reached even them: and a courtier of 1689 was willing to concede more than a patriot of 1630 would have ventured to ask. Let me not be understood to mean that ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... that, almost insensibly, as it were, I had become separated from my old companions the Blacks, and that I was more than ever Alone. The greatest likelihood is, that Authority deemed it advisable to break up, for good and all, the Formidable Confederacy they had laid hold ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... a curious interview between Eberhard Ludwig and his deserted wife; strained, unnatural, terrible, this meeting after long years, and insensibly they fell into their old attitudes: he wearied, irritated, coldly courteous; she tearful, imploring, tiresome. He told her that she was nothing to him, and that she had no further claims upon him; he provided residence, appanage, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... there can be no doubt: he thought himself a great statesman—and he thought Lincoln "a Simple Susan." He conceived his role in the new administration to involve a subtle and patient manipulation of his childlike superior. That Lincoln would gradually yield to his spell and insensibly become his figurehead; that he, Seward, could save the country and would go down to history a statesman above compare, he took for granted. Nor can he fairly be called conceited, either; that is ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... inveigle any man's belief unto mine, nor so much as ever revealed, or disputed them with my dearest friends; by which means I neither propagated them in others nor confirmed them in myself: but, suffering them to flame upon their own substance, without addition of new fuel, they went out insensibly of themselves; therefore these opinions, though condemned by lawful councils, were not heresies in me, but bare errors, and single lapses of my understanding, without a joint depravity of my will. Those have not only depraved under- standings, but diseased ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... were an independent legislature? It would be preposterous—absolutely absurd to entertain any such idea. The apprenticeship had been forced upon the country as a part and parcel of the planters' compensation—it had been working well, and would insensibly have slided into a state of absolute freedom, had the masters been left alone to themselves. It is now utterly impracticable to continue it. A most obnoxious measure had been passed by the British parliament, and sent out to this country to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... moderation only increased the Prince's arrogance; that mildness of conduct on one side only furnished resources to pride on the other; and that, in fine, instead of gaining by soft procedure, one was insensibly becoming an ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... as regards distinguishing species from varieties; they do not recognize the fact that species are only constant as long as the conditions in which they are placed are constant. Individuals vary and form breeds which blend so insensibly into the neighbouring species, that the distinctions made by naturalists between species and varieties, are for the most part arbitrary, and the confusion upon this head is becoming ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... those which come through the medium of schools or teachers. The spirit of the age; the general tone of thought, the prevalent habits of social intercourse, the political tendencies which were moulding the destiny of the nation,—these must have told, more insensibly indeed but more powerfully, on the mind of Seneca than even the lectures of Sotion and of Attalus. And, if we have had reason to fear that there was much which was hollow in the fashionable education, we shall see that the general aspect of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... tender hearts of the young visitors, who felt the delicacy of their position in enjoying a forbidden hospitality. The example of the evangelical perfection practised by these holy servants of God insensibly drew Charles and Henry to love the sublime virtues they practised. Nothing impressed them more than the solemn chant of the Office at midnight. The slow, solemn enunciation of each word by a choir of hoary anchorets rolled in majestic cadence through the precipices of the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... event proved that these were empty menaces. In proportion as it was known that Fairfax had begun his march, that he had reviewed the army on Hounslow Heath, and that he had fixed his head-quarters at Hammersmith, the sense of danger cooled the fervour of enthusiasm, and the boast of resistance was insensibly exchanged for offers of submission.[a] The militia of Southwark openly fraternized with the army; the works on the line of communication were abandoned; and the lord mayor, on a promise that no violence should be offered ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... appear'd before his distemper'd Eyes, but his Astarte giving up the Ghost, and himself overwhelm'd with a Sea of Troubles: As he gave himself up to this Flux and Reflux of sublime Philosophy and Anxiety of Mind, he was insensibly arriv'd on the Frontiers of Egypt: And his trusty Attendant had, unknown to him, stept into the first Village, and sought out for a proper Apartment for his Master and himself. Zadig in the mean Time made the best of his Way to the ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... exercise than formerly when sitting in one position over the needle, and the wages were paid so punctually, with no mean attempts to cut us down on the false plea of imperfect work, that I came insensibly to the conclusion that a vast benefit had been conferred on the sex by its introduction. Yet the apprehensions felt by all sewing-women, when the new instrument was first brought out, were perfectly natural. I have read that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... and of Spain: but the disgrace received at St. Quintin lessened the hopes we had of extending our conquests, and as fortune seemed to divide herself between two Kings, they both found themselves insensibly disposed ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... to Natural Law, and the leading factor in sanctification is Influence of Environment. The possibility of it depends upon the mobility of the organism; the result, on the extent and frequency of certain correspondences. These facts insensibly lead on to a further suggestion. Is it not possible that these biological truths may carry with them the clue to still ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... Sir Ernest narrowly. The Master was making his way towards the iron cage in which the fox cub was imprisoned. Ralph edged his horse insensibly nearer. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... Insensibly this consideration had the greatest possible effect on his conduct. Without advancing step by step in a reasoned progress, he understood that any one holding his views on human life generally should ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... persists in full force. The senses develop first, and all the higher intuitions called by the collective name of conscience gradually and later in life. They first take the form of sentiments without much insight, and are hence liable to be unconscious affectation, and are caught insensibly from the environment with the aid of inherited predisposition, and only made more definite by such talks as the above. But parents are prone to forget that healthful and correct sentiments concerning matters of conduct ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... provisions before her, and she ate with an appetite almost ravenous. I then gave her some mulled wine, which seemed to revive her greatly; and she returned me her thanks in a manner so lady-like and refined (a manner, however, which insensibly partook of a peculiar and indirect kind of hauteur, as remarkable in her tone as in the expression of her features,) that I was more than ever satisfied that she had descended to her present wretched ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Conway had pacified, are broke out afresh, by the imprudence of the Duke of Bedford and the ambition of the primate.(845) The latter had offered himself to the former, who rejected him, meaning to balance the parties, but was insensibly hurried into Lord Kildare's,(846) to please mr. Fox. The primate's faction have passed eleven resolutions on pensions and grievances, equal to any in 1641, and the Duke of Bedford's friends dared not say a word against them.(847) The day before yesterday a messenger arrived from ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... days after this conversation, when the snow had nearly disappeared, though the frost and cold continued, the two little boys went out to take a walk. Insensibly they wandered so far that they scarcely knew their way, and therefore resolved to return as speedily as possible; but unfortunately, in passing through a wood, they entirely missed the track, and lost themselves. To add to their distress, the wind began to ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... that capacity, and returned; and that she had long been in the same family. We really knew nothing whatever of her, except that she was remarkably business-like, punctual, self-reliant, and reliable: so I suppose we insensibly invented the rest. For myself, my mother was not a more real personage to me, than Miss ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... Baltzar, who was regarded as the best player of his time. Anthony Wood met Baltzar at Oxford, and says he "saw him run up his fingers to the end of the finger-board of the Violin, and run them back insensibly, and all in alacrity and in very good time, which he nor any one in England saw the like before." Wood tells us that Baltzar "was buried in the cloister belonging to St. Peter's Church in Westminster." The emoluments attached to the Royal ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... that you might be long with him and not know him to be learned. It may be said that he had no enemies, though he did not conceal his beliefs and thoughts, but stated them so courteously and with such deference to opposite views, that he drew men insensibly to his side. It was thought by many that he ought to go into the world and make a great name for himself. But he loved the quiet College life, the familiar talk with those he knew. He loved the great plenty of books and the ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... child, though very delicate and tender, wears out many clothes, whilst it daily grows stronger. If this renewing of spirits were perfect, it would be real immortality, and the gift of eternal youth. But the same being imperfect, the animal insensibly loses his strength, decays and grows old, because everything that is created ought to bear a mark of nothingness from which it was ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... towards Farfrae insensibly became more reserved. He was courteous—too courteous—and Farfrae was quite surprised at the good breeding which now for the first time showed itself among the qualities of a man he had hitherto thought undisciplined, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... and a half in length, but the eye is so charmed with the remarkable verdure and neatness of the fields, with the beauty of the flowers which are planted all around them and seem to mix with the quickset hedges, that time steals away insensibly. ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... disposition, or thirst of aggrandizement; or the display of abilities; gave rise to wars, which frequently ended in the entire subjection of the vanquished, whose cities were possessed by the victor, and increased insensibly his dominions. Thus, a first victory paving the way to a second, and making a prince more powerful and enterprising, several cities and provinces were united under one monarch, and formed kingdoms of a greater or less extent, according to the degree of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... insensibly drew herself up and walked more quickly. The boulevard, usually gay with carriages in the late afternoon, was absolutely deserted except for an occasional shop-boy on a bicycle. Sommers, hatless, with a torn coat, walking beside a somewhat ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the preservation of "our institutions, our laws, and even our remembrances of the past." If the opportunity were allowed to pass by unimproved, Canada would be forced into the American union by violence; or would be placed upon an inclined plane which would carry it there insensibly. Canada, during the winter, had no independent means of access to the sea, but was dependent on the favour of a neighbour which, in several ways, had shown a hostile spirit. The people of the Northern ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... improved by a general conversation with books, to enlarge on points which they are supposed already to understand. If a rational man reads an excellent author with just application, he shall find himself extremely improved, and perhaps insensibly led to imitate that author's perfections, although in a little time he should not remember one word in the book, nor even the subject it handled: for books give the same turn to our thoughts and way of reasoning, that good and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... and the Philosopher, Leonard felt that his position was not favorable to the display of his forces. Insensibly he edged his chair somewhat ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... issued from the cottage, chatting together like old friends. It was very remarkable, indeed, how familiar the old couple insensibly grew with the elder traveller, and how their good and simple spirits melted into his, even as two drops of water would melt into the illimitable ocean. And as for Quicksilver, with his keen, quick, laughing wits, he appeared to discover every little thought that but peeped into their ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... as I suppose, intended only at first to vex and plague me; and, finding she could do it to purpose, her desire of revenge insensibly became stronger in her than the desire of life; and now she is willing to die, as an event which she thinks will cut my heart-strings asunder. And still, the more to be revenged, puts on ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Insensibly Blair inclined to use the language in which his hearers couched their own thoughts. As we speak baby-talk to the infant, and broken English to the Frenchman, he unconsciously dealt in expressions adapted to the wild eager faces that looked into his. Here ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... He may perceive, that there may be as much flattery and as great a violation of truth through the medium of the body, as through the medium of the tongue, and that the same mental degradation, or toss of dignified independence of mind, may insensibly follow. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... interest in its contents, went on. Perhaps the absence of their father was a relief to them. They were nearer to each other, understood each other better than he could do; and they quickened their pace insensibly as they began to talk. It is easy to imagine what kind of talk it was—entire sympathy, yet disagreement wide as the poles—here for a few steps side by side, there darting off at the most opposite tangent; but they had begun to warm to it, and to forget ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Innes, the Attorney-General of Kentucky. All were more or less identified both with the obscure separatist movements in that commonwealth, and with the legitimate agitation for statehood into which some of these movements insensibly merged. In the spring of 1789 they proposed to Gardoqui to enter into an agreement somewhat similar to the one he had made with Morgan. But they named as the spot where they wished to settle the lands on the east bank of the Mississippi, in the neighborhood of the Yazoo, and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... unshocked[obs3], unstruck[obs3]; unblushing &c. (shameless) 885; unanimated; vegetative. callous, thick-skinned, hard-nosed, pachydermatous, impervious; hardened; inured, casehardened; steeled against, proof against; imperturbable &c. (inexcitable) 826[obs3]; unfelt. Adv. insensibly &c. adj.; aequo animo[Lat]; without being moved, without being touched, without being impressed; in cold blood; with dry eyes, with withers unwrung[obs3]. Phr. never mind; macht nichts [German], it is of no consequence &c. (unimportant) 643; it cannot ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... for and ashamed of his words as soon as they were uttered, but he would not humble himself to say so. Alexina had taken Stephen's part and her manner to Josie assumed a tinge of coldness. Josie quickly noticed and resented it, and the breach between the two girls widened almost insensibly, until they barely spoke when they met. Each blamed the other and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... let your fabric rise, And with attractive majesty surprise; Not by affected meretricious arts, But strict harmonious symmetry of parts; Which through the whole insensibly must pass, With vital heat to animate the mass: A pure, an active, an auspicious flame; And bright as heaven, from whence the blessing came: But few, oh! few souls, preordained by fate, The race of gods, have reached that envied ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... refreshed, and consoled. I assure you it is wonderful; they go among the natives, and to a certain extent become one of them; they win their confidence, treat them kindly, share with them food and drink, sleep in their houses and tents, and by and by insensibly have become their masters. Then how easy to teach them anything! Now they couldn't do this with troops of women and children along; so I came to the conclusion that their remarkable success in the conversion ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... subtle bodies of the worshipper are attuned to its high vibrations, and he finds himself quieted, soothed, pacified, without effort on his own part. He is thrown into a condition in which prayer and meditation are easy and fruitful instead of difficult and barren, and an irksome exercise becomes insensibly delightful. If the object be a representation of some sacred Person—a Crucifix, a Madonna and Child, an Angel, a Saint—there is a yet further gain. The Being represented, if his magnetism has been thrown into the image by the appropriate ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... day and deepest night. The first faint streak of scarcely perceptible pallor along the verge of the eastern horizon on our starboard bow lengthened and widened, and grew more pronounced, even as I gazed upon it, until it became a broad segment of cold, colourless light, insensibly melting out of the circumscribing darkness. Then a faint, delicate tone of softest primrose began to steal through it, quickly strengthening and brightening as the light spread upward and right and left, paling the stars one by one, until they dwindled away ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... conceivable kind, the copyist, the law stationer, the usurer, all sorts of money lenders, suitors of every description, haunters of the Chancery court and their victims, are for ever moving round about the lives of the chief persons in the tale, and drawing them on insensibly, but very certainly, to the issues that await them. Even the fits of the little law-stationer's servant help directly in the chain of small things that lead indirectly to Lady Dedlock's death. One strong chain of interest holds together Chesney Wold and its inmates, Bleak House and the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to propose to ourselves definite ends and purposes. The distinct consciousness of some object at present before us, imparts a manifold greater interest to the contents of any volume. It imparts to the reader an appropriative power, a force of affinity, by which he insensibly and unconsciously attracts to himself all that has a near or even a remote relation to the end for which he reads. Anyone is conscious of this who reads a story with the purpose of repeating it to an absent friend; or an essay or ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... insensibly into other topics. It is impossible to exaggerate the pleasure I took to be thus sitting at the same table with Flora, in the clothes of a gentleman, at liberty and in the full possession of my spirits and resources; of all of which I had need, because it was necessary that I should ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... borrowed name, and it was at Lanzut that he had given my mother the rendezvous. Having arrived there before her, and not in the least suspecting that she would be escorted by a commissary of police, he came out to meet her, full of joy and confidence. The danger to which he was thus, insensibly, exposing himself, transfixed my mother with terror, and she had barely time to give him a signal to return back; and had it not been for the generous presence of mind of a Polish gentleman, who supplied M. Rocca with the means of escaping, he would infallibly ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... daughter, and to render her those attentions which a lady so frequently requires on board ship. Often they stood together watching the distant shore or passing vessels, or the porpoises as they gambolled in the waves. Insensibly they became more and more drawn together. Constance told him of the difficulty she had experienced in escaping from the court. Had not her father himself, at a great risk, gone to Paris, she would have been unable to accomplish her object. Fortunately for her, a relative residing ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... participle. So that a participle is something less than a verb, though derived immediately from it; and something more than an adjective, or mere attribute, though its manner of attribution is commonly the same. Hence, though the participle by rejecting the idea of time may pass almost insensibly into an adjective, and become truly a participial adjective; yet the participle and the adjective are by no means one and the same part of speech, as some will have them to be. There is always an essential difference in their meaning. For instance: there is a ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Montgomerie was nearly as silent as his niece. Mrs. D'Egville, although evincing all the kindness of her really benevolent nature—a task in which she was assisted by her amiable daughters, still felt that the reserve of her guest insensibly produced a corresponding effect upon herself, while Colonel D'Egville, gay, polished, and attentive, as he usually was, could not wholly overcome an apprehension that the introduction of the Indian Chiefs had given offence to both uncle and niece. Still, it was ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson |
