"Insular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... factor for England's future was her insular position; this has been the case from the time Europe entered the ocean-period. Since the year 1600 England, by her commerce and politics, has influenced Europe from without, while she has maintained for herself a position of independence, ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... exclaimed. "Of what use will their navy be when my sword is once drawn, when I hold the coast towns of Calais and Boulogne, when my cannon command the Straits of Dover! The days of insular nations are passed, passed as surely as the days of England's arrogant supremacy ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... what point of magnitude precisely, a country so situated shall begin to be a continent, could not answer any purpose of utility; but the best and clearest rule for removing the doubt appears to be the following: As long as the peculiar advantages of an insular situation can be enjoyed by the inhabitants of such a country, let it have the title of an island; when it exceeds those limits let it be considered as a continent. Now the first and principal advantage of an island, is that of being capable of a convenient union under ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... word he would use to describe it. Lions on the Strand would be merely annoying, but chipmunks on Broadway would constitute a striking manifestation of the unsettled conditions existing in a wild and misgoverned land; for, you see, to every right-minded Englishman of the insular variety—and that is the commonest variety there is in England—whatever happens at home is but part of an orderly and an ordered scheme of things, whereas whatever happens beyond the British domains must necessarily be highly unusual and exceedingly disorganizing. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Ganymedes. If schools cannot alter character, they certainly can communicate to our cheerful English boys the most delightful manners in the world, so unembarrassed, courteous, easy, graceful, without the least touch of exaggeration or self-consciousness. I suppose one has insular prejudices, for we are certainly not looked upon as models of courtesy or consideration by our Continental neighbours. I suppose we reserve our best for ourselves. I expressed a wish to look at some of the new buildings, and a young gentleman of prepossessing exterior ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... uncommon thing to hear an American speak of British insularity—the Englishman's "insular prejudices" or his "insular conceit." On one occasion I took the opportunity of interrupting a man who, I was sure, did not know what "insular" might mean, to ask ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... the insular part of the territory is the fisheries. For many years the Pribilof Islands produced practically all the seal-pelts used in the manufacture of seal-fur garments. So many seals were killed, however, that the species seemed ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... the evidence goes, the Minoan Empire does not appear to have been a specially warlike one. No doubt there was a good deal of fighting in its history, as was the case with all ancient empires. But the insular position of Crete, and the predominance which the Minoan navy established on the sea, saved the island Empire from the necessity of becoming a great military power, and the absence of the spirit of militarism is reflected in the national art. ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... singularly healthy for Europeans as well as natives, although both hot and moist, as may be expected from being so close to the equator. Besides, the Peninsula is very nearly an insular region; it is densely covered with evergreen forests, and few parts of it are more than fifty miles from the sea. There are no diseases of climate except marsh fevers, which assail Europeans if they camp out at night on ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... darling Paul!" she said. "You dear, insular, arrogant Englishman! You have no equal ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... Bacon feared to use in his writings, lest they should remain forever unknown to all but the inhabitants of a relatively unimportant insular kingdom, is now the speech of two continents. The Common Law which Coke jealously upheld in the southern half of a single European island, is now the law of the land throughout the vast regions of Australasia, and of America north of the Rio Grande. The names of the plays that Shakespeare ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... I bade the insular metropolis adieu, and returned no more. The Continent was close and beckoning; I heard the confusion of her tongues, and saw the shafts of her Gothic Babels probing the clouds, and for another year I roamed among her cities, as ardent ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... crown. When our Revolution broke out, her Assembly passed resolutions declaring their entire concurrence in the principles set forth by the Congress, and gave as the reasons for not joining in our armed vindication of them, their insular position, and the peculiar nature of their population. Had geography permitted, Jamaica would doubtless have made one Slave State the more in the original Union, and would have been one of the fiercest ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Faithful to his 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 ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 azure Mediterranean, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my friend.—Heaven knows how warmly I have felt the obligation, and how gratefully I have thanked you. Fortune, sir, has made you powerful, and me impotent—has given you patronage, and me dependence. I would not, for my single self, call on your humanity; were such my insular, unconnected situation, I would despise the tear that now swells in my eye. I would brave misfortune—I could face ruin, for at the worst Death's thousand doors stand open; but the tender concerns that I have mentioned, the claims and ties that ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... cigars have not hitherto succeeded in making themselves acceptable in Europe on account of their inferiority, the blame is attributable simply to the system of compulsory labor, and the chronic insolvency of the Insular Treasury, whilst the produce of other tobacco countries has steadily progressed in quality in consequence of free competition. The fame of the Manila cigars may also have suffered in some slight measure from the wide-spread, though perfectly erroneous, idea ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... extent, the "Celtic vague"—all these things are there. But they are all co-ordinated, dominated, fashioned anew by some thing which is none of them, but which is the English genius, that curious, anomalous, many-sided genius, which to those who look at only one side of it seems insular, provincial, limited, and which yet has given us Shakespeare, the one writer of the world to whom the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Puerto Rico and Cuba, which information was to serve as a basis for the enactment of special laws for the government of each island. This gave the commissioners an opportunity to discuss their views on insular government with the leading public men of Spain, and they profited by these discussions till 1867, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... which it presents where weathered; but its general aspect is that of a porphyritic trap. Be it what it may, the fact is not at all affected, that the shores, wherever it occurs on this tract of insular coast, are strewed with reptilian remains of ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Philippines and Porto Rico are regarded as insular or territorial possessions of the United States, and are entitled to the ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... insular people,' he answered, somewhat confusedly, but the perfectly-informed Keferinis came to the succour both of Tancred and of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... his foreign states, and wherever the canon law came in the civil law followed in its train. But in England local liberties were strong, the feudal system had never been completely established, insular prejudice against the foreigner and foreign ways was alert, the Church generally still held to national tradition, the king was at deadly feud with the Primate, and was quite resolved to have no customs favoured by him brought into the land; ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... "That's their insular provincialism, then. I don't care a cent. The old man would have wrecked the Great Buchonian before breakfast for a pipe-opener. My God, I'll do it in dead earnest! I'll show 'em that they can't bulldoze a foreigner for flagging one of ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Americans are the most insular of all the great peoples of the world. You know nothing of other people. You know only your own history and not even that correctly, your own geography, and your own political science. You know ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... its insular position, had not so much influence in European politics as the other powers to which allusion has been made, but it was, nevertheless, a flourishing and united kingdom. Henry VII., the founder of the house of Tudor, sat on the throne, and was successful in suppressing ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... to the demand of the Spanish Ambassador, presented anew at this opportune time, and a new Governor of Jamaica was despatched over the sea with orders to arrest Morgan and send him to England. Hawxherst, who, in common with all the officers of the insular army, hated the bloodstained villain whom fortune had placed over them, had solicited Lord Carlingford to allow him to execute the order, with what success we ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... symmetrical. His features twitched when he was disturbed, but were beautiful when he smiled. To a profound observer he looked dangerous. He had the faculty of making his face signify nothing at all. He had been begotten an insular Italian, but was born a Frenchman. His wife, a Creole, more than six years older than he, was in the box with him. She sat at the front, and was seen by thousands. She wished to be seen; and when the pit shouted in the direction of the box she smiled a little smile, with a puckered ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... mentioned, is associated with Tyre both in the tablets of Tel el-Amarna and in the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings. It seems to have been the Palaetyros or "Older Tyre" of classical tradition, which stood on the mainland opposite the more famous insular Tyre. Phoenician tradition ascribes its foundation to Usoos, the offspring of the mountains of Kasios and Lebanon, and brother of Memrumus, "the exalted," and Hypsouranios, "the lord of heaven," who was the first to invent a clothing of skins, and to sail upon the water in boats, ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... unincorporated and unorganized territory of the US; administered by the Office of Insular Affairs, US ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... memories of the tour—the lone shieling and the misty island—were a source of pleasing recollection. Taken earlier, it would have removed many of his insular prejudices by wider survey and more varied conversation. 'The expedition to the Hebrides,' he wrote to Boswell some years after, 'was the most pleasant journey I ever made;' and two years later, after restless and tedious nights, he is found reverting to it and recalling the best ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... events of the day according to their partialities, and while the English charged the Austrian with having afforded the first ground of quarrel, those of other nations concurred in casting the greater blame upon the insular haughtiness and assuming ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... visit France and acquire the French language. His impressions of that country, as far as he went,—from Calais to St. Omer,—are given in lively enough style in a few letters; but they differ little from what might be expected from any very young man deeply tinged with insular prejudice. "I hate their country and their manners," he wrote, soon after his return; and his biographers were quite right in saying that he had been brought up in the old anti-Gallican school, with prejudices not to be ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... part is exclusively Ionian and insular both in style and sympathy; Delos and no other is Apollo's chosen seat: but the second part is as definitely continental; Delos is ignored and Delphi alone is the important centre of Apollo's worship. From this it is clear ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... the royal authority was re-established. A few Spaniards who had taken refuge there after the fall of Cadiz embarked on a vessel which the general allowed them to charter for their voyage to London. There was thus neither resistance nor reaction. This little insular restoration could not, however, be accomplished without a Mass, at which both companies of the troops were ordered to be present. Not knowing the rigor of the Carmelite rule, the general hoped to gain in the church some information about the nuns who were immured in the convent, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... the National Wildlife Refuge system note on Palmyra Atoll: incorporated Territory of the US; partly privately owned and partly federally owned; administered from Washington, DC, by the Fish and Wildlife Service of the US Department of the Interior; the Office of Insular Affairs of the US Department of the Interior continues to administer nine excluded areas comprising certain tidal and submerged lands within the 12 nm territorial sea ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... 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
... after night-fall, was a difficult as well as a dangerous amusement. Many of the miners pulled down their tents, and began to work upon the spots on which they previously stood. Others began to dig all round their wooden huts, until these rude domiciles threatened to become insular, and a few pulled their dwellings down in order to get at ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... men. Sir James was the millionaire's physician and friend, and Cassall valued all his judgments highly, for he saw in the fashionable doctor a money-maker as shrewd as himself; and, moreover, he had far too much of the insular Briton about him to undervalue the kind of prestige which attaches to one who associates with royal personages and breathes the sacred atmosphere of money. Sir James was an apple-faced old gentleman, who had been a miser over his stock of health and strength. He was consequently ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... without groan or complaint: folding the scanty coverlet around him, he would subside gradually into his berth, composing his little limbs as gracefully as Caesar. His courtesy was invincible and untiring: he was anxious to defer and conform even to my insular prejudices. Discovering that I was in the habit of daily immersing in cold water—a feat not to be accomplished without much toil, trouble, and abrasion of the cuticle—he thought it necessary to simulate a like performance, though nothing would have ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... 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 temper ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... shadow over his existence. When I got to know M. Bayol better during our evening tramps up and down the deck, he asked me confidentially what remedies I adopted when "ronge de spleen," and how I combated the attacks of this deplorable but peculiarly insular disease, and was clearly incredulous when I failed to understand him. This amazing man also told me that he had been married five times. Not one of his first four wives had been able to withstand the unhealthy climate of Pondicherry for more than eighteen months, so, after the demise of ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... are so 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 ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... bring in head and shoulders, drag in head and shoulders, lug in head and shoulders. Adj. irrelative[obs3], irrespective, unrelated; arbitrary; independent, unallied; unconnected, disconnected; adrift, isolated, insular; extraneous, strange, alien, foreign, outlandish, exotic. not comparable, incommensurable, heterogeneous; unconformable &c. 83. irrelevant, inapplicable; not pertinent, not to the, purpose; impertinent, inapposite, beside the mark, a propos ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the complex idiosyncrasy of such a work. There is a substratum of Guide Book and Gil Blas, no doubt, but there are unmistakable streaks of Defoe, of Dumas, and of Dickens, with all his native prejudices and insular predilections strong upon him. A narrative so wide awake amidst a vagrant population of questionable morals and alien race suggests an affinity with Hajji Baba (a close kinsman, we conceive, of the Borrovian ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... we smoked, and that included Lady Ellenborough and myself. I must confess to the soft impeachment, despite insular prejudices; and I would advise any woman who sojourns in the East to learn to smoke, if she can. I am no admirer of a big cigar in a woman's mouth, or a short clay; but I know of nothing more graceful or enjoyable than a cigarette, and even more so in the ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... of human nature's 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 reigned over by kings ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... any other man towards inspiring the whole country with the desire for unity. Herein lies his great work. Without Mazzini, when would the Italians have got beyond the fallacies of federal republics, leagues of princes, provincial autonomy, insular home-rule, and all the other dreams of independence reft of its only safeguard which possessed the minds of patriots of every party in Italy and of nearly every ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... always admired Tom on a horse, knew that she had never seen anyone who seemed so much a part of his mount as this quaint foreigner. "I suppose he is an Austrian," she said to herself, and then added with English insular arrogance, "Only Austrians are ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... was a recognizable Englishman in Austrian dragoon uniform;—white tunic, white helmet, brown moustache;—ay! and eh! and oh! and ah! coming frequently from his mouth; that he stood square while speaking, and seemed to like his own smile; an extraordinary touch of portraiture, or else a scoff at insular self-satisfaction; at any rate, it commended itself to the memory. Barto dismissed him, telling him to be daily in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... commanded the landing-places on the shore, and served to protect the reservoirs; it lay under the shadow of a rock, on which was built, facing the insular temple of Melkarth, protector of mariners, a sanctuary of almost equal antiquity dedicated to his namesake of the mainland.* The latter divinity was probably the representative of the legendary Samemrum, who had built his village on ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... semi-barbarous chieftains. A battle, with from one to two thousand men on each side, took place in Islay in 1598. The power of the Islay Macdonalds ultimately passed into the hands of the Campbells, who have since been the ascendant family in these insular regions. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... admirable in others in a toleration of peculiarities. It is odd, almost amusing, to note how in this country people of one section apply their local standards to the judgment of people in other sections, very much as an Englishman uses his insular yardstick to measure all the rest of the world. It never seems to occur to people in one locality that the manners and speech of those of another may be just as admirable as their own, and they get a good deal of discomfort out ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... combatants was not an easy or a popular task. National rivalry was apt to break out, and it was hard for the judges to escape the imputation of partiality. Nor did the English, it must be admitted, return from the field in much good humor. With a feeling of complacency engendered by their insular position and their long isolation from the Continent, they had been wont to consider themselves as far superior to the French in all exercises of strength and agility. The French knights had shown themselves fully ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... good English dinner awaited us at the konak of the queen's messenger. It seemed so odd, and yet was so very comfortable, to have roast beef, plum pudding, sherry, brown stout, Stilton cheese, and other insular groceries at the foot of the Balkan. There was, moreover, a small library, with which the temporary occupants of the konak killed the month's interval between arrival ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... still dreams of a British Empire whose egoism shall be as complete as that of Bismarck's Prussia, and warns us in 1907, in the style of 1887, against those 'ideas of our youth' which were 'at once too insular ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... case the victory ultimately rests with the latter; and we may take it as being M. Zola's opinion that the same will eventually be the case with the great bulk of mankind. English writers are often accused of treating subjects from an insular point of view, and certainly there may be good ground for such a charge. But they are not the only writers guilty of the practice. The purview of French authors is often quite as limited: they regard French opinion as the only good opinion, and judge the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... WAR.—National defense is the chief concern of the Secretary of War. Coast fortifications, the supervision of navigation, and river and harbor improvements fall within the scope of the department. Our insular possessions are administered by the Secretary of War. It is also the duty of this officer to prepare estimates of the expenses of his department, to supervise all expenditures for the support and transportation of the army, and to take charge of ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... not 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 ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... 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, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... repeatedly advertising. I shouldn't wonder if, by this time, he had gotten a satisfactory response. I went and listened to the customary description. The silence that ensued was broken by a miserable skeptic, whose ill-regulated aspirations betrayed his insular prejudice, 'Vot is it? arf hanimal, eh? t'other day, I stuck a pin into him, and ses he, 'Dam yez!' Vot ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... congratulated on a farce that at its best was really excellent fun. And he may take it for flattery, if he likes, when I say that a good deal of his dialogue might be adapted into the French without offending our gallant Allies on the ground of a too insular squeamishness. O. S. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... all intents an insular power, like Great Britain. We have but two land frontiers, Canada and Mexico. The latter is hopelessly inferior to us in all the elements of military strength. As regards Canada, Great Britain maintains a standing army; but, like our own, its numbers indicate clearly ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... case of the Napoleonic epoch, when the causes which drew together the western half of the continent operated powerfully to exclude our own country from the current influences of the time, and made the England of 1815, in opinion, in religion, and in taste much more insular than the England of 1780. The revolution which overthrew Charles X. did no doubt encourage and stimulate the party of Reform in Great Britain; but, unlike the Belgian, the German, and the Italian movements, the English Reform movement would unquestionably ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... on the various incomers to Fernando Po we may next turn to the natives, properly so-called, the Bubis. These people, although presenting a series of interesting problems to the ethnologist, both from their insular position, and their differentiation from any of the mainland peoples, are still but little known. To a great extent this has arisen from their exclusiveness, and their total lack of enthusiasm in trade matters, a thing that differentiates them more than any other characteristic from ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... said, "that if he's ever our guest again, I shall be a bit more insular. I can't ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... little Iberian. Caradoc and Regnus were tall middle-aged men of the fair flaxen British type. All three were dressed in the draped yellow toga after the Latin fashion, instead of in the bracae and tunic which distinguished their more insular fellow-countrymen. ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... will teach him "a 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
... 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, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... discovery and the other very fantastic foundation has something decidedly comic about it; as if Caesar's "Et tu, Brute," might be translated, "What, you here?" But in one respect the fable is quite as important as the fact. They both testify to the reality of the Roman foundation of our insular society, and show that even the stories that seem prehistoric are seldom pre-Roman. When England is Elfland, the elves are not the Angles. All the phrases that can be used as clues through that tangle of traditions are more or less Latin phrases. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... shrewdly that perhaps it would relieve the stranger from embarrassment to engage him in conversation, with beautiful tact brought him to tell the company of his own country, remarking that "We insular people have but a vague idea at best ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... 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 ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... see at a glance the extent of his discoveries; but a still higher estimation will be formed of them if we judge of them by their value to the present generation. Let us consider the importance of his admirable survey of the whole eastern coast of New Holland, showing its vast size and insular character. Not less important was his survey of the islands of New Zealand, which, with New Holland, or Australia, are now among the most valuable possessions of the British crown. He discovered New Caledonia, and surveyed most of the islands of the New Hebrides, and other islands in the Austral ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... with a slight disturbance of his ordinary suave and well-bred equanimity that the Italian received the information, that he need apprehend no obstacle to his suit from the insular prejudices or the worldly views of the lady's family. Not that he was mean and cowardly enough to recoil from the near and unclouded prospect of that felicity which he had left off his glasses to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... as a World Power. But the consequences of our peace policy hit us harder than England has suffered under her former American policy. The place of Great Britain as a Great Power is far more secured by her insular position and her command of the seas than ours, which is threatened on all sides by more powerful enemies. It is true that one cannot anticipate success in any war with certainty, and there was always the possibility during the past forty years that we might not succeed in ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... statement of the characteristic Maundevillian touches with regard to the mouth and tongue, and it may refer to some of the insular races which exist or existed in the district of which he ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... about Englishmen marrying for money. He had resented that on general principles when he heard it, but now it had a personal application that seemed to confront him whichever way he turned. Besides, wasn't it all rather sudden, from an insular point of view? Of course they did things with great rapidity in America, so perhaps she would not object to the suddenness. He had no one to consult, and he felt the lack of advice. He did not want to make ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... a perceptible odour! Ordinarily he had the common insular appetite for ventilation, but now stuffiness appealed to him; he scented it almost voluptuously. The ugliness of the wallpaper, of the furniture, of everything in the room was naught. Christine's profession was naught. Who could positively say ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... books, but no man got from them any correct idea of what the Great Republic meant in the history of civilization. For this the British people had to wait until De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, made it in some degree palpable to insular comprehension. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... hardly be doubted, when we recall the great influence his teachings have had, and the peculiar bitterness of that dramatic personage for England, for England's pretentiousness, her middle class satisfaction, her insular conceit. ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... and frail, and he did not think there was anything she could turn her hand to in a vigorous mining community. The same applied to his companion, though he was not greatly astonished that she had taken him into her confidence. The reserve that characterizes the insular English is less common in the West, where the stranger is more ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Flattery Adulatory Fire Igneous Faith Fiducial Foot Pedal Groin Inguinal Guardian Tutelar Glass Vitreous Grape Uveous Grief Dolorous Gain Lucrative Help Auxiliary Heart Cordial, cardiac Hire Stipendiary Hurt Noxious Hatred Odious Health Salutary, salubrious Head Capital, chief Ice Glacial Island Insular King Regal, royal Kitchen Culinary Life Vital, vivid, vivarious Lungs Pulmonary Lip Labial Leg Crural, isosceles Light Lucid, luminous Love Amorous Lust Libidinous Law Legal, loyal Mother Maternal Money Pecuniary Mixture Promiscuous, miscellaneous ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... the sea and exactly round, being about a quarter, of a league in circuit, upon which the city of Swakem is built; not one foot of ground on the whole island but is replenished with houses and inhabitants, so that the whole island, is a city. On two sides this insular city comes within a bow-shot of the main land, that is on the E.S.E. and S.W. sides, but all the rest is farther from the land. The road, haven, or bay surrounds the city on every side to the distance of a cross-bow shot, in all of which space, ships may anchor in six or seven fathoms ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... area altered the central position of England? Not at all, save to strengthen it. If you look at the hemisphere of greatest land, you will see that England occupies its exact middle. Insular herself, and therefore all made up of ports, she is nearer all ports in the world than any other country is or ever can be. I don't say that this insures for her perpetual dominion, such as Virgil prophesied ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... our insular type of mind. An empty dhow is passed which E14 was going to leave alone, but it occurs to her that the boat looks "rather deserted," and she fancies she sees two heads in the water. So she goes back half a mile, picks up a couple of badly exhausted men, frightened ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... adopt it boldly to design these qualities. Skeltery, then, is a quality of much art. It is even to be found, with reverence be it said, among the works of nature. The stagey is its generic name; but it is an old, insular, home-bred staginess; not French, domestically British; not of to-day, but smacking of O. Smith, Fitzball, and the great age of melodrama; a peculiar fragrance haunting it; uttering its unimportant message in a tone of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... detested the doctrines which were then taking root in the land. Against the cabals of Rome, the navies of Spain, and the armies of France,—alike hostile and dangerous,—England could make but a feeble show of physical forces, and was protected only by her insular position. The public dangers were so imminent that there was needed not only a strong hand but a stout heart and a wise head at the helm. Excessive caution was necessary, perpetual vigilance was imperative; a single imprudent measure might be fatal in such exigencies. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... 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 removal of many of the restraints ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... of the inhabitants in the different continents Relation of range in genera and species Distribution of the inhabitants in the same continent Insular Faunas Alpine Floras Cause of the similarity in the floras of some distant mountains Whether the same species has been created more than once On the number of species, and of the classes to which they ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... those whose friendship was best worth having in Boston and its neighborhood. His thorough scholarship, the result of the best English training, and his intrinsic qualities caused his society to be sought and prized by the most cultivated and thoughtful men. He had nothing of insular narrowness, and none of the hereditary prejudices which too often interfere with the capacity of English travellers or residents among us to sympathize with and justly understand habits of life and of thought so different from those to which they have been accustomed. His liberal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... thought as well as in dress, and the best of us follow both, as sheep follow their leader. We will sometimes follow our neighbor's line of insular prejudice, when worlds could not bribe us to copy her grammar or her gowns. Dull people admire youth. They excuse its follies; they adore its prettiness. That it is only a period of education, and that real life begins with maturity, does not ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... contain an acute transcript of life as only a sensitive feminine mind would have the cunning to observe it, and of a form of human life in itself highly feminine in its character, but they now present a singularly insular travesty of man, an unconscious caricature of man as he could only appear to a feminine mind bound by the romantic limitations of sex, a mind, that is, devoid of masculine understanding, unable to recognise by virtue of affiliation of instinct that which is fine in the male ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... hitherto found impracticable to bring the parties to an understanding satisfactory to both. The relative geographical position and the respective products of nature cultivated by human industry had constituted the elements of a commercial intercourse between the United States and British America, insular and continental, important to the inhabitants of both countries; but it had been interdicted by Great Britain upon a principle heretofore practiced upon by the colonizing nations of Europe, of holding the trade of their colonies each ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... who know 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 keep on hand, and when Lord Haldane in ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... illustrious Charles Howard, the Second Neptune of the Ocean, and Edward Stafford our most prudent Ambassador at the Court of France, in order to accomplish great deeds by sea and land. But since by your skill in the art of navigation you clearly saw that the chief glory of an insular kingdom would obtain its greatest splendor among us by the firm support of the mathematical sciences, you have trained up and supported now a long time, with a most liberal salary, Thomas Hariot, a young ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... would interpret the "chain," or "sweet influences" of K[i]mah "Sirius the dog," by assuming that the Jews considered that the dog was mad, and hence was kept chained up. More important still, he fails to recognize that the Jews had a continental climate in a different latitude from the insular climate of Greece, and that both their agricultural and their weather conditions were different, and would be associated with different ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... Moses, Joshua, kings of Judah and Nehemiah. And as we have seen, this ordinance was observed by Christians in the time of the apostles, so their practice may be traced through history afterwards, however obscure, until the time of the Reformation from Popery; when in Europe, both continental and insular, this ordinance was revived and exemplified. Among all nations in Christendom Scotland stands preeminent since first emancipated from bondage in mystical Babylon, for the frequency and fidelity of her ecclesiastical and ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... beneficial effects are clearly manifest. The 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
... in London Huxley's work was most varied. A large number of anonymous articles by him appeared in the Literary Gazette, and in other periodicals. He assisted to remove the insular narrowness from English scientific work by translating many foreign memoirs. With the collaboration of Mr. Henfrey, he edited a series of scientific memoirs, all of which were translated from foreign ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... solution Of earth's municipal, insular schisms,— Statesmen draping self-love's conclusion In cheap vernacular patriotisms, Unable to give up Judaea ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Jill, who by involuntarily harking back to the insular belief that the veriest heathen will quake in unison with the British culprit at the mere threat of British law, showed the absolute yarborough she held in this game, the stakes of which she guessed were something more precious than life itself, and in which ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the lady to be in England. Even in France she is not that, and between the Frenchwoman and the Italian there are the Alps. In a word, the educated Italian mondaine is, in the sense (also untranslatable) of singular, insular, and absolutely British usage, a Native. None the less would she be surprised to find herself accused of a ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... cheap literature, and the like, there came, of course, increased knowledge, a wider outlook. No discipline came with it, and one of its earliest products was a nervous dread of being thought behind the time, of being called ignorant, narrow-minded, insular. People would do anything to avoid this. They went to the length of interlarding their speech and writings with foreign words often in ignorance of the meaning of those words. Broad-minded, catholic, tolerant, cosmopolitan—those were the descriptive ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... said that though the subtropical scenery on the outer Himalaya was on a much more gigantic scale, it was not comparable in beauty and luxuriance with the really tropical vegetation induced by the hot, damp, and insular climate of those perennially humid Khasia Hills. The forest of gigantic trees on the Himalaya, many of them deciduous, appear from a distance as masses of dark grey foliage, clothing mountains 10,000 feet high. Whereas in the Khasia Hills the individual ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... upon 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 the others: 'In all the ten years it had not a single death by measles, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... ... to ... 800 bags (of 100 lbs. net each) of Standard Fine Granulated Sugar at ... cents per pound, manufactured in the United States or insular possessions, packed in cotton-lined burlap bags, deliverable from licensed warehouse in Chicago between the first and last days of ... inclusive. Delivery within such time to be at Seller's option, upon seven, eight or nine days' notice to the ...
— About sugar buying for Jobbers - How you can lessen business risks by trading in refined sugar futures • B. W. Dyer
... an insular point in space; Yet, what man stirs a finger, breathes a sound, But all the multitudinous beings round In all the countless worlds, with time and place For their conditions, down to the central base, Thrill, haply, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... commercial supremacy had not yet really begun. England was without a rival. Her navies controlled the sea. Her armies and her insular position gave her peace at home. The world was hers to exploit. For nearly fifty years she dominated the European, American, and Indian trade, while the great wars then convulsing society were destroying possible competitive capital and straining consumption to its utmost. The pioneer ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... by the charm of English society, filled with admiration of the people, tempted to contrast his New Englanders in many respects unfavorably with Old Englanders, mainly in their material and vital stamina; but with all this not blinded for a moment to the thoroughly insular limitations of the phlegmatic islander. He alternates between a turn of genuine admiration and a smile as at a people that has not outgrown its playthings. This is in truth the natural and genuine feeling of a self-governing citizen of a commonwealth where thrones and ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... with any certainty, was not in a true sense possessed. Let it be understood, however, that it was not the correct and original pronunciation that we cared for—that has perished probably beyond recall, even in the case of Greek, in spite of the Asiatic and the Insular Greeks—what we demanded in vain was any pronunciation whatever that should be articulate, apprehensible, and intercommunicable, such as might differentiate the words: whereas a system of mere vowels too inadequately strengthened by consonants, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 deplorable, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... readily gather that I am severely taciturn at a table d'hote. I refrain from joining in the "delightful conversation" which flies across the table, and know that my reticence is attributed to "insular pride." It is really and truly nothing but impatience of commonplace. I thoroughly enjoy good talk; but, ask yourself, what are the probabilities of hearing that rare thing in the casual assemblage of forty or fifty people, not ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... granted. The Hurons account for its origin; a speck of earth was fished out of the waters and grew. In M. H. de Charencey's tract Une Legende Cosmogonique (Havre, 1884) this legend is traced. M. de Charencey distinguishes (1) a continental version; (2) an insular version; (3) a mixed and Hindoo version. Among continental variants he gives a Vogul version (Revue de Philologie et d'Ethnographie, Paris, 1874, i. 10). Numi Tarom (a god who cooks fish in heaven) hangs a male and female above the abyss of waters in a silver cradle. He gives them, later, just ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... only enjoyment which one man does not envy another. All this is whimsical enough; but doubtless we are more operated on by the weather than by any thing else. Perhaps this is because we are islanders; for talk to an "intellectual" man about the climate, and out comes something about our "insular situation, aqueous vapours, condensation," &c. Then take up a newspaper on any day of a wet summer, and you see a long string of paragraphs, with erudite authorities, about "the weather," average annual depth of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... ruefully. Her French was of the British school-girl variety, grammatically precise, but with a hopeless, insular accent. After a few attempts Stefan had ceased trying to speak it with her. "Darling," he had begged, "don't let us—it is the only ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... their Saxon and Danish ancestors seems to have died out. There was a general indisposition to change, and except in her ecclesiastical buildings, England made but little progress in civilization from the time of Alfred to that of Harold. Its insular position cut it off from taking part in that rapid advance which, beginning in Italy, was extending throughout Europe. The arrival, however, of the impetuous Norman race, securing as it did a close connection ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... the amusements entered into by the nobility and gentry of our island there is not one so manly, so exciting, so patriotic, or so national, as yacht-sailing. It is peculiar to England, not only for our insular position and our fine harbours, but because it requires a certain degree of energy and a certain amount of income rarely to be found elsewhere. It has been wisely fostered by our sovereigns, who have felt that the ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Elba runs in a nearly north and south direction, Piombino lying off about north-northeast from its northern extremity. Near this northern extremity lies the little rocky islet so often mentioned, or the spot which Napoleon, fifteen years later, selected as the advanced redoubt of his insular empire. Of course the Proserpine was on one side of this islet and the strange lugger on the other. The first had got so far through the Canal as to be able to haul close upon the wind, on the larboard tack, and yet to ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... were sent to Flanders; the English officers learned the theory and practice of war in the best of all schools, and under the best of all teachers; that ignorance of the military art, the result in every age of our insular situation, and which generally causes the four or five first years of every war to terminate in disaster, was for the time removed, and that mighty genius was developed under the eye of Louis XIV., ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... but essentially English. It has a character of its own,—a character which has taken a tinge from the sentiments of the chivalrous ages, and which accords with the peculiarities of our manners and of our insular situation. It has a language, too, of its own, and a language singularly idiomatic, full of meaning to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... or three days more would have sufficed to demonstrate the insular character of Cuba, and would doubtless have made Columbus ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... been rapid, and she owed her advancement to a combination of circumstances. In the first place, her insular position rendered her almost impervious to attack, and she had therefore no occasion to keep on foot any army, and was able to throw all her strength on to the sea, where Genoa was her only formidable rival. In the second place, her mercantile ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... to return to the beloved isle, and after a few years they did so with the intention of ending their days on their own lands; but the demon of modern life had bitten deep into their hearts; they wearied of the monotonous insular existence, with its narrow limitations; they could not forget the new cities on the other continent, and finally they sold their property, or gave it to their family, and sailed away to return ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... teeming traffic, was no new scene to me, for I had spent pleasant days in it three years before. An American in America is a very pleasant fellow. It is true that on many social points and habits his views may differ from ours in a manner very shocking to our prejudices, insular or insolent, as these prejudices of ours too frequently are; but meet him with fair allowance for the fact that there may be two sides to a question, and that a man may not tub every morning and yet be a good fellow, and in nine cases ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... they would call your insular prejudice. We are accustomed to less self-assertion on the part of women than is customary with them. We prefer women to rule us by seeming to yield. In the States, as I take it, the women never yield, and the men have to fight their own battles ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... 