"Insular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half the time necessary for that part of the march, while there was a hot and dusty walk of half an hour before we reached the village. As he accompanied us in person, we had the satisfaction of frequently telling him our mind with insular frankness. He pretended to be much distressed, but assured us each time we returned to the charge—about every quarter of an hour—that we were close to the desired spot. From the village to the source, the way led us through such pleasant scenery and ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... insular prejudices, Norgate, on finding that the other seat in his coupe was engaged, started out to find the train attendant with a view to changing his place. His errand, however, was in vain. The train, it seemed, was crowded. He returned to his compartment to find already installed there ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... such variations and undulations as we find on the emerged plains; but the existence of this vast submarine basis must cause us to think of our island, naturally and geologically, as a true part of the great European continent, rendered insular by the comparatively recent intrusion of shallow and narrow waters. With some developments and some limits, our flora and fauna are absolutely Continental, the limits being even more noticeable as regards Ireland. The extensive coast-line has played a most important part in influencing national ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... in the service of his wife and his adopted country, but he was a 'foreigner,' and the insular Briton, brought up in the blissful belief that "one Englishman was as good as three Frenchmen," could not and would not overcome his distrust of one who had not been, like himself, so ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... at all Shelley, with the tap-roots of his emotions striking deep into politics and philosophy, is only an extreme instance of a national trait, which was unusually prominent in the early part of the nineteenth century owing to the state of our insular politics at the time though it must be admitted that English artists of all periods have an inherent tendency to moralise which has sometimes been a weakness, and sometimes has given ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... other too ardent. I see it all before me with the two new champions freshly girded for the strife, but a peaceful strife, my friend. Let our experience be at least profitable to you, and let it be a peaceful contention of emulation such as is alone suited to that insular nation which finds its strongest stimulus in domestic comfort and wealth. Apropos, has some one pursued a small discovery of mine, that, had I not been a stranger of a proscribed nation, and had not your English earl and the esquires been hostile to ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... book—"Oranges and Lemons"—a little difficult. The characters of it are old friends to that limited public which reads my books in England; their earlier adventures have been told in those previous volumes (and purposely omitted from "Happy Days" as being a little too insular). I feel somehow that strangers will not be on such easy terms with them, and I would recommend that you approach them last. By that time you will have discovered whether you are in a mood to stop and listen to their chatter, or prefer to pass ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... excitement was ministered to by the Tatar waiters, who, not having knowledge of our nationality, mistook us for English people, and wrecked our nerves by making our tea as strong and black as beer, with a view to large "tea-money" for this delicate attention to our insular tastes. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... distinguished service, which might still further be immeasurably exalted, and the most extravagant, derogatory, inefficient, and preposterous project that could be devised for the security and protection of an insular, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... the ease with which an island like Corsica might be absolutely isolated from the silkworm epidemic. And with regard to other epidemics, Mr. Simon describes an extraordinary case of insular exemption, for the ten years extending from 1851 to 1860. Of the 627 registration districts of England, one only had an entire escape from diseases which, in whole or in part, were prevalent in all ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... said Katie with a cold and insular emphasis, "lives here." And "You," she tried to convey with her eyes, "you, for all your smart black silk, are a hireling. I am Miss Batch. I happen to have a hobby for housework. I ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the mob, excited by its success, made war upon all foreigners. At length the excitement subsided, but too much damage to foreign lives and property had been done to be ignored, and the matter had an ugly look, especially as no Spaniard had suffered by this outbreak. The Insular government roused itself to punish some of the minor misdoers and made many explanations and apologies, but the aggrieved nations insisted, and obtained as compensation a greater security for foreigners and the ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... a foreign manner, asking with a certain vivacity questions which required no answer. Dorothy Roden was not slow of speech, but she touched topics with less airiness. Her mind seemed a trifle insular in its tendencies. One topic attracted her, and ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... [2] is separated from Gaul, Rhaetia, [3] and Pannonia, [4] by the rivers Rhine and Danube; from Sarmatia and Dacia, by mountains [5] and mutual dread. The rest is surrounded by an ocean, embracing broad promontories [6] and vast insular tracts, [7] in which our military expeditions have lately discovered various nations and kingdoms. The Rhine, issuing from the inaccessible and precipitous summit of the Rhaetic Alps, [8] bends gently to the west, and falls into the Northern Ocean. The Danube, poured from the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... mean to imply that Sir Richard Calmady would have the insolence, is so much the victim of insular prejudice as, to object to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... contemporary and practical questions, Mr. Mill shows always pre-eminent ability, with less of the Insular traits than any living Englishman. While there is perhaps no single passage in these volumes so thoroughly grand as his argument for religions freedom in his essay on Liberty,—an argument which the most heretical theologians of either Continent could hardly have put so boldly or so well,—yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... temporarily distressing results—though all comes right at last—and a lyrical description of an upset of his coach, the only one he ever had, written by a gifted hostler. But on call he could give "The Tight Little Island," "Rule Britannia" or any one of a dozen other insular melodies. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... many years is it possible to detect the main drift of its apparently opposing and confused currents when one is oneself in the midst of them. To an Englishman it is, perhaps, peculiarly difficult, for the Englishman is nothing if not insular; in that fact lie whatever virtues he possesses, as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and possibly racial—are involved. Thus far the champions have been chiefly the newspapers for spelling as it is, and scholars and educators for spelling as it ought to be. But, in spite of the intelligence of the disputants, the discussion has been singularly insular and deficient in perspective. It would gain greatly in conclusiveness if spelling and its modifications were considered broadly and historically, not as peculiar to English, but as common to all languages, and involving common problems, which ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... neighbours, must certainly have formed part of any North Gallic confederacy under him—the Atrebates and the Parisii. The former had their continental seat in Picardy; the latter, as their name tells us, on the Seine. Their insular settlements were along the southern bank of the Thames and the northern bank of the Humber respectively. How far the two sets of Parisians held together politically does not appear; but the Atrebates, whether in Britain or Gaul, acknowledged the claim of a single magnate, named ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... insulting when I say 'confused,' Meta. With your background you couldn't be any other way. You have an insular personality. Admittedly, Pyrrus is an unusual island with a lot of high-power problems that you are an expert at solving. That doesn't make it any less of an island. When you face a cosmopolitan problem you are confused. Or even worse, when your island problems ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... in those days would think the solemn walk of the Pavan quite as lively an amusement as good society could allow. There are other passages too which show that Shakespeare (or his characters) had a fine 'insular' feeling against these 'newfangled' fashions ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... litterateur, although in the most modest and hidden manner, stamped me as a volatile, flighty creature, who was no more to be depended upon than a feather in the wind; or, as the Italians say, qu' al piume al vento. It is a curious prejudice, and a purely insular one. And sometimes I think, or rather I used to think, that there was something infinitely grotesque in these narrow ideas, that shut us out from sympathy with the quick moving, subtle world as completely as if we were fakirs ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... the Britisher he is forgiven for those luxuries of insular stupidity which punctuate his history. I know what a fine fellow he is, and I pass them by. Mr. Churchill speaks of the German fleet as a "luxury"; but this is only one of those cold-storage impromptus that a reputation for cleverness must ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... between the decrees and the traditions of Rome, I drew a parallel distinction between Anglicanism quiescent, and Anglicanism in action. In its formal creed Anglicanism was not at a great distance from Rome: far otherwise, when viewed in its insular spirit, the traditions of its establishment, its historical characteristics, its controversial rancour, and its private judgment. I disavowed and condemned those excesses, and called them "Protestantism" or "Ultra-Protestantism:" ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Saghalien formed part of the Asiatic mainland. But, in 1806, Mamiya Rinzo, a Japanese traveller, voyaged up and down the Amur, and, crossing to Saghalien, discovered that a narrow strait separated it from the continent. There still exists in Europe a theory that Saghalien's insular character was discovered first by a Russian, Captain Nevelskoy, in 1849, but in Japan the fact had ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... island under cover of friendly assurances. In 1768, before the expiration of an informal truce, Marbeuf, the French commander, commenced hostilities against the patriots[4]. In vain did Rousseau and many other champions of popular liberty protest against this bartering away of insular freedom: in vain did Paoli rouse his compatriots to another and more unequal struggle, and seek to hold the mountainous interior. Poor, badly equipped, rent by family feuds and clan schisms, his followers were no match for the French ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... foreigner among them. Almost without exception they were native Majorcans, returning from trips of business or pleasure to the Continent. They spoke no language except Spanish and Catalan, and held fast to all the little habits and fashions of their insular life. If anything more had been needed to show me that I was entering upon untrodden territory, it was supplied by the joyous surprise of the steward when I gave him a fee. This fact reconciled me to my isolation on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... insular variety of the Mus hirsutus of W. Elliot, found in Southern India. They inhabit the forests, making their nests among the roots of the trees, and feeding, in the season, on the ripe seeds of the nilloo. Like the lemmings of Norway and Lapland, they migrate in vast numbers on the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... recognition. "When," Raikes concludes, "the Emperor Alexander was seen waltzing round the room at Almack's with his tight uniform and numerous decorations," or [Gronow, 'Recollections', 1860, pp. 32, 33] "Lord Palmerston might have been seen describing an infinite number of circles with Madame de Lieven," insular prejudices gave way, and waltzing ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... and marriage, for on them it is not only permissible but obligatory for women to propose to the men. Needless to say that the inhabitants of these islands, though so near Queensland, are not Australians. They are Melanesians, but their customs are insular and unique. Curr (I., 279) says of them that they are "with one exception, of the Papuan type, frizzle-haired people who cultivate the soil, use the bow and arrow and not the spear, and, un-Australian-like, treat their ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mould of countless generations ([Greek: oiae per phullon geneae]), and not from any top-dressing capriciously scattered over the surface at some master's bidding.[277] England had long been growing more truly insular in language and political ideas when the Reformation came to precipitate her national consciousness by secluding her more completely from the rest of Europe. Hitherto there had been Englishmen of a distinct type enough, honestly hating foreigners, and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... it to remind The younger here of our ethereal band And hierarchy of Intelligences, That this thwart Parliament whose moods we watch— So insular, empiric, un-ideal— May figure forth in sharp and salient lines To retrospective eyes of afterdays, And print its legend large on History. For one cause—if I read the signs aright— To-night's appearance of its Minister In the assembly of his long-time sway ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... fertile islands, with wholesome springs, provided with roadsteads and harbours, in which those who are overtaken by tempests may find refuge—in like manner has God placed in a world tossed by the billows and storms of sin, congregations or holy churches, in which, as in insular harbours, the doctrines of truth are sheltered, and to which those who desire to be saved, who love the truth, and who wish to escape the judgment of God, may repair." [282:2] These statements indicate ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... by Michael Moon in the few but clear phrases in which he opened the defence upon the third charge. So far from denying that Smith had fled from Croydon and disappeared on the Continent, he seemed prepared to prove all this on his own account. "I hope you are not so insular," he said, "that you will not respect the word of a French innkeeper as much as that of an English gardener. By Mr. Inglewood's favour we ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... kept as they find it; but languages, while they live, are perpetually changing. God apparently meant them for the common people; and the common people will use them freely as they use other gifts of God. On their lips our continental English will differ more and more from the insular English, and I believe that this is not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... partly prepared for some such answer, but I shall be just to you in my thoughts, Viscount Medenham. I know you are a brave man. It is not cowardice, but your insular convention that restrains you from facing me on the ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... of the request. He had noted down the most important, extraordinary and, picturesque features of the robbery of the diligence, the state of Vendee, and the details about the Companions of Jehu, thanking each informant by voice and gesture with the stiffness peculiar to our insular cousins, replacing his note-book enriched each time by a new item in a side pocket ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... an insular county in the S.W. of Scotland, consisting of the islands of Bute, from which the county takes its name, Inchmarnock, Great Cumbrae, Little Cumbrae, Arran, Holy Island and Pladda, all lying in the Firth of Clyde, between Ayrshire on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... to have the impertinence, my good man, to tell two American ladies that what they are looking for is not in good taste, simply because you are so stupid and insular as not to keep it in stock? Do you presume to express your opinion on taste when you are wearing a green satin necktie with a pink shirt? If you had ever been off this little island, and had gone to a land where taste in dress, and particularly in jewels, is understood, you would ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... the great Lila (wasting sickness) in Fiji, and the accounts of similar visitations following on the first visit of an European ship to an insular people. (The Fijians, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... had no means of judging, for the squire kept a rigid silence, except that he had long conferences with my father; and Lady Jane kept her room. It was indeed a very sore subject. The squire wanted to start for Monte Carlo at once; but he was singularly insular, detested travel, and in truth was very unfit for such a "cutting-out expedition" as was contemplated. He waited, half out of his mind with anxiety, but in hopes of a better report; what he hoped for was that luck would turn, and ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... The persecuted young woman had but to beckon a finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his insular haven. Already he imagined he could feel the cozy warmth of the station-house. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... were no doubt laudable, but the methods she adopted to set the stranger at her ease were not those most likely to endear the insular English to their cousins across the Atlantic. Ida, to begin with, had not only a spice of temper but also no great reverence for forms and formulas, and the people that she was accustomed to meeting were those who had set their mark ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... intercourse which the inhabitants have with persons from other parts of the kingdom, has in fact erased all insular peculiarities. But the following extract from the Memoirs of Sir John Oglander, which were written about the year 1700, will be read with interest, ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... great space which can usually be allotted, in a country like this, to institutions of this description, may perhaps give this hospital an advantage over one situated in the centre of a large city like London; though the semi-insular position of Boston must render space there comparatively valuable; but even this cannot take away from the merit of the people in showing such attention to the comforts of the needy sick. But what papa was ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... an occasional outbreak of Anglomania, the best French authors spell English proper names no better, the best French critics appreciate Shakspeare as little, and the majority of Parisians have no less partial and fixed a notion of the characteristics of their insular neighbors, than before the days of journalism and steam. The attempts to represent English manners and character are as gross caricatures now as in the time of Montaigne. However apt at fusion within, the national egotism is as repugnant to assimilation from without as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was founded not so such upon posthumous jealousy—though that passion is not so rare as absurd—as on the singular contrast between the character and intellect of the two men. The typical Englishman, with his rough, strong sense, passing at times into the narrowest insular prejudice, detested the Frenchified fine gentleman who minced his mother tongue and piqued himself on cosmopolitan indifference to patriotic sentiment: the ambitious historian was irritated by the contempt which the dilettante ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... living is better and more approved than the rest. They admire the Christian institutions and look for a realization of the apostolic life in vogue among themselves and in us. There are treaties between them and the Chinese and many other nations, both insular and continental, such as Siam and Calicut, which they are only just able to explore. Furthermore, they have artificial fires, battles on sea and land, and many strategic secrets. Therefore they are nearly ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... life, abandoned for a while her infant son Lancelot. Returning, she discovered him in the arms of the nymph Vivian, the mistress of Merlin, who on her approach sprung with the child into a deep lake and disappeared. This lake is held by some to be the lake Linius, a wide insular water near the sea-coast, in the regions of Linius or "The Lake;" now called Martin Mere or Mar-tain-moir, "a water like ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... English magistrate to a young culprit. "You have sent your father in sorrow to the grave. Why—I ask you—do you not go to Canada?" That such material did not offer the best fiber for the making of a nation in Canada did not dawn on this insular magisterial dignitary; and the sentiments uttered were reflected in the activities of countless philanthropies that seemed to think the porcine could be transmogrified into the human by a simple transfer from the pig-sty of their own vices and failure to the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... a test of the thoroughness of Liberal principles, and Sir Charles was distinguished from most of his countrymen by a refusal to impose geographical limitations on his notions of logic or of conduct. He was the least insular of Englishmen. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... thing or two" that he did not know before in his own special subject; so that his labour will not be lost, even from that point of view. Then we shall get the authoritative edition of Dante, which I am insular enough to believe will never come from either Germany or Italy, or from any ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... depicting the passions, as BOCCACCIO narrates his facetious stories, quite distinct from the inventions and style of northern writers. SHAKSPEARE is placed at a wider interval from all of them than they are from each other, and is as perfectly insular in his genius as his own countrymen were in their customs, and their modes of thinking ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Sarah, with all the advantages of youth, was, strangely enough, less pliable. She did full justice to Pesca's excellent qualities of heart; but she could not accept him implicitly, as my mother accepted him, for my sake. Her insular notions of propriety rose in perpetual revolt against Pesca's constitutional contempt for appearances; and she was always more or less undisguisedly astonished at her mother's familiarity with the eccentric ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... contributions we must make to the world's peace is this: We must see to it that the people in our insular possessions are treated in their own lands as we would treat them here, and make the rule of the United States mean the same thing everywhere,—the same justice, the same consideration for the essential rights ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... awkward, insular distrust and shyness of the Spaniard. They made no response to his professions of goodwill and brotherhood, poured out fluently in his yet difficult Scots-English. They noticed and commented afterwards upon his contemptuous shrug, when ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... remained in Lawford's cheek. It hurt him to hear his father speak so in referring to Louise Grayling. He, too, possessed some of the insular prejudice of his kind against those who win their livelihood in the glare of the theatrical spotlight. This gentle, well-bred, delightful girl staying at Cap'n Abe's store was a revelation to him. He held his tongue, however, and held his ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... yet so it was in Skye." The acquisition of this branch of learning was not, indeed, expensive. Latin was taught for two shillings and sixpence the quarter, and English and writing for one shilling. Indeed it is scarcely more now. The people seldom quitted their insular homes, except when on service; and, to the silence of their wild secluded scenes, the romance of poetry and the composition of song gave a relief and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... done a jolly good day's work with the spade for this old buffer, and now the intellect claims its turn. The mind retires above the noisy world to its Acropolis, and there discusses the great problem of the day; the Insular Enigma. To be or not to be, that is the question, I believe. No it is not. That is fully discussed elsewhere. Hum! To diffuse—intelligence—from a fixed island—over ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... of Heaven!'—The Poet from having considered the peculiar advantages, which this country has enjoyed, passes in rapid transition to the uses, which we have made of these advantages. We have been preserved by our insular situation, from suffering the actual horrors of War ourselves, and we have shewn our gratitude to Providence for this immunity by our eagerness to spread those horrors over nations less happily situated. In the midst of plenty ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... nothing better. Eckermann is inferior as a biographer to Boswell, and his book is neither so interesting nor amusing; but Goethe was far greater than Johnson, and his talk is cosmopolitan and broad, while Johnson's is apt to be insular and narrow. "One should not study contemporaries and competitors," Goethe said, "but the great men of antiquity, whose works have for centuries received equal homage and consideration.... Let us study Moliere, let us study Shakespeare, but above all things, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... Defense), Department of State, Fish and Wildlife Service (Department of the Interior), Maritime Administration (Department of Transportation), National Imagery and Mapping Agency (Department of Defense), Naval Facilities Engineering Command (Department of Defense), Office of Insular Affairs (Department of the Interior), Office of Naval Intelligence (Department of Defense), US Board on Geographic Names (Department of the Interior), US Transportation Command (Department of Defense), and other public and ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... famous. One suspected, far back in the yeoman strain, a hurried, possibly furtive marriage with gypsy or Jew; a sudden blossoming into lyricism on the part of a soil-stained Masters. Certainly from somewhere Sir John had inherited an imagination which was not insular. Dangerous men, these Sir Johns, with their hooked noses and their ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... above ten miles distant from Fusina. As I started from Venice at six in the morning I had a fine receding view of the Ocean Queen, with her steeples and turrets rising from the sea. Venice has no fortifications and needs them not. Her insular position protects her from land attacks, and the shoals prevent the approach of ships of war. Floating batteries therefore and gunboats are her best defence. The road from Fusina to Padua is on the banks of the Brenta the whole way, and is lined ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... support of a Church of England school, finds himself paying taxes not only to endow the Church of Rome in Malta, but to send Christians to prison for the blasphemy of offering Bibles for sale in the streets of Khartoum. Turn to France, a country ten times more insular in its pre-occupation with its own language, its own history, its own character, than we, who have always been explorers and colonizers and grumblers. This once self-centred nation is forty millions strong. The total population of the French Republic ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... they insisted on the translations. Nor did they stay at the classics. They devoured books in Italian and French. Never has England been so cosmopolitan, at least so European, in its absorption of ideas and knowledge. It is only since the icebound Puritan days that England has become insular, self-contained, in part hugely conceited, and in part absurdly diffident, concerning itself. The best work of Byron and Shelley aimed at breaking down this attitude, and if we are again growing out of our insularity—which is ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... all, we have to take things as they come, and I throw myself into the deep comfort of gratitude that her situation has overtaken her in this country, where every perfect ministration will surround her, rather than in your far-off insular abyss of mere—so to speak—picturesqueness. I should have been, in that case, at the present writing, in a fidget too fierce for endurance, whereas I now can prattle to you quite balmily; for which you are all, no doubt, deeply grateful. Give her, please, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Parisian. For that was just what the good man was at heart and would be till he died, the form in which environment of younger years had moulded him: less French than Parisian, sharing the almost insular ignorance of life in the provinces characteristic of the native boulevardier; to whom the sun is truly nothing more or less than a spotlight focussed exclusively on Paris, leaving the rest of France in a sort ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... his friendship, John Leech was the keenest of observers, noting and satirizing as no one before his time had attempted, or indeed had been able to do, the cant and hypocrisy, the pride and selfishness, the upstart and arrogant exclusiveness, the insular prejudices and weaknesses, which form a part of our national character; but doing this, he loved his countrymen and countrywomen for their finer qualities, and hated the bungling foreigners who presume to caricature them without ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... but the inspiring leaven was wanting till the Norman brought it over. Chaucer works still in the solid material of his race, but with what airy lightness has he not infused it? Without ceasing to be English, he has escaped from being insular." Let us look at some of these gains a ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... business knowledge they were after, he said; they went about everywhere—into factories and dock yards, and public buildings, and made funny little notes and sketches of things they didn't understand—so that they could explain them in Germany. In his fatuous, insular way, it pleased him to regard them rather as a species of aborigines benefiting by English civilization. The English Ass and the German Ass are touchingly alike. The shade of difference is that the English Ass's sublime self-satisfaction is in the German Ass self-glorification. The English Ass smirks ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... limestone necessary for smelting the iron ore. The coal-fields on or near the coast are centres of shipbuilding; and the interior coal-fields the centres of the great textile industries. Because of her insular position and fleets of ships the raw products from other countries can be brought to England easily and cheaply, and then ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... frost of unexampled intensity began. The Hudson, East river, and all the waters around New York were so completely frozen that an army with its artillery and wagons might have crossed them in all directions with perfect safety. New York lost all the advantages of its insular situation and became easily accessible on every side. The city was fortified by the British, but on account of its insular situation, several parts being considered of difficult access were left undefended. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Hal on shore watching their departure. Presently the yacht was out of sight from their hemmed-in position, the view being obstructed by trees and tall bushes on an intervening isle, which constituted a link of the insular chain that ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... her. She loved all who offered her affection, and would solace and advise with any. She watched the progress of the world with tireless eye and beating heart, and, anxious for the good of the whole world, scorned to take an insular view of any political question. With her a political question was a moral question as well. Mrs. Browning belonged to no particular country; the world was inscribed upon the banner under which she fought. Wrong was her enemy; against this she wrestled, in whatever part ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... representatives, ministers, a standing army, and governors: so it is no wonder that they have their revolutions. At some future day this must be one of the richest countries of La Plata. The soil is varied and productive; and its almost insular form gives it two grand lines of communication by the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... collected, the seasons at that place glide into each other by the softest gradations, and the heat never, even in midsummer, reaches that extreme which is felt in higher latitudes of the American continent. The climate of Florida is in fact an insular climate; the Atlantic on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the west, temper the airs that blow over it, making them cooler in summer and warmer in winter. I do not wonder, therefore, that it is so much the resort of invalids; it would be more so if the softness of its atmosphere ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... so hateful—he shuddered. But the shame of it was for his wife, who had dissipated a certain selfish and envious strain in him. Jessica had drawn from him the Puritanism which had made him self- conscious, envious, insular. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fat pastures of the temperate and insular climes, the horse is built up to eighteen hands high, with a width and weight infinitely more than proportionate to his height, if we compare him to the southern horse. In the arid south, by no contrivance of man or "natural selection" can a horse of weight be produced; ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... foreigners from the mainland are called, is still looked upon with a certain amount of suspicion, and oftener than not advances are met with a surliness that must be understood and so forgiven. Heredity is stronger in remote and insular districts than in those where the channels of communication are free, but the long story of brave and self-sacrificing endeavour to save life on their inhospitable shores more than counterbalances any lack of manners in this ancient race, which is probably very nearly identical ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... displaced them. No facts, as far as I can find, have ever been alleged. And without facts on the other side, an impartial man will hold by the one fact which is certain, that the Church of England, popish as it was, was, unfortunately for it, not popish enough; and from its insular freedom, obnoxious to the Church of Rome, and the ultramontane clergy of Normandy; and was therefore to be believed capable—and therefore again ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Lochlomond and Dumbarton to Glasgow, then by Loudon to Auchinleck in Ayrshire, the seat of my family, and then by Hamilton, back to Edinburgh, where he again spent some time. He thus saw the four Universities of Scotland[782], its three principal cities, and as much of the Highland and insular life as was sufficient for his philosophical contemplation. I had the pleasure of accompanying him during the whole of this journey. He was respectfully entertained by the great, the learned, and the elegant, wherever he went; nor was he less delighted ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... inamorata was cruelly imprisoned in the palace of her sire at Batavia, young Tasman, instead of wasting time in regrets, set forth on a voyage of adventure, seeking to win by prowess what gallantry had failed to effect. On his first voyage he so far circumnavigated the island as to be convinced of its insular character, but really saw little of the land. In subsequent voyages he made extensive explorations, calling not only the mainland, but all the little islets he discovered, by the several names and synonyms of Mademoiselle Van Diemen, his beloved. When at length he was able to lay before ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... behind his conductor. His two rooms were en suite, and while as replete with comfort as the most thorough-going Englishman need desire, had yet about them a touch of lightness and elegance that smacked of a taste that had been educated on the Continent, and was unfettered by insular prejudices. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... project is a chimera—but, according to the projector, the political and religious freedom of England formed its greatest obstacle. Part of his plan, therefore, includes the means of weakening the Insular heretics by intestine divisions—a mode not seldom practised by the continental powers of France ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... come to pass that what seems and in fact is the newer swarm, will have many older words, and very often an archaic air and old-world fashion both about the words they use, their way of pronouncing, their order and manner of combining them. Thus after the Conquest we know that our insular French gradually diverged from the French of the Continent. The Prioress in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales could speak her French "full faire and fetishly", but it was French, as ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... negroes. They are, in everything good and evil, more unlike than any other two men we can take at random from the great European family. They are opposite from the roots of their history, nay of their geography. It is an understatement to call Britain insular. Britain is not only an island, but an island slashed by the sea till it nearly splits into three islands; and even the Midlands can almost smell the salt. Germany is a powerful, beautiful and fertile inland country, which can only find the sea by one or two twisted and ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... outpost and sentinel of that continent in the West for three-hundred years now gagged and bound, since the flight to Rome of her last native Princes, she stands to-day as in the days of Philip III, if an outcast from European civilization non the less rejecting the insular tradition of England, as she has rejected her insular Church. And now once more in her career she turns to the greatest of European Sovereigns, to win his eyes to the oldest, and certainly the most faithful of European peoples. Ireland already ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... English code governing the externals of women in various particulars. And the principal result was to make the English code seem insular and antique. She had an extremely large white hat, with a very feathery feather in it, and some large white roses between the brim and her black hair. Her black hair was positively sable, and one single immense lock of it was drawn level across her forehead. With the large white hat she wore a ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... terribly insular. You must really get rid of all that. I used to think like you, but here we have got to the place where we can laugh at all that sort ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... of the US with policy relations between Guam and the US under the jurisdiction of the Office of Insular Affairs, US Department of ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... works were written by Englishmen or Frenchmen. The Yorkshire French of Peter Langtoft's Chronicle, and the jargon of the Year Books, attest how the political separation of the two lands, and the preponderance in northern France of the dialect of Paris, placed the insular French speech in strong contrast to the language of polite society beyond the Channel. Yet barbarous as Anglo-French became, it retained the freshness of a living tongue, and gained some ground at the expense of Latin, notably in the law courts and ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... that English humour "far from agreeable, and bitter in taste, like their own beverages, abounds in Dickens. French sprightliness, joy, and gaiety is a kind of good wine only grown in the lands of the sun. In its insular state it leaves an aftertaste of vinegar. The man who jests here is seldom kindly and never happy; he feels and censures the inequalities of life." On the contrary, we are inclined to think that French humour is fully as ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... guests all abstained from writing down some names of our gallant generals. Lord Kitchener, however, obtained nine votes, and I myself included Christian De Wet; but on discovery of documents he was ruled out, in spite of my pleading for him on imperialistic grounds. I thought it rather insular, too, I must confess, that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Sargent were denied to me because they are American subjects. My own final list, as pasted in the Album at Ivanhoe, along with ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... exhausted communities, and in their turn received a salutary mitigation, till in process of time the conqueror and conquered, having a common interest, were lost in each other. To neither of these modes was unfortunate Ireland subject, and her insular territory, by physical obstacles, and still more by moral influences arising out of them, has aggravated the evil consequent upon independence lost as hers was. The writers of the time of Queen Elizabeth have pointed out how unwise ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... said, "that if he's ever our guest again, I shall be a bit more insular. I can't ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... are loose in their youth, but an insular country subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen. I attribute a great deal of the nonsense called Conservative Reaction to Peel's solemnity. The proper minister for England at this moment would be Pitt. Extreme youth ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... is full of an angry, vague disposition to thwart that expansion which Germans regard very reasonably as their natural destiny; there are all the possibilities of a huge conflict in that disposition, and it is perhaps well to remember how insular—or, at least, how European—the essentials of this quarrel are. We have lost our tempers, but Canada has not. There is nothing in Germany to make Canada envious and ashamed of wasted years. Canada has no natural quarrel with Germany, nor has India, nor South Africa, nor Australasia. They ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... from both ladies described the delights of the journey, which was taken in a leisurely sight-seeing manner; and as to Rocca Marina, it seemed to be an absolute paradise. Mr. White had taken care to send out an English upholsterer, so that insular ideas of comfort might be fulfilled within. Without, the combination of mountain and sea, the vine-clad terraces, the chestnut slopes, the magical colours of the barer rocks, the coast-line trending far away, the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prospects for the islands were never better, and it is sincerely to be hoped by all who wish well to the human race that Hawaii-nei may long continue to prosper in every way, and to send light and gladness to the peoples of the insular countries which are scattered like lovely gems all over ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... and the good fortune that had hitherto attended his arms, contributed to the stupid lethargy of the people. That he who had just subdued the terrible Norsemen, with the mighty Hardrada at their head, should succumb to those dainty "Frenchmen," as they chose to call the Normans; of whom, in their insular ignorance of the continent, they knew but little, and whom they had seen flying in all directions at the return of Godwin; was a preposterous ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... difficulty arose. The cavalry horses were entered by the subalterns of the regiment, who would ride the horses themselves, and the Englishman was going to send his servant to ride against them. There was the insular pride and bad taste of the English exemplified, and, in the end, John Hardy had to ride his own horse, very much ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... asking him for introductions; if he gave them, they would lead you into strange haunts. But if Fate compelled you to go to Llasa or Yarkand or Seistan he could map out your road for you and pass the word to potent friends. We call ourselves insular, but the truth is that we are the only race on earth that can produce men capable of getting inside the skin of remote peoples. Perhaps the Scots are better than the English, but we're all a thousand per cent better than anybody else. Sandy was the wandering ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... continental spirit; there is nothing insular or narrow about it. It is informal, nonchalant, tolerant, sanguine, adaptive, patient, candid, puts up with things, unfastidious, unmindful of particulars; disposed to take short cuts, friendly, hospitable, unostentatious, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... The change of name was, I believe, introduced by the celebrated French geographer, Malte Brun, who, in his division of the globe, gave the appellation of Austral Asia and Polynesia to the new discovered lands in the southern ocean; in which division he meant to include the numerous insular ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... now prevalent in England, and the paralyzing of great branches of trade which could not occur in an England that really ruled the sea, may be attributed in chief part to this war of the submarines. The advantage of the insular position of England has been greatly lessened, thanks to this excellent German weapon, even if it cannot be completely eliminated. But if one compares with the total voyages of the English merchant shipping the losses of the English merchant marine, amounting to more ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... herein contained shall extend and apply to all land and water, continental or insular, in any way within the ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... called England, and not the ornamental water in the Bois de Boulogne! And yet.... The delicious possibility of ineffable indiscretions on the part of Simon Fuge monopolized my mind till the train stopped at Knype, and I descended. Nevertheless, I think I am a serious and fairly insular Englishman. It is truly astonishing how a serious person can be obsessed by trifles that, to speak mildly, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the really important and distinctive points of them find an echo! To how few does this whole Exhibition seem to have been anything but a matter of personal gain or curiosity, for national aggrandisement, insular self-glorification, and selfish—I had almost said, treacherous—rivalry with the very foreigners whom we invited as ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... that the speaker was English; if he was, he had lost the insular significance of his vowels. Still, it was, in its way, as pleasant a voice as the other's. There was no doubt about the younger man; he was English to the core, English in his love of chance, English in his loyalty ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... produced. The continual interchange of manuscripts among the nations on the continent of Europe probably explains the more conventional character and strong general resemblance of most of the early Continental work; but the scribes of insular England, less influenced by contemporary progress and examples, produced forms of greater individuality (see 46, 47, 48). In Ireland, letter forms originally derived from early Roman models were developed through ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... pages with the same deathless force as the villagers in Hardy's novels of Wessex life. And George Eliot and Thomas Hardy are the two English writers who have made these villagers, with their peculiar dialect and their insular prejudices, serve the purpose of the Greek chorus in warning the reader of the fate ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... an age in the physical history of the world when the patches of land already raised above the water became so united as to form large islands; and though the aspect of the earth retained its insular character, yet the size of the islands, their tendency to coalesce by the addition of constantly increasing deposits, and thus to spread into wider expanses of dry land, marked the advance toward the formation of continents. This extension of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that the train reached Dover we were "as thick as thieves," for Nakamura's perfect frankness and his geniality of manner quickly conquered my insular aloofness toward the foreigner; and upon boarding the Channel steamer we at once went below and were busy with our luncheon almost before the boat had cast ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... with Malta and some islets, an insular group lying between the eastern part of Sicily and the Lesser Syrtis. It is situated in Lat. 36 2', Long. 12 10' nearly, and is distant from Sicily only about fifty miles. The colonisation of the island ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson |
