"Insecurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... misery and insecurity of the Uitlanders, the atrocity of the Government, and the uncloaked hostility to Great Britain that has existed till now, we may quote a description of the situation given last year by Professor ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... fine moonlight night, as we have already said, when Father Philip approached this bridge, the singular construction of which gives a curious idea of the insecurity of the times. The river was not in flood, but it was above its ordinary level—a heavy water, as it is called in that country, through which the monk had no particular inclination to ride, if he could ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... better than any other form of government, and is as bad as aristocracy or pure monarchy, under both of which modes of governing states there have been civil wars, heavy expenditures, much suffering for all classes of men, and great insecurity for life and property. Assuredly, democracy never could hope for a fairer field than has here existed; and if here it has failed, the friends of democracy must suffer everywhere, and the cause of democracy receive a check from which it cannot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... do away with all interest on money. Interest on money is the root and ground of the world's troubles. It puts one man in a position of safety, while another is in a condition of insecurity, and thereby it at once creates a ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... far in the arts without healthy doses of both ego and insecurity, and the downside of being able to google up all the things that people are saying about your book is that it can play right into your insecurities — "all these people will have it in their minds not to bother with my book because they've ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... rich and the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful, the idle and the diligent, the luxurious and the austere. For, what with the limits of digestion, the practical impossibility of wearing two neckties at once, the insecurity of investments, the responsibilities of wealth and of success, the exhaustingness of the search for pleasure, and the cheapness of travel—the real differences between one sort of plain man and another are slight in these times. (And ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... the difficulty of getting horses, and the terrible insecurity of the roads, partly from the desire to get Clement to attend to Cardinal de Retz's warning and escape with us. There was no difficulty on his mother's account. She was longing to enter Port Royal, and only delayed to keep house for him, with many doubts whether she ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a strange new sense of insecurity, unhappiness and forlornness crept increasingly upon him. He realised that he had that morning said good-bye to the town, and now he felt as though he had, in some way, hurt or insulted it. And, all the afternoon, he ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... memory of the world war was still maintaining in many countries a feeling of insecurity, which was represented in the candid statements in which, at the request of the Assembly, several of them had put forward the requirements of their national security, and the geographical and political considerations ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... wonderfully sagacious in a wild state in preserving themselves from accidents, to which, from their bulk and immense weight, they would be particularly liable, such as the crumbling of the verge of a precipice, the insecurity of a bridge or the suffocating depth of mud ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... There, projected out into the night, were the cables of steel holding the frail platform over the abyss of night and terror. Beyond was Canada. There was light enough in the sky to reveal, but not to dissipate, the appalling insecurity. What an impious thing it seemed to them, this trembling structure across the chasm! They advanced upon it. There were gleams on the mill cascades below, and on the mass of the American Fall. Below, down in the gloom, were patches of foam, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... comforted in respect of the continued absence of CHANCELLOR of the Duchy. 'Tis a touching trait, illustrating the high level of human nature the Commons reach. Had it been MASTERMAN'S political friends who mourned his absence, recognising in it cause of insecurity for the Empire, situation would be natural and comprehensible. It is from the so-labelled enemy's camp that lamentation is sounded. WORTHINGTON EVANS, MASTERMAN'S severest censor whilst he still sat on Treasury Bench in charge of Insurance Act, is in especial degree inconsolable. Physically ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... same sense of insecurity was felt, the india-rubber-like film giving way easily and springing up again, while the old muttering and murmuring noises thrilled beneath ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear. After this the universe was changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before, and that I have never felt since.[83] It was like a revelation; and although the immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. It gradually faded, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... left to woman, but a general looseness of grammar, and a conscious insecurity in the matter of spelling, stand in the way of literary expression of the burning thoughts within her. All she can do is to moan over her lot and to take refuge in the works of Miss Hominy. There she learns the great theory of the equality of the sexes, the advancement of woman ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... in a day—that same day. Every hour, after the sailing of the Crusader, had he become more anxious; for every hour brought intelligence of some new act of outlawry in the neighbourhood, impressing him with the insecurity, not only of his Penates, but the lives of himself and his ladies. So long as the British ship lay in port, it seemed a protection to him; and although this may have been but fancy, it served somewhat to tranquillise his fears. Soon as she was gone, he gave way to ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... fact, there is no evidence that the mercy which Parliament was disposed to show was in any way restricted by such influence. Hyde, at least, made no effort to curtail the exemptions made by Parliament. His only anxiety was that the Act should pass speedily, so that the sense of insecurity should disappear, and the path of reconciliation should be open. In his own words, "It was then, and more afterwards, imputed to the Chancellor, that there were no more exceptions in the Act of Indemnity, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... their appointments, which accustomed them to an ease of living with which they could no longer dispense. If he made them grants of land, it was out of his conquests, which were exposed to insecurity by war, and which war ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... good deal to the feeling of insecurity felt at the residency; and to counteract this the ship's carpenters were set to work to contrive stout shutters with loopholes for barricading, and also ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... hubs, as the case might be, seemed like roads of Paradise to the young man. Although he himself grieved for Gordon's wife, and Gordon himself filled him with covert anxiety, yet he was young and the girl was young, and they were both released from a miserable sense of insecurity and mystery, which had irritated and saddened them; their thoughts now turned toward their own springtime, as naturally and innocently as flowers bloom. There was grief, and the shadow of trouble, but of past trouble; their eyes ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... whose huge arms met and intertwined with each other across it, filling the arch they made with a solemn darkness even in the noon of day. At night, however, the obscurity was black and palpable; and such upon this occasion was its awful solemnity and stillness, and the sense of insecurity occasioned by the almost supernatural gloom about him, that Woodward could not avoid the idea that it afforded no bad conception of the entrance to the world of darkness and of spirits. He had not proceeded far, however, under this dismal canopy, when an incident occurred which tested ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... whole body of the testimony of the defense was shown to be irrelevant, introduced only to excite sympathy, and not giving a color of probability to the absurd supposition of insanity. The attorney then dwelt upon, the insecurity of life in the city, and the growing immunity with which women committed murders. Mr. McFlinn made a very able speech; convincing the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he read in her eyes? A confession of insecurity, fear; a mute appeal? Before it all his doubts and misgivings vanished; the look they exchanged was like that when she had stood on the staircase ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... horror the story of a Roman knight who was beaten to death by the servants of his household, and, though he admits that the knight had been cruel and overbearing, such an untimely fate brought home to him the insecurity of all masters—that insecurity which led the Romans to punish with such merciless severity any attack by a slave upon his owner. Not that Pliny had any cause for self-reproach! He tells us in a charming letter his rule of conduct with his dependants, ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... very stupid," resumed the old lady after a slight pause, her face grown grave again, "but for weeks past, even before this happened, I've had such an odd sense of insecurity, a presentiment of trouble. I'm not given to feelings of that kind, which makes this one more noticeable. I can't explain it, but there it is—a kind of foreboding that ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... in the boat; the even more tedious happenings in the local law-court; the very externals—relaxing wind and fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena—the jovial immoderation of everything and everybody: they foster a sense of violence and insecurity; they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... traced us; and though for the moment we were secure, because we never went abroad, and could not have been naturally sought in such a neighborhood, still that very circumstance would eventually operate against us. At length, every night I dreamed of our insecurity under a thousand forms; but more often by far my dreams turned upon our wrongs; wrath moved me rather than fear. Every night, for the greater part, I lay painfully and elaborately involved, by deep ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... diminishing and the suffering from disease increasing. The question inevitably arises, Is this a consequence of our political system? and if so, is political liberty worth having, are democratic principles worth establishing, if the price to be paid for them is increased insecurity of life and greater wretchedness among the poor? If the origin of these evils is to be found in the incompetency of the government or the inefficiency of individuals in a democracy, a remedy must be applied, or the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Amphictyonic unions, and of frequenting each other's religious festivals, was the great means of creating and fostering the primitive feeling of brotherhood among the children of Hellen, in those early times when rudeness, insecurity, and pugnacity did so much to isolate them. A certain number of salutary habits and sentiments, such as that which the Amphictyonic oath embodies, in regard to abstinence from injury as well as to mutual protection, gradually found their way into men's minds: the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... sort of wilfulness as Bull's, the salve abject submission to it which we behold in his tidal bodies of supporters. Neptune has done something. One thinks he has done much, at a rumour of his inefficiency to do the utmost. Spy you insecurity?—a possibility of invasion? Then indeed the colossal creature, inaccessible to every argument, is open to any suggestion: the oak-like is a reed, the bull a deer. But as there is no attack on his shores, there is no proof that they are invulnerable. Neptune is appealed to and replies by mouth of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... first glance at this, the most disaffected part of Ireland. On reaching Claremorris, in the heart of the most disturbed district, I certainly felt, and not for the first time, that as one approaches a spot in which law and order are supposed to be suspended the sense of alarm and insecurity diminishes, to put it mathematically, "as the square of the distances." Even after a rapid survey of this part of the West I cannot help contrasting the state of public opinion here with that prevailing ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... a great patch of burned timber; and the wind blew it along the ground towards us. It was cool, for the sun was hidden by light clouds, but not cold. The ground under foot was slightly warm. I had expected to feel some dread, or shrinking, or at least some sense of insecurity, but I did not the slightest, then or afterwards; and I think mine is the usual experience. I had no more sense of danger on the edge of the crater than I had in the streets ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... receded at the bottom I was unable to determine, for the light of one candle was of very little use at so great a distance, and in darkness so profound. I persuaded the maire to make an effort to reach a point from which he could see the insecurity of the ice which had seemed to form so solid a floor; and he was so much impressed by what he saw, that he fled with precipitation from the cave, and we eventually found him asleep under a bush ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... 1869 removed one important grievance in the affairs of Ireland, Mr. Gladstone soon proceeded to another, and in February, 1870, brought forward, in a crowded House, his Irish Land Bill. The evil which he had in view to cure was the insecurity of tenure, which resulted in discouraging and paralyzing the industry of tenants, especially in the matter of evictions for non-payment of rent, and the raising of rents on land which had been improved by them. As they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... hundred scoundrels—that there was a great deal of talk about taking it up in Parliament and proposing his expulsion, which, however, they have not had the folly to do. The Irish Bill was to come on last night. The sense of insecurity and uneasiness evidently increases; the Government assumes a high tone, but is not at all certain of its ability to pass the Coercive Bills unaltered, and yesterday there appeared an article in the 'Times' in a style of lofty reproof and severe admonition, which was no doubt as appalling as it ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Delphine turned back. With swift intuition Miss Lady caught the conviction that some relationship existed between these two which she herself did not understand. A sudden sense of insecurity possessed her, mingled with the reflection that the master of the Big House was ignorant of what arrested drama was here going on under his own roof. If she dared but tell the master what she suspected—ah! then perhaps this comfortable landscape, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... of indifference. In my earliest criticisms of the Origin I ventured to point out that its logical foundation was insecure so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... this picture of insecurity and unrest to another figure which possesses most advantageous social properties. I refer to the ellipse. An ellipse is a curve formed by the section of a cone by a plane surface inclined at an angle to the vertical axis of the cone, greater than the angle ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... except in that impersonal, yet so important matter of roots; Amabel had known a little irritation over Mrs. Grey's open manoeuvreings; but on this morning of rudderless tossing, Marjory appeared in a new aspect. How sound; how safe. It was of Augustine's insecurity rather than of Augustine himself that she was thinking as she said: "She is such a ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... to them that they were, as a class, both arrogant and luxurious, and would, indeed, have long ago become insupportable, only that the fabric which their rapacity was for ever striving to erect, their extravagance as perpetually undermined. I further commented upon the insecurity of any institution dependent solely upon prescription. Finding these suggestions unpalatable, I next addressed myself ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... sinecures, and the relics of his private fortune, afforded him a decent support; he was surrounded by people of his own principles; and as all the strength of the King's cause was concentrated about the seat of the court, every apprehension of personal insecurity was at an end. He was now, therefore, in a state of comparative comfort; man is seldom placed in a better; and in times like those I describe, a good ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... house of the deceased, or to a small bark-house by its side, prepared for their reception. In this manner the skeletons of the whole family were preserved from generation to generation by the filial or parental affection of the living After the lapse of a number of years, or in a season of public insecurity, or on the eve of abandoning a settlement, it was customary to collect these skeletons from the whole community around and consign them ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... would increase. When one reached the disturbed districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with by a vigorous administration of the existing law. Unfortunately, the so-called "better classes," full of bitterness against the Liberal Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till it was too ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... three is the broadening of our program of social legislation to alleviate the causes of workers' insecurity. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... most important is the feeling of insecurity aroused by doubt as to the beliefs by which we are in the habit of regulating our lives. Whoever has tried to explain the philosophy of Berkeley to a plain man will have seen in its unadulterated form the anger aroused by this ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... paying for a house and lot. Psychiatry is demonstrating the after-effects of fear upon the minds of children, but little has yet been done to show how far that fear of the future, arising from economic insecurity in the midst of new surroundings, has superinduced insanity among newly arrived immigrants. Such a state of nervous bewilderment and fright, added to that sense of expectation which youth always carries into new surroundings, ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... with boats, the only way of approach was over the bridge. But the very fact that they resorted to lakes, where at the expense of great labor they erected their villages, is a striking illustration of the insecurity of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... issued writs of arrest and banishment, and utterly ignored all authority but their own. A good many men were banished and forced to leave the country, but they were of that class we could well spare. Yankee Sullivan, a prisoner in their custody, committed suicide, and a feeling of general insecurity pervaded the city. Business was deranged; and the Bulletin, then under control of Tom King, a brother of James, poured out its abuse on some of our best men, as well as the worst. Governor Johnson, being again appealed to, concluded to go to work regularly, and telegraphed me about the 1st ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... in most human affairs. He felt at the moment like a tight-rope artist might feel if suddenly, in the middle of the performance, the manager of the Music Hall were to rush out of the proper managerial seclusion and begin to shake the rope. Indignation, the sense of moral insecurity engendered by such a treacherous proceeding joined to the immediate apprehension of a broken neck, would, in the colloquial phrase, put him in a state. And there would be also some scandalised concern for his art too, since a man must identify himself with something more tangible than his own ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... in these days, when the spirit of discontent is so widespread, all illegal actions have, so to say, a political bearing, my lord, and all illegal actions are wicked, gentlemen of the Jury, since they tend towards the insecurity of society, or in other words, are definitely aimed at the very basis of all morality and religion. Therefore, my lord, I have received instructions from the Home Secretary to prosecute this woman, who, as I shall be able to prove to you, gentlemen of ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... crest, was what she might have expected—yet one can never become quite used to such pictures as that! Below was the first-line trench, deserted since the third division had been sent forward, and its emptiness gave her a feeling of insecurity. She would have preferred a visual line of stalwart fellows between her and the maddened enemy, instead of one that had gone into the smoke. She looked back to see if another division were coming up, but the intervening world seemed destitute of habitation, save along the smoke-fringed horizon where ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... after ten days of Monte Carlo, the Villa Bella Vista was full of the Dauntreys' paying guests, a cold sense of insecurity and trouble to come, which would be worse by and by than the bitter disappointment of the present, lay heavy upon Eve's heart. Her menage was uncomfortable, and people were threatening to go. Every day nearly she had a "scene" ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of your sister's death has grieved me more than I can express, and I beg to render you my heartfelt sympathy. Truly we live in a world where solemn shadows are continually falling upon our path—shadows that teach us the insecurity of all temporal blessings, and warn us that here "there is no abiding place." We have, however the blessed satisfaction of knowing that death cannot enter that sphere to which the departed are removed. Let hope and faith, my dear friend, mingle with your natural sorrow. Look to that future ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... arches of the central tower, and the substitution of a lighter lantern. When this was done, the great round arches east and west of the tower were changed into pointed arches, but those north and south were left unaltered. There is every probability that some signs of insecurity had made themselves evident. We have seen that three stages of the Norman tower were erected by Abbot William of Waterville. Though not so stated we infer from this that at least one more stage was afterwards added. In any case the tower must have been a very massive structure, considerably higher ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... mysterious-looking rocks, dimly seen through clouds of driving mist, adds a wild sublimity to the scene. While the boat struggles over the curling billows, at times lifted up by the ground-swells from below, the feeling of danger and insecurity is lost in the whirl of waters that surround you. The mind expands with the scene, and you rejoice in the terrific power that threatens to annihilate you and your fairy bark. A visible presence of the majesty of God is before you, and, sheltered by His protecting hand, you ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... stress and danger of the time have left an abiding sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind. I sit in my study writing by lamplight, and suddenly I see again the healing valley below set with writhing flames, and feel the house behind and about me empty and desolate. I go out into the Byfleet Road, and vehicles pass me, a butcher boy ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... moderate time, return the capital already expended, with a commensurate advantage. But these things can only take place provided the public tranquillity be maintained, and the government keep their engagements with foreigners inviolate. The insecurity arising from the domestic feuds now disturbing this fine country, must, if it continues, finally annihilate its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... with as much indifference as he would have parted with a dog. It was clearly explained to the youths that they would probably never return to their native country, but, as Cook observes, so great was the insecurity of life in New Zealand at that time, that he felt no compunction in the matter, as the lads could scarcely fail to improve their ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... of camels in the desert; or, a single herdsman, armed with blunderbuss and stiletto, and prowling over the plain. Thus the country, the habits, the very looks of the people, have something of the Arabian character. The general insecurity of the country is evinced in the universal use of weapons. The herdsman in the field, the shepherd in the plain, has his musket and his knife. The wealthy villager rarely ventures to the market-town without his trabuco, and, perhaps, a servant on foot with a blunderbuss on his shoulder; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... an obsequiousness as profound as that of the blacks. The readiness and ease with which they adapt themselves to these conditions ought not to be lost sight of by the colored people. The meaning is very important, and we should learn it. We are taught our insecurity by it. Without the means of living, life is a curse, and leaves us at the mercy of the oppressor to become his debased slaves. Now, colored men, what do you mean to do, for you must do something? The ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... abbots, and in 1789, when it was finally secularized, the four thousand monks of its earlier history had shrunk to four. Perhaps the most curious of all the buildings of Lerins is that which took its rise in the insecurity of its mediaeval existence. The Castle of Lerins, which lies on the shore to the south of the church, is at once a castle and an abbey. Like many of the great monasteries of the East, its first object was to give security to its inmates against the marauders who surrounded them. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... an arbitrary regime engenders almost always "demonomania." The insecurity of life, and the consecutive injustices in the cavils of the police administration, develop in society a reciprocal fear and distrust. From feeling themselves in danger of being denounced and menaced in their liberty, men rapidly become the prey of terror. And the terrible life, sooner or later, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... to stretch his lean limbs unduly, and a feeling of insecurity attending his first efforts to stand, he was not aware of any inconvenience from his ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... exaggeration of man's individuality lies in the fact that social activity is partly brought about in the satisfaction of the more egoistic impulses of the individual. "The fear motive drives men together in times of insecurity; the pugnacity motive bands them together for group combat; the economic motive brings industrial cooeperation and organization; the self-assertive and submissive tendencies bring emulation as well as obedience; the expansion of the self to cover one's family, one's clique, one's class, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... commonest events of every day you will find the flavor of past ages lingering in petty annoyances. The insecurity of the middle ages has left as a legacy to our times a complicated system of obstacles to a man getting into his own house at night. I lived in a pleasant house on the Prado, with a minute garden in front, and an iron gate and railing. This gate was shut and locked by the night watchman ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... said he, "if I missed nothing else at Santa Ysabel, I should long for—how shall I say it?—for insecurity, for danger, and of all kinds—not merely danger to the body. Within these walls, beneath these sacred bells, you live too safe for a ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... more than all the joyous animal movements of the kittens in his lap, seemed somehow to return to him that intimate relation to life which he had lost. He no longer felt the sensation of detachment, of insecurity in his surroundings; for his own individual existence had become in his eyes but a part of the enlarged universal existence of ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... I am contemplating a long series of exhaustive arguments designed to prove it your duty to leave your jewels where they are, in all their noble insecurity. This in the firm belief that to plead with you long enough to adopt this course will result in your going and doing otherwise ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... non-compliance led to active debate. In regard to the public debt it was said, "That it must, once for all, be defined and established on the faith of the States, solemnly pledged to each other, and not revocable by any, without a breach of the general compact." If a feeling of insecurity existed in regard to the property interests of the Nation when but thirteen legislative bodies assumed their control, how much greater is the insecurity of our personal interests if they are, as is assumed, under the control of thirty-seven separate legislative ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of these conceptions themselves, as also from a complete investigation of those derived from them, it abstains with reason; partly because it would be deviating from the end in view to occupy itself with this analysis, since this process is not attended with the difficulty and insecurity to be found in the synthesis, to which our critique is entirely devoted, and partly because it would be inconsistent with the unity of our plan to burden this essay with the vindication of the completeness of such an analysis and deduction, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... certain, that if either these materials be wanting, or the skill and capital necessary to work them up be prevented from forming, owing to the insecurity of property, to any other cause, the cultivators will soon slacken in their exertions, and the motives to accumulate and to increase their produce, will greatly diminish. But in this case there will be a very slack demand for labour; and, whatever may be the nominal cheapness ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus
... brooks they consisted of three pines covered with planks, without any parapet—with sometimes a plank out, and sometimes a hole in the middle. Over large streams they were wooden erections of a most peculiar kind, with high parapets; their insecurity being evidenced by the notice, "Walk your horses, according to law,"—a notice generally disregarded by our coachman, as he trotted his horses over ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the pride, the historic glamour, the fine breeding of the Old Regime, by which he had been fascinated, had they not fallen to pieces like a flower whose petals are scattered in the tempest? Even the burning hope of his heart, the dream of a life of earthly bliss with his love, was showing its insecurity and dropping asunder. His ship was sinking in the ocean of Eternity. How futile his intrigue, how mean his deceptions, how insufficient his excuses. The Everlasting Presence gazed through them, and in its all-illumining blaze they fell and sank ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... river for the purpose of washing it. Wooden beams are placed here and there to lessen the danger of caving in, but I must confess that in spite of this precaution I was at first haunted with a horrible feeling of insecurity. As I became reassured I repeated loudly those glorious lines ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... his cause. I wonder if this avowal will seem odd to Englishmen of the next century! To Englishmen of the present one, a Roman Catholic and a lover of priestcraft and tyranny are two words for the same thing; as if we could not murmur at tithes and taxes, insecurity of property or arbitrary legislation, just as sourly as any other Christian community. No! I never loved the cause of the Stuarts,—unfortunate, and therefore interesting, as the Stuarts were; by a very stupid and yet uneffaceable ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... influence their lives. There can be no question that wherever earthquakes occur in such a measure as to produce widespread terror, where, recurring from time to time, they develop in men a sense of abiding insecurity, they become potent agents of degradation. All the best which men do in creating a civilization rests upon a sense of confidence that their efforts may be accumulated from year to year, and that even after death the work of each man may remain as a heritage to his ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... of the best titles l absorbed during that research. l never miss an opportunity to help my readers discover that older books were written in an era before all intellectuals were afflicted with lifelong insecurity caused by cringing from an imaginary critical and nattery college professor standing over their shoulder. Older books are often far better than new ones, especially if you'll forgive them an occasional error in point of fact. We are not always discovering newer, better, and improved. Often we ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... before observed, was a very young man of not much experience as a seaman. I therefore felt that, under critical circumstances, my main support had fallen from me. It is needless to add, that a deep sense of forlornness and insecurity was the result of ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... triumphantly rode the canons of the upper Great Platte,) our present boat was only pasted together in a very insecure manner, the maker having been allowed so little time in the construction, that he was obliged to crowd the labor of two months into several days. The insecurity of the boat was sensibly felt by us; and, mingled with the enthusiasm and excitement that we all felt at the prospect of an undertaking which had never before been accomplished, was a certain impression of danger, sufficient to give a serious character to our ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... continue a discourse which was all darkness to me; and, besides, sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my penetration; at least, beyond its present reach; and feeling the uncertainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... post of a man rendered notorious by his contempt for authority, who already boasted of no less than thirty murders, and who had voluntarily placed himself in the lowest ranks of society, would be a thing absolutely incredible; but the Ocampos probably felt the insecurity of their authority, and were sufficiently sagacious to attempt, at least, to render that man a useful adherent or ally, who might, if allured by their foes, prove a terrible weapon against them. But they found in Quiroga no submissive servant. So openly did he disregard the injunctions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... in speaking of the "obituary method of appreciation," says that we feel a slight sense of impropriety and insecurity in contemporary plaudits. "Wait till he is well dead, and four or five decades of daisies have bloomed over him, says the world; then, if there is any virtue in his works, we will tag and label them and confer immortality upon him." But Mr. Burroughs ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... The feeling of insecurity had grown on her. It had something to do with Mona, with Maggie and Maggie's baby. She had no clear illumination, only a mournful acquiescence in her own futility, an almost physical sense of shrinkage, the ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... political atmosphere the Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, endeavored to bring about a turn for the better by effecting an understanding with England, in whose attitude he correctly recognized the real cause of the political insecurity. At this point attention must be called to the fundamental difficulty with which all negotiations at that time, and subsequently, were confronted, and necessarily confronted. In Germany it was seen very clearly from the start that the probability of a combined French-Russian ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Novelty ought to irritate him. All curiosity has thus a practical genesis. We need only look at the physiognomy of a dog or a horse when a new object comes into his view, his mingled fascination and fear, to see that the element of conscious insecurity or perplexed expectation lies at the root of his emotion. A dog's curiosity about the movements of his master or a strange object only extends as far as the point of deciding what is going to happen next. That ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... — N. danger, peril, insecurity, jeopardy, risk, hazard, venture, precariousness, slipperiness; instability &c 149; defenselessness &c adj., exposure &c (liability) 177; vulnerability; vulnerable point, heel of Achilles^; forlorn ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the Crown Prince of Prussia, Princess Alice of Hesse Darmstadt, and many other crowned heads and celebrities. It was a year of fetes and international courtesies. But in Paris itself there was a strange feeling of insecurity,—a fearful looking for something, society knew not what. "It seemed," said one who breathed the rarefied air in which lived the upper circles of society, "as if the air were charged with electricity; as if the shadows of coming events ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... individuality, must create an opposition and so beget an enemy. Not only do nations issue forth invigorated from their wars, but those nations torn by internal strife win peace at home as a result of war abroad. War indeed causes insecurity in property, but this real insecurity is only a necessary commotion. From the pulpits much is preached concerning the insecurity, vanity, and instability of temporal things, and yet every one, though he may be touched ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the insecurity and confusion. Berchtold vacillated, torn hither and thither by different influences. It was a question of hours merely; but they passed by and were not made use of, and disaster ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... be easy enough to do. I did it in The Right of Way. I did it in others of my books. What happens to one man and one woman does not necessarily happen to another. There are men who, for love of a woman, would not take advantage of her insecurity. There are others who would. In my books I have made both classes do their will, and both are true to life. It does not matter what one book is or is not, but it does matter that an author writes his book with a sense of the fitting ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... given, and from that day Sandy paid his blood money, hoping that greed would hold the child to her bargain, but with always a feeling of insecurity. He changed his box to another rock, but a certain uncanniness about Molly gained a power over him and he ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... During the insecurity of the Middle Ages, the seclusion of women for their own protection had been severely necessary. In the East the 'purdah-system' reached the length of excluding women of the better classes from the society of ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... lower the price of the precious metals. Their price depends on their cost of production; and it may be very much increased, even under the most favorable natural conditions, by the unskillfulness of labor, the dearness of the means of subsistence, of machinery and of auxiliary substances, by insecurity to property or to the person; by war, oppressive taxes(845) etc. The new mines can produce a decline in the price of the precious metals only to the extent that, for the same amount of capital and labor expended, they, spite of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... she observed, "but one hates the feeling of insecurity, all the same. Both my steward and stewardess are old friends. It must have been a very clever person who found his way ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid;—one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced. In the forest, as a breeze moved the trees, I felt only the earth tremble, but saw no other effect. Captain Fitz Roy and some officers were at the town during ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the war-horse or of the palfrey. From the twelfth century onward, the improvement in the comforts of living was not confined to the nobles and to rich burghers in cities. It was shared by the rural classes, notwithstanding the miseries—such as insecurity, and dangers of famine—that ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... belligerents, to say it again, put in the first line of their requirements security against renewed attacks, protection against the continuation of the insecurity of peace. Both admit that the proposed League of the Nations has become a necessity; both admit that it might indeed protect mankind against new wars and a state of incessantly endangered peace. Why then wait and let the disaster go on instead of proceeding ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... yelling at Moore, who in the insecurity of his tubbiness was jarred and almost overturned, "you're robbing them of their country. You're taking away the thing that keeps them from falling down on all-fours and going back to brute beasts. My God, Moore, you're a traitor! You ought to ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... other of our larger towns had followed suit. But in Horncastle the constable, by way of setting a thief to catch a thief, had, it was said, himself in his earlier years been a great smuggler, while in his age he was a spindle-shanked old man, whom a boy could knock down. Roused by the insecurity of property, the authorities decided to import a London detective, disguised in plain clothes. He came, and for a while marauders, among whom the secret soon leaked out, carefully stayed their hands. After a time, however, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... on from those anticipations of swaying insecurity to speculations about the psychological and physiological effects of flying. Most people who look down from the top of a cliff or high tower feel some slight qualms of dread, many feel a quite sickening dread. Even if men struggled ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... far nearer Verlaine in type. He had but the one thing to tell of, and that was lost love, and he told it over and over in his book of verse. His Pierrot of the Minute was himself, and his Cynara was the ever vanishing vision of his own insecurity and incapability. He perished for the love of hands. He is so like someone one knows, whom one wants to talk to tenderly, touch in a friendly way, and say as little as possible. He comes to one humanly first, and asks you for your ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... usurper of the kingdom of Macedon: "You discover nothing while your eye is fixed on Archelaus himself.... But when you turn to the persons whom he has killed, banished, or ruined—to the mass of suffering that he has inflicted—and to the widespread insecurity which such acts of iniquity spread through all societies where they become known—there is no lack of argument which prompts a reflecting spectator to brand him as [a most dangerous and destructive animal, no] a disgraceful man." (Grote's ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... had declared themselves against the Jacobin supremacy. Rich from commerce and their maratime situation, and, in the case of Lyons, from their command of internal navigation, the wealthy merchants and manufacturers of those cities foresaw the total insecurity of property, and in consequence of their own ruin, in the system of arbitrary spoliation and murder upon which the government of the Jacobins was founded. But property, for which they were solicitous, though, if its natural force is used in time, the most powerful barrier to withstand revolution, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... The sense of insecurity which obtains during the Sessions of the Raad is due scarcely less to the threats which are not fulfilled and attempts which do not succeed, than to what is actually compassed. A direct tax on gold has more than once been threatened; concessions for cyanide, jam, bread, biscuits, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... a lamentable fact that for the last hundred years a great nation has been reduced to such a state of insecurity, that no one dares to think of the future, though all have repudiated the past, and thus every thing is reduced for them to the present ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... fascinating, yet withal tormenting, insecurity in the intercourse preceding an actual Declaration of Love. It may be the ante-chamber to an earthly paradise. It may but prove to be a fool's paradise. George Eliot describes two of her characters as being "in ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... must ultimately lead to their separation from Great Britain. The present connection is undoubtedly an embarrassment to Great Britain in her relations to the United States and a source of uneasiness to the Dominion, owing to the insecurity which is felt to exist from the possibility of a rupture between the two nations. It cannot be the policy of England, and is certainly not the desire of the people here, to become annexed to the United States; but I believe the best, and indeed the only way to prevent this, is to teach the ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... the most inculpatory view of the question, and every circumstance in his delineation of the matter—the deeply-rooted ribbon conspiracy; the unredressed grievances of the persecuted Protestants at Achill, and the general insecurity of life and property, were, in his opinion, either created by the conduct of Lord Normanby, or had acquired an aggravated character under his auspices. In reply Lord Normanby vindicated his administration with very ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... immediately entered into a treaty with their envoy, and sent to their assistance eight companies of infantry and seventeen pieces of cannon, under the command of the English colonel, Temple. In the midst of this turmoil and apparent insecurity, the states-general proceeded in their great work, and assumed the reins of government in the name of the king. They allowed the council of state still nominally to exist, but they restricted its powers far within those it had hitherto exercised; and the government, thus absolutely assuming ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... was not speaking from any sense of personal insecurity," he explained. "But I wished you to understand the manner in which I prefer to ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... had become secure. The woollen manufacture in Worcestershire was spreading into the open country,[5] and, doubtless, in other counties as well; and the "beautiful houses" which had fallen into decay, were those which, in the old times of insecurity, had been occupied by wealthy merchants and tradesmen, who were now enabled, by a strong and settled government, to dispense with the shelter of locked gates and fortified walls, and remove their residences to more convenient situations. It was, in fact, the first symptom ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... him, that he believed it to be just; he had a tendernesse and compassion of nature, which restrayned him from ever doinge a hard hearted thinge, and therfore he was so apt to grant pardon to Malefactors, that his Judges represented to him the damage and insecurity to the publique that flowed from such his indulgence, and then he restrayned himselfe from pardoninge ether murthers or highway robberyes, and quickly decerned the fruits of his severity, by a wounderfull reformation of those enormityes. He was very punctuall and regular ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... to add terribly to the sense of insecurity felt by the Doctor, and Joses was not slow to ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... confirms the utterances of Asha; it is in Ahura himself that he and the kine place their confidence; to his will they submit themselves; the doubts and questions arising from their outward insecurity, they ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... empire of the Turk. But the individuality of peoples is not to be blotted out in a day; nor, with all its striking advance in wealth, in civilisation, and in military power, has the Magyar State been able to free itself from the insecurity arising from the presence of independent communities on its immediate frontiers belonging to the same race as those whose language and nationality ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Bonaparte's tent or barrack; and medals of William the Conqueror were produced, as having been dug up upon the same honoured spot. These were pleasant bodings, yet perhaps did not altogether, in the minds of the soldiers, counterbalance the sense of insecurity impressed on them by the prospect of being packed together in these miserable chaloupes, and exposed to the fire of an enemy so superior at sea, that during the chief consul's review of the fortifications, their frigates stood in shore with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... possible. Decidedly likely. Some, through lack of experience or understanding, or both, grow hard and bitter on the instant. They feel themselves astonishingly abased in the face of notable tenderness and sacrifice. Others collapse before the grave manifestation of the insecurity and uncertainty of life—the mystic chemistry of our being. Still others, taught roughly by life, or endowed with understanding or intuition, or both, see in this the latest manifestation of that incomprehensible chemistry ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... between the insecurity and peril of the old lake dwellings and the present safety of the town, open on all sides, unguarded and free from fear, is very marked. But not less complete is the contrast between the ancient hamlet, thus hidden for security ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... his relations with the Company had been adjudicated by the Courts. Under cover of these legal proceedings in the state courts, the New York Offices were forcibly entered, the books and securities of the Company removed and a feeling of insecurity and uncertainty aroused that caused a serious depreciation in the value of the securities they were endeavoring to market. W. M. Tweede being appointed receiver by the State Courts of such property of the Company as was ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... exceedingly cheap, in keeping out of the market the goods of his competitors. The predominant character of such a society is vast and boundless wealth, but, on the other hand, a great instability of all relations, an almost continual, anxious insecurity in the position of each individual, together with a very unequal sharing of the returns of production among ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... A sceptic may easily deride that confidence of theirs; their system may have been their system and nothing more. But the way to proceed if we wish to turn our shrewd suspicions and our sense of insecurity into an articulate conviction and to prove that they erred, is to build another system, a more modest one, perhaps, which will grow more spontaneously and inevitably in the mind out of the data of experience. Obviously the rival and critical ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... were by no means on the best of terms. Spanish war-vessels in the West Indies had been overhauling American merchantmen in a high-handed way, which had already called forth the remonstrances of our Government; and the complaints from Cuba of the insecurity of property and life of American citizens had become more numerous than ever. Still, the result of the dispute was a surprise to the world; especially as the overt act of rupture had come from Spain, and not from the United ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... The utter insecurity of woman without the ballot is shown in the reversal of this decision within a few months, by the Court of Appeals, on the ground that it would be "contrary to the policy of the law, and destructive to the conjugal union and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Methodist Church now occupies in the North-West. His station was one calling for rare tact and ability. The Riel Rebellion, and the disaffection of the Half-breed population, made his position at times one of danger and insecurity; but he proved himself to be equal to every emergency. In addition to the many duties devolving upon him in the establishment of the Church amidst so many discordant elements, a great many extra cares ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... was inert and vicious. He had, however, the wisdom to make Bemoin prime minister, and to throw all the cares and troubles of governing upon him. Nothing was heard in the kingdom but of Bemoin. But he, seeing, perhaps, the insecurity of his position, diligently made friends with the Portuguese, keeping aloof, however, from becoming a convert, though he listened respectfully to those who expounded the Christian faith to him. Cibitab, a brother of the inert Brian, by the father's side, became jealous ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps |