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 it was to transplant among a barbarous people, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... make that popular;) or a sketch of cock fighting among the ancients to the Monthly Record; or an essay on Ayahs in India to an American magazine; or a biography of Washington or Lincoln to any English magazine whatever. We have them every month in some American periodicals, and our poor insular serials can get on without them: ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... customs that give an individuality to a nation, and John Bull abroad loses none of his insular obstinacy; but keeps his Christmas in the old fashion, and wears his clothes in the new fashion, without regard to heat or cold. A nation that never surrenders to the fire of an enemy cannot be expected to give in to the fire of the sun, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... earnestly hoping the downfall, and the other as confidently predicting and as sincerely desiring, the durability of Republican Institutions. If there had been no such common Humanity, then we should not have seen this tide of emigration from insular and continental Europe flowing into our country through the channels of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the Mississippi,—ebbing, however, always with the occasional rise of the hopes of freedom abroad, and always swelling again into greater volume ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... look—meinzelf I shmoke a bipe, mit baintings on ze bowl, I shtoffs him vith dat sheepstabak vat's dwisted in a roll, I gif my vort it ton't daste pad—zough yust a leedle veak— Shtill, ven I schmokes inzide a drain,—I vinds zom laties seeck! (Amiable surprise, as you mention this instance of insular intolerance.) Bot, zere, you makes me chadderbox, and dakes op all my dime! I vant to dell you how mein vriend behafed himself sooblime: "If you vill pe mein Braut," he zaid, "tobaggo I'll renounce, And shvear to nefer puy no more von solidary ounce!" Zo she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... the only 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 board, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... 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 ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... thwarted and intercepted at every turn by the abominable ghost of British Protection. What a blessing it would have been if the meddlesome palaverers of the Cobden Club, American as well as English, could ever have been made to understand the essentially insular character of Protection and the essentially continental character ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ideas, like all other forms of human thought, move more or less in shoals. Very rarely does a great discovery emanate from an isolated observer. The man who cannot come in contact with other workers in kindred lines becomes more or less insular, narrow, and unfitted for progress. Nowadays, of course, the free communication between different quarters of the globe takes away somewhat from the insularity of any quarter, and each scientist everywhere knows something of what the others are doing, through wide-spread publications. But ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... (Department of Transportation), National Center for Medical Intelligence (Department of Defense), National Geospatial-Intelligence 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), Oil & Gas Journal, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... after heavy rain. No cat is so afraid of water for herself, as I am grown to be for you. That panic, which will last for many months, adds to my fervent desire of your returning early in the autumn, that you may have neither fresh water nor the "silky" ocean to cross in winter. Precious as our insular situation is, I am ready to wish with the Frenchman, that you could somehow or other get to it by land,— Oui, c'est une isle toujours, je le sais bien; mais, par exemple, en allant d'alentour, n'y auroit-il pas moyen d'y arriver ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... sufficient to, but not in excess of, the requirements of the general welfare. In this particular distinctiveness of characteristic, which has thus differentiated the receptivity of the Japanese from that of the continental Asiatic, we may perhaps see the influence of the insular environment that has permitted and favored the evolution of a strong national personality; and in the same condition we may not err in finding a promise of power to preserve and to propagate, by example and by influence, among those akin to her, the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... yet in the oblivion to which he had consigned it. But in recompense for this, there was a very black cloud darkening the horizon of 1554. The Queen had announced to her Parliament her intended marriage with Prince Philip of Spain. All the old insular prejudices against foreigners rose up to strengthen the Protestant horror of a Spanish and Popish King. The very children in the streets were heard to cry, "Down with the Pope and the Spaniards!" Elizabeth ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... people in the world. Place a Briton and an American, of average parts and breeding, on board a Rhine steam-boat, and it is almost certain that the Yankee will mix up, so to speak, the better of the two. The gregarious habits of our continental neighbours are more familiar to him than to his insular kinsman, and he is not tormented like the latter by the perpetual fear of failing, either in what is due to himself or to others. His manners will probably want polish and dignity; he will be easy rather than graceful, communicative rather than affable; but he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... geographical tie was strongest, language and geography together could carry the day, and the continental Norman became a Frenchman. In the islands, where the geographical tie was less strong, political traditions and manifest interest carried the day against language and a weaker geographical tie. The insular Norman did not become a Frenchman. But neither did he become an Englishman. He alone remained Norman, keeping his own tongue and his own laws, but attached to the English crown by a tie at once of tradition and of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... 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 ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... those centuries of momentous change, when the wreck of the Roman Empire threatened civilization and Christianity with ruin like its own, the civilization and Christianity of the great district between the Loire, the Alps, and the Pyrenees rested mainly on the Abbey of Lerins. Sheltered by its insular position from the ravages of the barbaric invaders who poured down on the Rhone and the Garonne, it exercised over Provence and Aquitaine a supremacy such as Iona till the Synod of Whitby exercised over Northumbria. All the more illustrious sees of Southern Gaul ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... up to the bright warmth like an animal, and forgot. And he became part of the marvellous and complicated splendour of the scene, took pride in it, took even credit for it (Heaven knew why!), and gradually passed from insular astonishment to a bland, calm acceptance of the miracles of sensuous beatitude which ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... 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. By the strength of the ice, however, every point became exposed, and in that unforeseen ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... during the Middle Ages was of a twofold character. The first, Christian and Latin, was found all over Europe, and made the protection and extension of knowledge, its chief object. The other was a more insular literature for each nation, and always in the language of the people. Theodoric the Goth, Charlemagne, and Alfred the Great, the chief patrons of the literature of their age, sought to carry on, side by side, and to improve, these two literatures, the ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis |
