"Insidiously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little, Mr. Moore?" said Lady Adela, insidiously. "Couldn't he get it hinted in the papers that 'Lady Arthur Castletown' is only a nom ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... that Ling's mind was troubled, but the fault did not lie with Mian, as the person in question was fully aware, for before her eyes as before those of Ling the unevadable compact which had been entered into with Chang-ch'un was ever present, insidiously planting bitterness within even the most select and accomplished delights. Nor with increasing time did the obstinate and intrusive person Wang become more dignified in his behaviour; on the contrary, he freely made use of his position to indulge ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... another question so insidiously conveyed that even a change of feature on my part might have given the answer. A half smile, however, and a slight bow was all my reply; while Soult muttered something between his teeth, which called forth a laugh from ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress, against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... "good time." And to the girl who has no mother at hand thus to warn her; take it from us that as your own chaperone you must recognize the silly season as your period of special peril, as the time when it is insidiously easy to relax your vigilance, to let down the protecting bars of strict social conventionality and to give yourself a little latitude in the matter of ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... diplomatists, I cannot forbear giving you a short sketch of one whose weight in the scale of politics entitles him to particular notice: I mean the Count von Haugwitz, insidiously complimented by Talleyrand with the title of "The Prince of Neutrality, the Sully of Prussia." Christian Henry Curce, Count von Haugwitz, who, until lately, has been the chief director of the political conscience of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... reason I should cease to appeal. I should sit down in silent despair of making any impression on such an understanding; but you, gentlemen, I ask you, adding the words which I have read to the broken passage, which is insidiously separated and included in the indictment, can there be a doubt remaining in any rational and unprejudiced mind, that the union and co-operation called for by this Address from those who desire reform in Parliament, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... or indicated by Dr. Westcott, might be withdrawn without at all weakening my position. These objections, I may say, refer solely to details, and only follow side issues, but the attack, if impotent against the main position, has in many cases been insidiously directed against notes and passing references, and a plentiful sprinkling of such words as "misstatements" and "misrepresentations" along the line may have given it a formidable appearance and malicious effect, which render it worth while once for ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... instance, the high standard as to truthfulness indicated by Cicero, in his "Offices," III., 12-17, 32. "Pretense and dissimulation ought to be banished from the whole of life." "Reason ... requires that nothing be done insidiously, nothing dissemblingly, nothing falsely." Note, also, Juvenal, Satire XIII., as to the sin of a lie purposed, even if not spoken; and Marcus Aurelius in his "Thoughts," Book IX.: "He ... who lies is guilty of impiety to the same [highest] divinity." "He, then, who lies intentionally ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... April, an insidiously warm morning with the ailanthus trees in bud before the State House, when Jasper Penny left the court room where Essie had been freed. Provision had been made for her—she had had a severe collapse during the trial—and ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... passengers in strolling over the pleasant paths and trying to make out what bird it was singing somewhere in the trees. We made out an almond-tree in bloom, after some dispute; and, in fact, the climate there was much softer than at the landing, so insidiously soft that it required great force of character to keep from buying the flowers which some tasteful boys gathered from the public beds. There is a mild monument or two in this garden, to what memories I promptly failed to remember afterward; but as there are more ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... would be jumping into the fire for fear of the frying-pan. The danger from the alarm is, that the pride and resentment exerted by them may be an overmatch for the dictates of prudence, and favor the project of a Southern Convention, insidiously revived, as promising, by its councils, the best securities against grievances of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the Provincial Congress, on April 20, 1776; reported "that Farquhard Campbell disregarding the sacred Obligations he had voluntarily entered into to support the Liberty of America against all usurpations has Traitorously and insidiously endeavored to excite the Inhabitants of this Colony to take arms and levy war in order to assist the avowed enemies thereof. That when a prisoner on his parole of honor he gave intelligence of the force and intention of the American Army under Col. Caswell to the Enemy ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... His name would awaken suspicion, and any story of disgrace and banishment might be accounted the very mask to fit a spy. There was this sleek, venomous Gonzaga, whom she trusted and relied on, to whisper insidiously into her ear. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... close application to study upon his nervous system, he was liable to fits of fretfulness and scepticism that, only occasional and transient as they were, told nevertheless with disturbing effect upon his temper. In the same unfortunate direction was the tendency of a habit grown insidiously upon him,—a habit against the damning control of which (as no one better than the writer of this article knows) he wrestled with an earnestness indescribable, resorting to all the remedial expedients which professional skill or his own experience ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Nobody since Dickens has given us the impression of London in all its multitudinous, dismal-gay activities as Mr. Wells gives it us. But it is no longer the London of Dickens. It is a "great, stupid giantess," a "city of Bladesover ... parasitically occupied, insidiously replaced by alien, unsympathetic, and irresponsible elements." It was a chaotic mass of houses built for the middle-class Victorian families. And even while these houses were ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... Mlle. Duval. They are dangling her before him, but he will be the dupe of those Machiavels in the Val-Noble to whom he is going to sacrifice his position. Camusot, this affair, so unfortunate as it is for the d'Esgrignons, so insidiously brought on by the President for du Croisier's benefit, will turn out well for nobody but /you/," she had said, as ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... course, but it is disagreeable. It is disagreeable in the same way as discovering a three-card-trick man among a decent lot of folk in a third-class compartment. The open impudence of the whole transaction, appealing insidiously to the folly and credulity of man kind, the brazen, shameless patter, proclaiming the fraud openly while insisting on the fairness of the game, give one a feeling of sickening disgust. The honest violence of a plain man playing a fair game fairly—even ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... here only and shall not live there; if he lives here he must remain here; but wherever he lives he shall not live—he shall not have the means of living. This is the operation of the law as it stands, without any new edict. This is the sentence of death that silently, insidiously, and in the veiled language of obscurely worded laws has been pronounced against hundreds of thousands of human beings.... Shall civilized Europe, shall the Christianity of England behold this slow torture and bloodless massacre, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... that it has long ago been condemned by the general consent, and suppressed by many judicial decisions, this will be only equivalent to saying, that it has been sometimes violently rejected through the influence and power of its adversaries, and sometimes insidiously and fraudulently oppressed by falsehoods, artifices, and calumnies. Violence is displayed, when sanguinary sentences are passed against it without the cause being heard; and fraud, when it is unjustly accused of sedition and mischief. Lest any one should suppose that ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... sculptor, too unacquainted with sculptural beauty (witness his ugly ideal statues), to be able, like the man who turned the successors of Alexander into a race of leonine though crazy demi-gods—to insidiously idealize these ugly and insignificant features; by what means did he turn these dead men into things beautiful to see? I have said that he took up art where Graeco-Roman Antiquity had left it. Remark that I say Graeco-Roman, and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... to sell some distant and inaccessible portion of his land, and is compelled to spend part of the proceeds in constructing roads to it in order to sell the remainder. Regardless of the soundness or folly of such philosophy, the mischief was done. Insidiously the internal-improvement precedent had been allowed to creep into the strict-construction fold. How it grew until one veto after another was required to bring the people back to their senses remains ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... not revenge himself upon him who was the innocent cause of his exposure, in St. Louis; but in New York, where neither were so well known, he did all he could to injure Mr. Charless' reputation. The friends of the latter, having heard of Mr. M.'s unprincipled conduct, in insidiously striving to undermine the confidence reposed in him there, informed him of it, expecting that he would take some notice of the matter—which he did not do. They came again, and protested against his allowing "that fellow" to ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... shower of small pumice stones and heavier ashes, and emitting stifling eruptic fumes. After a time the sounds of approaching torrent were heard, and soon streaming rivers of dense black mud poured slowly but irresistibly down the mountain sides, and circled through the streets, insidiously creeping into such recesses as even the subtle ashes had failed to penetrate. There was now no place of shelter left. No man could defend himself against this double enemy. It was too late for flight for such as had remained behind. Those who had taken refuge ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... moisture is dispersed about in bits Too small for eyes to see. Another case: A ring upon the finger thins away Along the under side, with years and suns; The drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone; The hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastes Amid the fields insidiously. We view The rock-paved highways worn by many feet; And at the gates the brazen statues show Their right hands leaner from the frequent touch Of wayfarers innumerable who greet. We see how wearing-down hath minished these, But ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... struggle against the spell, telling ourselves that the scope and limits of the present volume will not permit of a glance at the villas of ancient Rome, but they insidiously steal upon us through those of the Renaissance. Particularly is this true of the Villa d'Este and the Villa Albani, magic gateways both leading directly into that ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... regime. They are against the employment of responsible technicians and commercial experts in the factories. They believe that officers and experts alike, being ex-bourgeois, must be enemies of the people, insidiously engineering reaction. They are opposed to any agreement with the Allies, exactly as they were opposed to any agreement with the Germans. I heard them describe the Communists as "the bourgeois gendarmes of the Entente," on the ground ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... of the poison that had crept insidiously into his blood and was beginning to spread and rage with deadly power. He fought against it bravely, he fought against it despairingly. He hoped that chance would cure him, he prayed ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... continued to observe the law of Moses, could possibly hope for salvation!"[35] While, on the other hand, the most learned and the most wealthy of the Christian name, under the generally recognised title of "knowing" (Gnostic), had more insidiously effaced the authority of the Evangelists by dividing themselves, during the course of the third century, "into more than fifty numerably distinct sects, and producing a multitude of histories, in which the actions and ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... not go on writing," it is very probable he would have scared me away from pen and ink for ever; but there was nothing either to frighten one or arouse one's antagonism in the mere suggestion to "write another." And thus a dead point in the revolution of my affairs was insidiously got over. The word "another" did it. At about eleven o'clock of a nice London night, Edward and I walked along interminable streets talking of many things, and I remember that on getting home I sat down and wrote about half a page of "An Outcast ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... principle obtains possession of the breast, it destroys the health and spirits: the streams which gladden the heart become corrupted, and productive of rage and melancholy. Jealousy is like the snake which insidiously entwines itself around its victim; or like the bohun upas of Java, which diffuses death. The bright beams of hope, which cheered the possessor, and carried his vision to distant days and distant scenes ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... may seem, it is really one of the most disabling of bad habits. Its continuance contributes largely to the sum of nervous exhaustion. Whatever its origin, whether it stands in the relation of cause or effect, it is an indulgence that insidiously takes the snap and sparkle out of life and leaves us for the time being colorless ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... grew insidiously out of her speculations; a desire to talk about him, hear his name. Lavinia deliberately shut her eyes to the fact that this last became her principal reason for wishing to ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... at work resents the mis-education received at school and suspects that he has been following false gods. The enemies that cause him trouble come from unexpected sources. He finds it infinitely easier to eschew alcohol and tobacco than to avoid living conditions that insidiously undermine his aversion to stimulants and narcotics. The reasons for avoiding stimulants in the interest of others are more numerous and more cogent than the reasons for avoiding stimulants and narcotics for one's own sake. The altruistic ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... will steal insidiously into your ear, your brain, and the whirlpool of your senses until you stand rooted in ecstasy in a flooded field of sweet desire. Rising swiftly and shrilly it will tear like racing waters at the ramparts we and our forefathers, have ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... that night on the Irrawaddy, Elsa recorded a disagreeable sensation. It proved to be transitory, but at the time it served to establish a stronger doubt in regard to her independence, so justifiable in her own eyes. It might be insidiously leading her too far away from the stepping-off place. The unspoken words in those hateful eyes! The man knew Warrington, knew him perhaps as a malefactor, and judged his associates accordingly. She thus readily saw the place she occupied in the man's estimation. She experienced ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... {15} has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... full posture of defense, all were inside the walls and every man had gone to his post. They now awaited the attack, and yet there was some distrust of Henry Ware. Braxton Wyatt, a clever youth, had insidiously sowed the seeds of suspicion, and already there was a crop of unbelief. By indirection he had called attention to the strange appearance of the returned wanderer, the Indianlike air that he had acquired, his new ways unlike their own, and his indifference ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... long ago that it has escaped attention and I am now no longer called upon to render an account of its meaning. Nevertheless, whatever its other merits or defects may be, I can assure my readers that it was not my intention to propound a riddle, or insidiously convey any erudite teaching. The fact of the matter was that a longing had been born within my heart, and, unable to find any other name, I had called the thing I desired ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... proper distinctions? This, indeed, is the great art of the most celebrated freethinkers. They recommend themselves to warm and ingenuous minds by lively strokes of wit, and by arguments really strong, against superstition, enthusiasm, and priestcraft; but at the same time they insidiously throw the colours of these upon the fair face of true religion, and dress her out in their garb, with a malignant intention to render her odious or despicable to those who have not penetration enough to discern the impious fraud. Some of them may have thus deceived themselves ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... your way to St. Teresa's. We don't often get such a strong contingent from the other side." By "the other side" Mr. Reed meant Middlesex, but to Audrey the phrase was insidiously controversial. She determined to take her stand ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... anxiety on the queen's account, who was shortly to be brought to bed, led him to take the road to Paris. He sent word to me to follow him, but necessarily some days elapsed before we met; an opportunity of which his enemies and mine were quick to take advantage, and that so insidiously and with so much success as to imperil not my reputation only but ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... and the most illustrious of living English sculptors was the first to propose a substantial memorial to his name. What his nativity and his character thus so eminently contributed to signalize, the offspring of his genius, the manner of his death, solemnly confirmed. By no sudden fever, such as insidiously steals from the Roman marshes and poisons the blood of its victims,—by no violent epidemic, like those which have again and again devastated the cities of Europe,—by no illusive decline, whereby vital power is sapped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of the morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as I lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell upon it with growing complacency; its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one after another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to sign and seal one's own sentence of degeneration, I still knew that, if she were alive, I should love her. Day ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him whose prerogative yields only to ours. You have questioned his right upon a point of all others the most decided—the right of a father to dispose of his child in marriage. You have even fled from his protection—and you have dared—insidiously, and meanly have dared, to screen your disobedience beneath this sacred roof. You have prophaned our sanctuary with your crime. You have brought insult upon our sacred order, and have caused bold and impious defiance of our high prerogative. What punishment ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... mountains over which, in the day of her distress, poured Rome's Gothic enemies, in wild and overwhelming hordes. Wasted and enfeebled by the constant drain made on her resources to supply the many provinces of her fair empire, her very vitals insidiously sapped and impoverished by the selfish luxury and vice to which her pagan civilization had brought her, what wonder that she fell an easy prey. Yet the heart still yearns over her in her mighty fall, and as I looked, and caught the enthusiasm of my Roman guide, the lament ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... opinions lurk there in ambush. He must keep a sharp lookout for heretical propositions, and arguments savoring of heresy; insinuations against the established order of the sacraments, ceremonies, usages and ritual of the Roman Church; new turns of phrase insidiously employed by heretics, with dubious and ambiguous expressions that may mislead the unwary; plausible citations of Scripture, or passages of holy writ extracted from heretical translations; quotations from the authorized text, which have been adduced ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... in other words, to do a safe, conservative line of business. I am looking for that line still; and I believe the nearest thing to it in this imperfect world is the sort of speculation sometimes insidiously proposed to childhood, in the formula, "Heads I win; tails you lose." Mindful of my father's parting words, I turned my attention timidly to railroads; and for a month or so maintained a position of inglorious security, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be so is obvious. Firstly, it is in the sphere of domestic labour that slave or hired labour most easily and insidiously penetrates. The force of blows or hireling gold can far more easily supply labourers as the preparers of food and clothing, and even as the rearers of children, than it can supply labourers fitted to be entrusted with the toils of war and government, which have in the past been the especial ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... evidence of his reverses insidiously crept into his personal appearance. He who had been the leader now clung to the tail-ends of style, and it was a novel sensation when one day he noticed a friend scrutinizing his garments much in the same critical manner that he had himself erstwhile affected. This glance rested casually on the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... in listless dreaming, or in that sort of senseless twaddle which forms the bulk of the conversation in some circles, is in very great danger of demoralization. Many of the usages and customs of fashionable society seem to open the door to vice, and to insidiously, and at first unconsciously, lead the young and inexperienced away from the paths of purity and virtue. There is good evidence that the amount of immorality among what are known as the higher classes is every year increasing. Every now and then a scandal in high life comes to the surface; ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... equalled and never surpassed, Adderley could no longer restrain himself, and crying 'Brava!—brava! Bravissima!' fell to clapping his hands in the wildest ecstasy. Walden, less demonstrative, was far more moved. Something quite new and strange to his long fixed habit and temperament had insidiously crept over him,—and being well accustomed to self-analysis, he was conscious of the fact, and uneasy at finding himself in the grip of an emotion to which he could give no name. Therefore, he was ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... calls up old times, ay?" he began insidiously. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought you out for a ride; maybe it brings back painful memories, as the ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... Even while staggering under the pressure of the awful sickness, with mind getting more and more embittered, brain sometimes reeling with the shock of the constantly recurring fevers—though I knew how the malaria, rising out of that very fairness, was slowly undermining my constitution, and insidiously sapping the powers of mind and body—I regarded the alluring face of the land with a fatuous love, and felt a certain sadness steal over me as each day I was withdrawing myself from it, and felt disposed to quarrel with the fate that ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... shoe-blacking parlor,—Caesar should have run one,—and that the present popularity of the sponge in a bottle may derive from superfluous girth. Invented as a dainty toilet accessory for women, and at first regarded by men as effeminate, it is easy to see how insidiously the sponge in a bottle would have attracted a stout husband accustomed to shine his own shoes in the earlier contortionist manner. By degrees, first one stout husband and then another, men took to the bottle; the curse of effeminacy was lifted; the habit grew on men of all ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... of the law, is, that the last are so gross, as to revolt the taste and startle the mind to resistance, while Bulwer presents the same ideas, so clothed in the fascinations of taste and genius, as most insidiously to seduce the unwary. It seems to be the chief aim of this licentious writer, to make thieves, murderers, and adulterers, appear beautiful, refined, and interesting. It is time that all virtuous persons in the community should rise in indignation, not only against the writers, but the venders ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... only man in the Netherlands who could control the rising tide of a national revolt. He took care, said his enemies, that his conduct at Antwerp should have every appearance of loyalty; but they insinuated that he was a traitor from the beginning, who was insidiously fomenting the troubles which he appeared to rebuke. No one doubted his genius, and all felt or affected admiration at its display upon this critical occasion. "The Prince of Orange is doing very great and notable services ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... opinion between the title to the crown and the possession of the deceased monarch's harem is well understood.[25] Adonijah, in making request for Abishag, a youthful concubine taken by David in his old age, was considered as insidiously renewing his claims to the sovereignty. Solomon saw at once the wisdom of his father's dying admonition: he seized the opportunity of crushing all future opposition and all danger of a civil war. He caused Adonijah to be put to death; suspended Abiathar from his office, and banished ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... most moving as Morrice Deans was the most exacting and troublesome and the Wombash Pantheist the most insidiously destructive figure in these three toilsome disputes. The Pringle man's soul had apparently missed the normal distribution of fig-leaves; he was an illiterate, open-eyed, hard-voiced, freckled, rational-minded creature, with large expository ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... tummy steals on one insidiously, like a thief in the night. You notice that you are plumping out a trifle and for the time being you feel a sort of small personal satisfaction in it. Your shirts fit you better. You love the slight strain upon the buttonholes. You admire the pleasant ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... observation than ever before. I needed him. Something deep within me, something undivined hitherto, called out into life by his presence, could not do without him. This new craving, breakingly wild and sweet, awoke in my blood and cried for him. His presence nourished it in me. Most insidiously it attacked me. It stirred deep down among the roots of my being. It 'threatened my personality' seems the best way I can put it; for, turning a critical analysis upon it, I discovered that it was an undermining and revolutionary change going steadily forward in my character. Its growth had ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... helpful, coming from the highest ruler, and for place, at the fountain head of the Government, have a reflex influence upon much which is unjust. With each success we should beware of envy, the offspring of selfishness, which is apt to creep insidiously into our lives. We should crown the man who has achieved distinction and advise him as to pitfalls. "No sadder proof," Carlisle has said, "can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men." There is no royal road to a lasting eminence but the toilsome pathway ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... "And I plant upon a mountain high and elevated. On the high mountains of Israel I will plant it;" but especially Ps. lxviii. 16: "Mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan, the top of mountains is the mountain of Bashan." Ver. 17. "Why do ye tops of mountains insidiously observe the mountain which God desireth for His residence? Yea, the Lord will dwell in it for ever." The mountain of God is, in these verses, an emblem of the kingdoms of the world, which are powerful through God's grace. In ver. 16, the Psalmist declares what the mountain of Bashan is. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... for an old wound which his constitution received whilst battling with dysentery and fever, on his celebrated journey across Africa, and this finally sapped his vital powers, and, through the irritation of exhaustion, insidiously clouded much of ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... the ComWeb, feeling a little shaken. All she'd done was to say she wanted to apply for a transfer! Undersecretary Rozan was one of Precol's Big Four. For a moment, Trigger had an uncanny notion. Some strange madness was spreading insidiously through the Hub. She shook the ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed; it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... astonishing how completely a slovenly habit will gradually, insidiously fasten itself upon the individual and so change his whole mental attitude as to thwart absolutely his life-purpose, even when he may think he is doing his best ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... successful General, but he is denounced by one faction, insulted by another, insidiously praised by a third, and, if he should persevere in serving them, he has more disinterested rectitude than I suspect him of, or than they merit. This is another of that Jacobin ministry which proved so fatal to the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... stepping-stones, for making the transition to higher stages that are not harmless. The weakest preparations from malt, lead, by graduated steps, to the strongest; until we arrive at the intoxicating porter of London, which, under its local name (so insidiously delusive) of 'beer,' diffuses ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of ours. Personally I am willing, if necessary, to sacrifice very much so-called dogma to conciliate our worthy Nonconformist brethren; while I shall lose no opportunity of cutting at the roots of those Romanising tendencies which are so lamentably and insidiously active in the very heart of our ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... afternoon hour at the little Protestant cemetery close to St. Paul's Gate, where the ancient and the modern world are insidiously contrasted. They make between them one of the solemn places of Rome—although indeed when funereal things are so interfused it seems ungrateful to call them sad. Here is a mixture of tears and smiles, of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the good, that a man could get help in his conduct, he declared I was in a different world from him. 'Damn my conduct!' said he. 'I have given it up for a bad job. My question is, "Can I drive a nail?"' And he plainly looked upon me as one who was insidiously seeking to reduce the people's annual bellyful of corn and ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time of flood it cuts new channels for itself, leaving in a few days river towns far in the interior, and suddenly giving a water frontage to some plantation whose owner had for years mourned over his distance from the river bank. Capricious and irresistible, working insidiously night and day, seldom showing the progress of its endeavors until some huge slice of land, acres in extent, crumbles into the flood, or some gully or cut-off all at once appears as the main channel, the Mississippi, even now when the Government is at all times on the alert to hold it in ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... everywhere. They fled from the city only to meet the dreaded apparition in the country. As they journeyed on Leroy grew restless and feverish. He tried to brace himself against the infection which was creeping slowly but insidiously into his life, dulling his brain, fevering his blood, and prostrating his strength. But vain were all his efforts. He had no armor strong enough to repel the invasion of death. They stopped at a small town on the way and obtained the best medical ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... kind of metamorphosis of the ordinary nutritive processes and in this manner, it may proceed insidiously for a long period, so that a large part of the tissue of the lungs shall be replaced by tubercular deposit without any other sign than an increasing difficulty of respiration." These views are strongly corroborated by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... said I; "respecting that trifling debt of honour— there's another condition that I didn't think of. As a sort of payment on account, you must privately and insidiously circulate a very ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... and frost, by mechanical attrition and chemical decomposition, to form the pulverized earth and clay. This soil is being swept away by perennial showers, and carried off to the oceans. The oceans themselves beat on their shores, and eat insidiously into the structure of sands and rocks. Everywhere, slowly but surely, the surface of the land is being worn away; its substance is being carried to burial in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Hydrographical Report in 1841, has placed this tradition in its proper light. He gives a somewhat different account of Pontiac's death, which he states to have taken place when he was in liquor, and the blow was insidiously given. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... beset with three powerful currents, which insidiously operate to deflect her from her course. Materialism, which denies or ignores the supernatural, and concentrates its heed on ameliorating the outward conditions of human life; criticism, which is clever at ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... the inexpugnable strength of common sense being insidiously menaced by this gruesome, by this insane, delusion. And ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively, though often covertly and insidiously, directed,—it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... cried, springing up from a midnight reverie in my hut. Every selfish argument for my own safety had passed in review before my mind, and something so akin to judicious caution, which we trappers in plain language called "cowardice," was insidiously assailing my better self, I cast logic's sophistries to the winds, and dared death or torture to drive me from my post. Whence comes this sublime, reasonless abandon of imperiled human beings, which casts off ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... much alive to all the glorious possibilities of the policy of national reconciliation which was taking shape and form before their eyes to brook any of the ill-advised counsels of those who had determined insidiously on the wreck of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... the persecuted defendant relative to his majesty's ministers. I thought official accounts might be less detailed there than against the managers, who, as open enemies, excite not so much my "high displeasure" as the friends of government, who so insidiously elected and panegyrised him while they wanted his assistance, and betrayed and deserted him when he was no longer in a capacity to serve them. Such, at least, is the light in which the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Poisonmonger, fatigued with the rush of Christmas business, fainted away, and, being revived by potions from his own pails, survived only long enough to administer a forcible dose in revenge. The Well-Meaner's fate differed from that of her companions in that she was insidiously poisoned by each actor in turn, so that, figuratively speaking, the curtain descended upon a row of corpses, in the midst of which the Greek Chorus ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Convention; there is, so to speak, a gasp of silence; nay a certain grating of one knows not what!—Lecointre, our old Draper of Versailles, in these questionable circumstances, sees nothing he can do so safe as rise, 'insidiously' or not insidiously, and move, according to established wont, that the Robespierre Speech be 'printed and sent to the Departments.' Hark: gratings, even of dissonance! Honourable Members hint dissonance; Committee-Members, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the Bible were suddenly lost from the world, be restored in piecemeal fragments gathered out of the books in which the Book has been quoted, Then, besides, there are the Bible thoughts that have indirectly, we might almost say insidiously, permeated the literature of Europe and America. More than that, the Bible has been industriously for years securing its own translation into hundreds of tongues and dialects of the globe. The Koran does not take pains to translate itself, and, indeed, refuses ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... particles that swept through the wagon. Presently these particles became heavier, more perceptible, and polished like small shot, and a keen wind drove them stingingly into the faces of the passengers, or insidiously into their pockets, collars, or the folds of their clothes. The snow forced ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... had touched him—how lightly, in all probability, they would touch him. He had distinctly the military bearing. He would have that same bearing at sixty. And that same charm. He was one to whom experience gave the gift of charm more insidiously than ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... discussion. It hinders uneducated people from saying in the only ways in which they know how to say it, what those who have been brought up differently say, with impunity, far more effectively and far more insidiously. Some of the men who have been imprisoned during the last two years, only uttered in language of deplorable taste views that are expressed more or less politely in books which are in the library of a bishop unless he is a very ignorant person, and against ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... Thrice have I pardoned him; this is his fourth offence." But he referred the matter to his council, and was advised to cross over to England immediately with the ships which had brought the reenforcement under the Duke of Albemarle. That nobleman, however, insidiously, as it was afterward pretended, diverted him from this intention. The Earl of Salisbury received orders to sail immediately with his own retainers, a body of one hundred men, and to summon to the royal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... upon his ear like a spirit of consolation, speaking of peace, of love which needs no reward save its own sweetness, of aspiration which looks forever beyond the thing of the hour to find attainment in that which is eternal. So insidiously did it whisper these things, so delicately did the simple and perfect melodies creep upon the spirit—that Boyce felt no resentment, but from the first listened as one who listens to learn, or as one who, fainting on the hot ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... to undermine his influence with the King proving vain—for Charles was as well aware of its inspiration as of the Chancellor's value to him—that crew of rakes went laboriously and insidiously to work upon the public mind, which is to say the public ignorance—most fruitful soil for scandal against the great. Who shall say how far my lady and the Court were responsible for the lampoon affixed one day to my ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... men as pure in soul, as fervid lovers of truth, as this world ever possessed. On the other hand it would be nothing short of a miracle in human nature, if all that dreadful tangle of economies and reserves, so largely practised and for a long time so insidiously defended, did not familiarise a vein of subtlety, a tendency to play fast and loose with words, a perilous disposition to regard the non-natural sense of language as if it were just as good as the natural, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... "suthin' in him." Oddly enough, the crowd that had at first sympathized with Jack now began to admit provocations. His subsequent silence, a disposition when questioned on the subject to smile inanely, and, later, when insidiously asked if he had ever seen Polly dancing with the goat, his bursting into uproarious laughter completely turned the current of opinion against him. The public mind, however, soon became engrossed ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Tortoiseshell, the feline phenomenon, they two sit curmurring, forgetful of mice and milk, of all but love! How meekly mews the Demure, relapsing into that sweet under-song—the Purr! And how curls Tom's whiskers like those of a Pashaw! The point of his tail—and the point only is alive—insidiously turning itself, with serpent-like seduction, towards that of Tabitha, pensive as a nun. His eyes are rubies, hers emeralds—as they should be—his lightning, hers lustre—for in her sight he is the lord, and in his, she is the lady ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... Archbishopric of Sens and rewarded with the rich abbey of Saint Benoit-sur-Loire—insinuated to the queen mother that the misfortunes befalling France were tokens of the Divine displeasure. Had Francis spared no exertions to destroy the first germs of the heresy so insidiously introduced into his kingdom, he would not now, said the churchman, be languishing in the dungeons of Milan or Madrid. Nor could hopes be entertained of his deliverance, and of a return of Heaven's favor, unless the queen mother bestirred herself ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... a pretty leetle seat!" he exclaimed in a tone of pleased discovery, just as though he had not been leading her insidiously towards it ever since they, came ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... deliberately to secure a hold on the Marquis, which the Marquis could never shake off, is a secret locked away with Maunders underground. If he did, he was more successful than wiser men have been in their endeavors. Insidiously he drew the Marquis into a quarrel, in which he himself was involved, with a hunter named Frank O'Donald and his two friends, John Reuter, known as "Dutch Wannigan," and Riley Luffsey. He was a crafty Iago, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... dreadful room (long since renovated) which, with its unmentionable suggestion of horror, had held him spellbound on that morning when he had begun his career at the factory. It held him spellbound now, evilly, insidiously. He stood by that blackened, ashy hearth in the foul room, with its damp, mottled, rotting walls, his eyes fastened on that hideous sofa to which he was drawn—drawn a little nearer and a little nearer, the thing in his hand—did it move itself? Cold ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... me tell you how you look to me, now?" said Harry Underwood's voice, softly, insidiously ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... especially in his reply to those who demanded from him an explanation of the authority by which he acted, which reply consisted in propounding a question to them, situated between the very difficulties into which they were insidiously endeavouring to draw him. (Matt. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... its own times, sir," said Carford insidiously. But the Duke, suffering from disappointed desire, was not to be led ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... and her happiness were in the balance weighed against a woman's power. It seemed to Lenore that she felt hopelessly unable to carry the issue to victory; and yet, on the other hand, a tumultuous and wonderful sweetness of sensation called to her, insidiously, of the infallible potency of love. What could she do to save Dorn's life and his soul? There was only one answer to that. She would do anything. She must make him love her to the extent that he would have no will to ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... public feeling in the United States while the bloody work of the French Revolution was progressing. He saw with alarm the spirit of that Revolution, so widely different from that which had shaken off the fetters of kingly rule in America, working insidiously into the constitution of the politics of the United States, and passion assuming the control of reason in the minds of his people. This was specially manifested by an outburst of popular feeling when the proclamation of the French republic reached America, and news that French arms had made a conquest ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... that tinsel gives a wholly unreal tone to what is being said and is so pregnant with affectation as to be tiresome. Between slang and adjectives, it is hard to choose, both are so detestable from a woman's lips. The difference is that the adjective insidiously captures the refined mind, while slang only holds captive the coarse mind. In a plain and intended to be truthful statement of any occurrence, the injection of three or four adjectives will change the whole tenor of narration, and give ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... and Davidge would have seen Marie Louise if he had not stopped short and turned a cold shoulder on her, just as the distant orchestra, which had been crooning one of Jerome Kern's most insidiously ingratiating melodies, began to blare with all its might the ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... a state on his stage, which is ceasing to be a state at the moment in which he shows it to us; a state which has the war principle—the principle of conquest within no longer working in it insidiously as government, but developed as war; for it has just overstepped the endurable point in its mastery. It is a revolution that is coming off when the curtain rises. For the government has been gnawing the Roman common-weal at home, with those same teeth it ravened the Volscians with abroad, till ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... redoubled his attentions, seeing only in her presence a certain meprise, which concerned her more than himself. The niece of his enemy meant nothing more to him than an interesting girl,—to be protected always,—to be feared, never. But even suspicion may be insidiously placed in ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... she bore him no malice were producing their effect; he was beginning to recover himself. The old helpless habit of addressing all his complaints to his housekeeper was returning already with the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount—returning insidiously, in company with that besetting anxiety to talk about his grievances, which had got the better of him at the breakfast-table, and which had shown the wound inflicted on his vanity to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... worth and love of the western girl, Flo Hutter? Carley knew absolutely, through both intelligence and intuition, that Glenn Kilbourne would never love Flo. Yet such was her intensity and stress at times, especially in the darkness of waking hours, that jealousy overcame her and insidiously worked its havoc. Peace and a strange kind of joy came to her in dreams of her walks and rides and climbs in Arizona, of the lonely canyon where it always seemed afternoon, of the tremendous colored vastness of that Painted Desert. But she resisted these dreams now because when she awoke ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... subjects upon those of Scotland. Instead of preparing a new equipage and splendid retinue, the ambassador retreated to his study, and evoked a fiend, in the shape of a huge black horse, mounted upon his back, and forced him to fly through the air towards France. As they crossed the sea, the devil insidiously asked his rider what it was that the old women of Scotland muttered at bedtime. A less experienced wizard might have answered, that it was the Pater Noster, which would have licensed the devil to precipitate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... for this very reason that, in spite of the charm which Rome flings over one's mood, there ran through Rowland's meditations an undertone of melancholy, natural enough in a mind which finds its horizon insidiously limited to the finite, even in very picturesque forms. Whether it is one that tacitly concedes to the Roman Church the monopoly of a guarantee of immortality, so that if one is indisposed to bargain with her for the ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them 'glittering generalities.' Another bluntly styles them 'self-evident lies.' And others insidiously argue that they apply ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... black and lowering—and the heavens shrouded in a uniform covering of leaden-coloured clouds, deepening into a livid indigo at the edge of the horizon. The snow, no longer hard and glittering, has become soft and spongy, and the foot slips into a wet and insidiously-yielding mass at every step. From the roof pours down a continuous stream of water, and the branches of the trees collecting the moisture of the reeking atmosphere, shower it upon the earth from every dripping twig. The cheerless and uncomfortable aspect of things without ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... were not made for each other. He was thriftless, idle, dissolute—the small roue of the neighbourhood: she was careful, industrious, virtuous. He was good-looking—of a dark, saturnine beauty, insidiously impressive, like the dangerous charms of a tempter; she was radiant and lustrous with the sweet graces of modesty, innocence, and intelligence. Julia, however, young and susceptible, was for a time pleased with his attentions. Persuasive powers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... because, better placed for a sight of the matter, she traced his unhappy perversion through reaches of its course into which he could scarce follow it. He knew how he felt, but, besides knowing that, she knew how he looked as well; he knew each of the things of importance he was insidiously kept from doing, but she could add up the amount they made, understand how much, with a lighter weight on his spirit, he might have done, and thereby establish how, clever as he was, he fell short. Above all she was in the secret of the difference between the forms he ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... annihilation pure and simple, with a pseudo-religious air which is far more subtly dangerous. Indeed, of the various expedients for extinguishing men's faith in the life to come, this is probably the most insidiously effective in use to-day; it is the silken handkerchief, drenched with chloroform and held quite gently to the victim's face—a lethal weapon in all but appearance. And there are some who are attracted by the faint, cloying ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... fly from this decision, to shrink from the great resolve, to temporize, to waver, have at such moments ever presented themselves to men and to nations. Even now they present themselves, manifold, subtly disguised, insidiously persuasive, as exhortations to humility, for instance, as appeals to the deference due to the opinion of other States. But in the faith, the undying faith, that it, and it alone, can perform the fate-appointed task, dwells the virtue of every ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb |
