"Insensibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was, perhaps, fifteen minutes later that he seemed to awake, and after a look over his shoulder stepped from the door into the yard. His mother was cooking, and he strolled down the path across the little clearing and entered the pines. Insensibly his pace quickened—he strode along the dusky path with as firm a step as if it were broad daylight. A quarter of a mile below the path crossed the little stream and joined the path from Cove Mills's place, which he used to take when he went to school. He crossed at the old log and turned ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... "The prose of the Restaurateur—which by the way sounds as if I were alluding to the literature of the Restauration,—hath insensibly superseded the poesy of the peerless Portuguese. Well, Gentlemen, in vain may 'sterner Albion' glory in the profusion of wealth and the pomp of 'glad repast,' unless also she breeds heroes to adventure and poets to celebrate. As you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... Italy in that capacity, and returned; and that she had long been in the same family. We really knew nothing whatever of her, except that she was remarkably business-like, punctual, self-reliant, and reliable: so I suppose we insensibly invented the rest. For myself, my mother was not a more real personage to me, than Miss ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... more plainly than by mere reference, how much I geologically owe you. Those authors, however, who like you, educate people's minds as well as teach them special facts, can never, I should think, have full justice done them except by posterity, for the mind thus insensibly improved can hardly perceive its own upward ascent." ("L.L." I. pages 337-8.) In another letter, to Leonard Horner, he says: "I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brain, and that I never acknowledge this sufficiently." ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... suspect any ulterior motive beneath the plan, and when Buck rode off about one o'clock, leading his pack-horse, his spirits rose insensibly at the ease with which things seemed to be ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... true, conservative ideas in regard to the binding force of marriage. There was always a great deal said on this subject, in a light way, by persons for whose opinions on other subjects she had the highest respect, and this had its influence. Insensibly her views and feelings changed, until she found herself, in some cases, the advocate of sentiments that once would have been ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... to reality, imagery forming in correspondence with the desires. In its fully developed form in adolescence," Venturi continues, "masturbation has an almost hallucinatory character; onanism at this period psychically approximates to the true sexual act, and passes insensibly into it. If, however, continued on into adult age, it becomes morbid, passing into erotic fetichism; what in the inexperienced youth is the natural auxiliary and stimulus to imagination, in the degenerate onanist of adult age is a sign of arrested development. Thus, onanism," the author ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... seemed thinner, older; she noticed his cheek bones for the first time. Then, meeting her eyes, youth returned with a laugh and a touch of colour; and, without understanding exactly how, she was aware, presently, that they had insensibly slipped back to their light badinage and gay inconsequences—back to a footing which, strangely, seemed to be already an old footing, familiar, pleasant, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of young women who are more capable than I am. Moreover, I saw that I was becoming a burden, and people called on me rather as a matter of duty than for any other reason. You don't know how soon all but the very best insensibly neglect very poor relatives if they are not gifted or attractive. I do not wonder at being made to feel this, nor do I blame anybody. My little girl is a cripple, my rooms are dull, and I have nothing in me with which to amuse or entertain visitors. Pardon my going into ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... find Some favourite system to their mind; In every point to make it fit, Will force all nature to submit. Cadenus, who could ne'er suspect His lessons would have such effect, Or be so artfully applied, Insensibly came on her side. It was an unforeseen event; Things took a turn he never meant. Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinet, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... mere passing traveller, who cares little for the minute beauties of scenery, there is certainly a monotony in the long and unbroken line of woods, which insensibly inspires a feeling of gloom almost touching on sadness. Still there are objects to charm and delight the close observer of nature. His eye will be attracted by fantastic bowers, which are formed by the scarlet creeper (or Canadian ivy) and the wild vine, flinging their closely-entwined wreaths ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... his pleasure, the wild boy made no reply but glanced at us with the utmost contempt when Big Pete went through some gestures in Indian sign language. The lad mutely pointed to the dead sheep, the sight of which seemed to enrage him again, for insensibly his fingers tightened on the bow and the wood began to curve after a manner which sent me ducking behind the sheltering stone again; but Big Pete only folded his arms across his broad chest and looked the ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... even to those of us long habituated to the hardships of border travel. Indeed, I know few forms of exertion that so thoroughly test the mettle of men as journeying across the wilderness. There are no artificial surroundings, either to inspire or restrain; and insensibly humanity returns to natural conditions, permitting the underlying savage to gain ascendency. I have seen more than one seemingly polished gentleman, resplendent with all the graces of the social code, degenerate into a surly brute with only a few hours of such isolation ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... consternation when in January I received an account of his death!" Most poignant were his sufferings under this affliction, which led him to God for comfort in prayer and Bible study. He says: "I began with the Acts, and found myself insensibly led to inquire more attentively into the doctrines of the Apostles." Writing to his sister, having announced shortly and with much simplicity that his name stood first upon the list at the college examination of the summer of 1800, he says: "What a blessing it is for me that I have such a ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... Ecliptick than he hath marked it, even without having any great regard to the Refractions: but since he would subject himself to others, he hath made it pass a little higher, which, he saith, was almost insensibly so, in those few days that he was observing and writing, but that this may perhaps become sensible hereafter; which if it be so, he affirms that it will cut the Ecliptick and Equator sooner, than he hath marked it, &c. However, he thinks it convenient, to have given ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... marvellous art of the Middle Ages has been treated in nearly every country, especially in France. One can distinguish on its ruins three sorts of lesions, all three of which cut into it at different depths; first, time, which has insensibly notched its surface here and there, and gnawed it everywhere; next, political and religious revolution, which, blind and wrathful by nature, have flung themselves tumultuously upon it, torn its rich garment ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... it's partly your fault that I haven't," Nick went on. "At Oxford you were very bad company for me—my evil genius: you opened my eyes, you communicated the poison. Since then, little by little, it has been working within me; vaguely, covertly, insensibly at first, but during the last year or two with violence, pertinacity, cruelty. I've resorted to every antidote in life; but it's no use—I'm stricken. C'est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee—putting Venus for 'art.' It tears me to ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Insensibly he had dropped his flippant tone, and was speaking, seriously, with conviction. There was a moment's pause and then Jack said, "And you ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... power in public opinion, and Honor, who at Kilmore had lived according to a model of her own choosing, now found herself insensibly falling in with the general tone of the College, and acquiring the mental shibboleths of her schoolfellows. Naturally all this was not accomplished at once, and "Paddy Pepper-box", as she was still nicknamed, had many outbreaks and relapses; but by the time ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... gradually and insensibly changes into an elliptical one. The side walls become lower, at each yard their height is diminished by the thickness of a brick, and finally they disappear about the middle of the total length. At the point shown in our ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... lovely eyes were held in thrall, By that dear page where first the woman reads: That Julio was no flatt'rer, none at all, She told herself—and then she told her beads; Meanwhile, the nerves insensibly let fall Two curtains fairer than the lily breeds; For Sleep had crept and kiss'd her unawares, Just at the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... as those of coarse primitive (METAMORPHIC) limestone; the next state is saccharine, then fine grained and arenaceous; a compact variety, having a porcelanous aspect and a bluish-grey colour, succeeds: this, towards the outer edge, becomes yellowish-white, and insensibly graduates into the unaltered chalk. The flints in the altered chalk usually assume a grey yellowish colour." (Dr. Berger Geological Transactions 1st series volume 3 page 172.) All traces of organic remains are effaced in that part of the limestone ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... yesterday. 'Tis my swan song. I am done with the beaux and the toasts and the fripperies. When I spoke to Harry Conway at the Court, his eyes were so fixed on Lady Waldegrave that he heard me not till I had spoke three times. Get thee to a nunnery, Fanny! I shall now insensibly drop into a spectatress. What care I! To ninety-nine women life ends with their looks, but I will be the hundredth, ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Clare!" he cried in the kindest way he had ever used to her, "if you knew how I feel this!" and now as he wept she wept, and came insensibly into his arms. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... never repent of the share you have in my heart, I know not whether I gave it you willingly or not at first. No; to speak ingenuously, I think you got an interest there a good while before I thought you had any, and it grew so insensibly and yet so fast, that all the traverses it has met with since have served rather to discover it to me than at all to ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... class, who are ordinarily jealous, calumniating, and gross. They thus acquired, with some, the character of being timid, and with others, of pride: but their reserve was accompanied with so much obliging politeness, above all towards the unfortunate and the unhappy, that they insensibly acquired the respect of the rich and the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... rage. All he could do was to wrench the board from its nailing, and hurl it into the ditch. Then he sat upon the step, and prayed for the New King, and that his coming might be hastened. As his blood cooled, insensibly he yielded to the fatigue of long travel in the summer heat, and sank down lower, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Harmel did with his converts. He taught his workmen to associate more closely with one another, he brought their minds and their hearts together, and let them act one upon another. He lived and moved and had his own being among them like a father, and in this way insensibly they came by degrees to regard each other as members of a family. He has always felt, and his whole life has shown it, that the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," whatever the motives of its authors may have been, put the weak of this world at the mercy of the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... images, the invocation of saints, the worship of relics, the rudiments of purgatory in prayers for the dead, and the tremendous mystery of the sacrifice of the body and the blood of Christ, which insensibly swelled into the prodigy of transubstantiation." In this remarkable passage we have a distinct foreshadow of the Tractarian movement, which came seventy or eighty years afterwards. Gibbon in 1752, at the age of fifteen, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... without being unfaithful to your engagements, retire many times in the day to pour out your soul before God, and receive fresh communications of his grace. Our hearts are so much affected by sensible objects, that, if we suffer them to be engaged long at a time in worldly pursuits, we find them insensibly clinging to earth, so that it is with great difficulty we can disengage them. But, by all means, fix upon some stated and regular seasons, and observe them punctually and faithfully. Remember they are engagements ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... upon the brow of a fevered man, fell the clear tones of her voice upon Anthrops, bewildered and confused by the sudden enchantment. She, indeed, called it a misfortune, but so cheerily and gayly that her voice belied the term; and Anthrops insensibly plucked up heart, and shook off ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... excellent order, and the chasms were so firmly bridged by the frozen mass that no caution was necessary in crossing them. Surmounting a weathered cliff to our left, we paused upon the summit to look upon the scene around us. The snow gliding insensibly from the mountains, or discharged in avalanches from the precipices which it overhung, filled the higher valleys with pure white glaciers, which were rifted and broken here and there, exposing chasms and precipices from which gleamed the delicate blue of the half-formed ice. Sometimes, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... views of late afternoon began to throw up a succession of lovely ranges, pierced by valleys, glens, and gorges. Where the eye had ached with the harsh red of the rocks spread with the harsh green of the scant vegetation, soft vapors rose insensibly—purple, pink, and orange—changing into nameless hues as they climbed into the great clefts and veiled the rolling domes and swathed the pinnacles and furrowed the deep passes and put the horizon infinitely far away. The transmutation from conditions ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... resentment, led me on to sympathy. My championing, purely abstract though it was to begin with, none the less involved my looking at things with eyes hypothetically inverted,—an orientation for the sake of argument. After a while, insensibly and at no one moment, hypothesis merged into reality: I myself was inverted. That occasional and fictitious inversion had never, I believe, superposed this true inversion; rather a true inversion, those many years dormant, had simply responded finally to a stimulus strong and prolonged ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... which they fortified with castles, thus making good what they had won, was avenged, indeed, but not compensated, by the furious inroads of the British, who, like the billows of a retiring tide, rolled on successively, with noise, fury, and devastation; but, on each retreat, yielded ground insensibly ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... approach to it the more you lose the thought of Swift. The eager passion of the meaning beats upon the mild drapery of the words. So you could not express the plain thoughts of an Englishman in the grand manner of a Spaniard. Insensibly, and as by a sort of magic, the kind of manner which a man catches eats into him, and makes him in the end what at ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... afternoon, when I opened my eyes in the little gorge, the soft green vibrations merged insensibly with the longer waves of the doves' voices and with the dying odor. Soon the green alone was dominant; and when I had finished thinking of pleasant, far-off green things, the wonderful emerald of my great tree-frog of last year came to mind,—Gawain the mysterious,—and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... cordage, and the heavy and grand movements of the hull as it rolls on the sluggish billows of a calm sea, is ever a pleasing and indeed an imposing spectacle. Alida knew that more, than a hundred human beings slept within the black and silent mass, and her thoughts insensibly wandered to the business of their daring lives, their limited abode, and yet wandering existence, their frank and manly qualities, their devotion to the cause of those who occupied the land, their broken ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... effect of this promiscuous and indecent splashing down of dead people in so many wells, is bad. It surrounds Death with revolting associations, that insensibly become connected with those whom Death is approaching. Indifference and avoidance are the natural result; and all the softening influences of the great sorrow ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... teachers for the Sunday-school, and Phebe was well content to remain passively aside, as of old. But, as Mrs. Lane remarked, there were no drones allowed in Mr. Halloway's hive, and before long Phebe found herself insensibly drawn in to be one of the workers too, with any amount of business growing upon her hands, and herself, under this new and wise guidance, becoming more and more capable ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... of his uncle, with a roll of papers in his hand,—meant for a parliamentary bill for the turnpike trusts in the neighbourhood of C——-. The sight brought back his recollections of that pious and saturnine relation, and insensibly the minister's thoughts flew to his death-bed, and to the strange secret which in that last hour he had revealed to Lumley,—a secret which had done much in deepening Lord Vargrave's contempt for the forms and conventionalities of decorous ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... palaces. Black afreets continually arose from the depths of our talk, and expanded, like the one the fisherman released from the copper vessel, until they blotted everything bright from our vision. Insensibly, we yielded to the occult force that swayed us, and indulged in gloomy speculation. We had talked some time upon the proneness of the human mind to mysticism, and the almost universal love of the terrible, when Hammond suddenly said to me, "What do you consider to be ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... like 'the youth that fired the Ephesian dome,' aims at celebrity alone, in frequenting the purlieus of the gaming-house only 'wastes his sweetness on the desert air.' Moreover, the members of the Ebony Clubs being compelled to assume the appearance, and adopt the manners, insensibly imbibe too much of the feelings of gentlemen, to be likely to pay, to the most passive pigeon that ever submitted to rooking, the cap in hand homage rendered by a 203practitioner within the pins and binders of the prize-ring ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... been written comparing this exquisite season when spring passes insensibly into summer with the fulfilled prophecy of girlhood, that no attempt shall be made to repeat the simile. Amy's birthday should have been in May, but it came early in June. May was still in her heart, and might linger there indefinitely; but ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... changed. She grasped the fact intuitively, and then she verified it by proof. Her heart beat strong and high. If she could hide her hate, her fear, her abhorrence, she could influence these wild men. But it all depended upon her charm, her strangeness, her femininity. Insensibly they had been influenced, and it proved that in the worst of men there yet survived some good. Gulden alone presented a contrast and a problem. He appeared aware of her presence while he sat there eating like a wolf, but it was as if she were only an object. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... one with the other, they had insensibly relaxed their pace, becoming mere strollers on the outside edge of the throng. The sense of being watched came to both of them at once, and, looking up at the same moment, they saw, approaching at a snail's pace, an open Victoria, in which were two ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... thousand thoughts and feelings which at all other times lay in cold repression in her heart. His counsels were always so wholesome, his sympathies so quick, his devotion so fervent and cheerful, that while with him Agnes felt the burden of her life insensibly lifted and carried for her as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Congress. All were agreed upon the propriety of paying the foreign loan, but the battle raged about every other point in turn. One of the legacies of the old Congress was the principle of repudiating what it was not convenient to redeem, and the politicians of the country had insensibly fallen into the habit of assuming that they should start clear with the new government, and relegate the domestic debt to the limbo which held so many other resources best forgotten. They were far from admitting the full measure of their inheritance, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... comparisons are at the bottom of all useful and practical knowledge. "They are suggestive," says Prof. Agassiz, "of further comparisons. When the objects of nature are the subjects of comparison, the mind is insensibly led to make new inquiries, is filled with delight at every step of progress it makes in nature's ever young and blooming fields, and study becomes a pleasure. No American knows what a good country he ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... from subject to subject, yet always tending, whether they would or no, toward the matter which was inevitably in both their minds. Insensibly the barrier between them and it broke away. Neither, indeed, forgot the interposing shadow of Catharine Elsmere. But the conversation touched on ideas; and ideas, like fire in stubble, spread far afield. Oxford: ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he do next? What sort of a man was this? The rough fellows in the circle around him insensibly drew back a little, and looked in each other's faces with surprise, as they tried to read the riddle of this disconcerting behaviour. The Quaker would not show fight! He was actually giving them leave to set upon him and beat him again! ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... the maintenance of vast establishments within their walls, to the employment of a great variety of independent trades abroad. Their influence is lessened; but a mode of accommodation, and a style of splendour, suited to the manners of the times, has been increased. Royalty itself has insensibly followed; and the royal household has been carried away by the resistless tide of manners: but with this very material difference;—private men have got rid of the establishments along with the reasons of them; whereas the royal household has lost all that was stately and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... impearled her cheek. Intrepid and adventurous with the hero, he began also to take a new interest in the misfortunes of love. He could not describe the passionate complaints, the ingenuous tenderness of another, without insensibly making the case his own. "Had the lover known my Imogen, he would no longer have sighed for one, who could not have been so fair, so gentle, and so lovely." Such were the thoughts of Edwin; and till now Edwin had always expressed his thoughts. But now the words fell ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... senses. Was that John Humphreys quietly walking up and down the library! Mr. Lindsay's library! and was she about to introduce her brother to the person who had forbidden her to mention his name? There was something, however, in Mr. John's figure and air, in his utter coolness, that insensibly restored her spirits. Triumphant confidence in him overcame the fear of Mr. Lindsay; and when he appeared, Ellen, with tolerable composure, met him, her hand upon John's arm, and said, "Father, this is Mr. Humphreys," my ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... haste in rising. One might really think the company were ashamed of so natural and jovial a function as that to which a dining-room is consecrated. And then, have you not noticed that, sitting at table, a certain intellectual tone, an atmosphere of a definite kind, is insensibly generated among the guests, whatever the subject of conversation may be? They are often quite unaware of its existence, but it hangs none the less about the room and binds the inmates together for the time being. Suddenly we are bidden to rise and betake ourselves elsewhere; to sit on other chairs ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... pleased—sometimes hazarding dissent; but whenever I did, foiled and floored by a few pointed satirical sentences, whose sophistry, for such I must now believe it, confounded me with a rapidity which, were it not for the admiration with which he had insensibly inspired me, would have piqued and irritated my vanity ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... visible signs of them, had not got forged yet. I certainly had no "proposed" to Theodosia. In fact, to the very best of my recollection I never did "propose" to her—or "pop," as the hideous phrase is—any decisive question at all. We seem, to my recollection, to have come gradually, insensibly, and mutually to consider it a matter of course that what we wanted was to be married, and that the only matter which needed any words or consideration was the question, how the difficulties in the way of our wishes were to ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... any dread of seeing their projects melt away into visions and chimeras. A great band of landed proprietors formed the leaders of the Whigs. Times have changed since then, and the representatives of some of those great houses which then led the Whig party have passed or glided insensibly into the ranks of the Tories; but the main reason for this is because a Tory of our day represents fairly enough, in certain political aspects, the Whig of the days of Queen Anne. What is called in American politics a new departure has taken place in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... head, when the beadle said this; the beadle drooped his, to get a view of Mrs. Corney's face. Mrs. Corney, with great propriety, turned her head away, and released her hand to get at her pocket-handkerchief; but insensibly replaced it in that ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... forlorn hope assembled at the base of the hill and clambered up to the summit. The fact that it was Christmas Eve may conceivably have had something to do with the want of vigilance upon the part of the sentries. In a season of good will and conviviality the rigour of military discipline may insensibly relax. Little did the sleeping Yeomen in the tents, or the drowsy outposts upon the crest, think of the terrible Christmas visitors who were creeping on to them, or of the grim morning gift which Santa Claus ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... beneath, in the heaven and on the earth, are types insensibly repeated of one grand archetype, so we find that the sun himself is a magnet, and by his different poles repels or attracts the planets, and amongst them our earth; in winter he repels her, and she ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... for the self-denial her absence entailed, when Antonia came back to him, alert, self-reliant, industrious, an intelligent and responsive companion, a neat and capable housekeeper, who insensibly gave to his home that American air it lacked, and who set upon his table the well-cooked meats and delicate dishes which he had ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... remain blind to the trend of events. After the fall of Tsingtao and the subsequent complications with Japan, which so greatly served to increase the complexities of a nebulous situation, certain lines of thought insensibly developed. That the influential classes in China should have desired that Germany should by some means rehabilitate herself in Europe and so be placed in a position to chastise a nation that for twenty years had brought nothing ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... he whose knowledge of the "royal art" extends no farther than these preliminaries has scarcely advanced beyond the rudiments of our science. There is a far nobler series of doctrines with which Freemasonry is connected, and which no student ever began to investigate who did not find himself insensibly led on, from step to step in his researches, his love and admiration of the order increasing with the augmentation of his acquaintance with its character. It is this which constitutes the science and the philosophy of Freemasonry, and it is this alone ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Throughout those three centuries, the centuries of its greatest achievements and noblest martyrdoms, Christianity had not defined its God. And even to-day it has to be noted that a large majority of those who possess and repeat the Christian creeds have come into the practice so insensibly from unthinking childhood, that only in the slightest way do they realise the nature of the statements to which they subscribe. They will speak and think of both Christ and God in ways flatly incompatible with the doctrine of the Triune deity upon which, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... ashamed to be beaten by him, and strove to grow like him as far as they could. They never knew him drunk, they never heard him swear; they never found him unjust—even to a poverty-stricken indigene; or brutal—even to a fille de joie. Insensibly his presence humanized them. Of a surety, the last part Bertie dreamed of playing was that of a teacher to any mortal thing; yet, here in Africa, it might reasonably be questioned if a second Augustine or Francis Xavier would ever have done half the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... toilet a deep shade of purple, such as affords a good background for the hair and complexion. The larger draperies of the costume being of this color, the bonnet may be of a lighter shade of the same, ornamented with lilac hyacinths, shading insensibly towards rose-color. The effect of such a costume is simple, even though there be much ornament, because it is ornament artistically disposed towards a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... was a wider liberty, a new atmosphere, and though the French protested bitterly and could not but believe the mother country would make some strenuous effort to recover the territory as they temporized with the Indians and held out vague hopes, yet, as the years passed on, they found themselves insensibly yielding to the sway, and compelled now and then to fight for their homes against a treacherous enemy. Mayor Gladwyn had been a hero to them in his ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Insensibly, too, 'Lena's manner won upon her, for spite of her fretfulness, Mrs. Graham at heart was a kindly disposed woman. Ill health and long years of dissipation had helped to make her what she was. Besides this, she was not quite happy in her domestic relations, for though Mr. Graham possessed ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... Chair by the cross-benches some years now. Naturally growing philosophical; insensibly cultivates habit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... happiness—to guard him from the possibility of a self-reproach. At first he listened to her with haughty calmness; merely saying, in reference to Sophy and Lionel, "I have nothing to add or to alter in the resolution I have communicated to Lionel." But when she thus insensibly mingled their cause with her own, his impatience broke out. "My happiness? Oh! well have you proved the sincerity with which you schemed for that! Save me from self-reproach—me! Has Lady Montfort so wholly forgotten that she was once Caroline Lyndsay that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trail out the ensign for an instant and to rustle the royals; and then away on the extreme verge of the eastern horizon, the gleaming water assumed a light blue tint, which gradually spread, creeping slowly down towards the two vessels, the blue on the horizon insensibly darkening all the while, and conveying the thrice welcome intelligence that the breeze ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the senseless glass, appealed to it with unreasoning frenzy, as to something which could give up its secret if it would, but only to meet my own features in every guise of fury and despair—features I no longer knew—features which insensibly increased my horror till I tore myself wildly from the spot, and cast about for further clues to enlightenment, before yielding to the conviction which was making a turmoil in mind, heart, and conscience. Alas! there was but little more to see. A pair ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... place, by way of digression, of a very remarkable event, or rather series of events, that happened before Mr. Cranstoun's last departure for Scotland. One day whilst my mother and I were last in London, we were talking of the immortality of the soul; and the subject we were then upon led us insensibly to a discourse of apparitions; and that again to a promise we made each other, that the first of us who died should appear to the survivor, after death, if permitted so to do. My mother dying first, in the manner already related, I sometimes retired ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... you, What mean you by this service? ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses." So the old story is told again, being thus kept ever green in memory; and, in telling it, the experiences of the past are brought insensibly to bear on the conditions of the present. Thus, once a year, like the Israelites of old, we, as a people, may take our bearings and verify our course, as we plunge on out of the infinite past into the unknowable future. It is a useful practice; and we are here this first evening of ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... Insensibly Barry and Cameron both crouched down in the car, but the driver held his wheel, without the apparent quiver of ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... must want to ask something about his property. It was still under Soames' control; for in the adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty years back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost insensibly retaining control ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... be theirs. The bloom of their youth withers away in a premature old age: while yet boys, they suddenly become old, without any interval of manhood. For impure sensuality, the mistress of every vice, devising one shameless pleasure after another, insensibly plunges into unmentionable debauchery, experienced in every form of brutal lust." The jealous Roman husband's furious desire to prevent the consequences of his wife's incontinence was by no means well served by ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... of the masses raised by the second upheaval, having the same general direction, are granitic. But, as we advance towards the north-east, the granites insensibly resolve themselves into ophiolitic rocks,—a name given by French geologists to certain volcanic eruptions of the cretaceous era,—which are also found in the Morea.[21] There are but few traces remaining of this second upheaval, which evidently laid in ruins great part of the ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... is one of the most frequently misused words in the language. Its primary meaning is to evaporate insensibly through the pores, but in this sense it is not used; in this sense we use its twin sister perspire. Transpire is now properly used in the sense of to escape from secrecy, to become known, to leak out; and improperly used ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... imports have been some L150,000,000 sterling more than our exports, while our stock of gold in the Bank of England (and the gold in circulation) remain the same from year to year. This is one of those many things (like the supply of meat to London) which will regulate itself perfectly and insensibly (without any violent disturbances in trade or the money market) if Government will only leave the matter entirely alone. If our stock of gold is at all short our merchants give a little less per quarter for American wheat; the trade is checked; the sensibility of the market—the experience ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... community. No one doubted the wisdom of the selection. Every one knew that to Miss Trotter's tact and intellect the success of the hotel had been mainly due. Possibly, the satisfaction of Buckeye Hill was due to something else. Slowly and insensibly Miss Trotter had achieved a social distinction; the wives and daughters of the banker, the lawyer, and the pastor had made much of her, and now, as an independent woman of means, she stood first in the district. Guests deemed it an honor to have a personal interview with her. The governor ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... facilities of communication between points once isolated, the interchange of customs and modes of thought, make this encouragement more and more difficult each decade. The naturally inclined eccentric finds his sharp outlines rubbed off by unavoidable attrition with a larger world than owns him. Insensibly he lends himself to the shaping hand of new ideas. He gets his reversible cuffs and paper collars from Cambridge, Massachusetts, the scarabaeus in his scarf-pin from Mexico, and his ulster from everywhere. He has passed out of the chrysalis state of Odd Stick; he has ceased ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... difficulty in bringing in spiritual conversation immediately after preaching, when my bosom should be burning. Excused myself from dining out from other than the grand reason; though checked and corrected myself. Evening—Insensibly slid into worldly conversation. Let these things be corrected in me, O Lord, by the heart being more filled with love to Jesus, and more ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... was more than four feet long; the blade four good digits wide, thick in proportion, insensibly diminishing in thickness and width to the point, which was very small. The handle appeared to me of worked enamel, long and very large; as well as the pommel; the crossed piece long, and the two ends wide, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... rule, and associating with her as already one of the family. It is true, in his manner to Eleanor herself he did not so step beyond bounds as to give her opportunity to check him; yet even over this there stole insensibly a change; and Eleanor felt herself getting deeper and deeper in the toils. Her own manner meanwhile was nearly perfect in its simple dignity. Except in the interest of third party measures, which led her sometimes further than she wanted to go, Eleanor kept a very steady way, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... art of many countries; but the books of life ought to form the background of every life of thought and study. They need not, indeed they cannot, be mastered at once; but by reading in them constantly, for brief or for long intervals, one comes to know them familiarly, and almost insensibly to gain the enrichment and enlargement which they offer. Moreover, they afford tenfold greater and more lasting delight, recreation, and variety than all the works of lesser writers. Whoever knows them in a real sense knows life, ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... he said. "Will you let me decide for you? Don't let yourself get scared. You have kept so strong till now." Firmly as he spoke, there was somehow a note of soothing in his voice, and almost insensibly the girl was moved by it. She remained silent and motionless, but the strong grip of his fingers ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... consequent upon diversity of environment, and diversity of environment is thus the ultimate measure of diversity of specific form. Here then we meet the difficulty that diverse environments often shade into each other insensibly and form a continuous series, whereas the Specific Forms of life which are subject to them on the whole form a Discontinuous Series." This difficulty is, however, not of fundamental importance as well authenticated facts have been adduced showing that by alteration of ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Wontner, who said we might, that it was so. Next he touched on Colonels of the old school, and their cognisance of tactics. Not that he himself pretended to any skill in tactics, but after three years at the 'Varsity—none of us had had a 'Varsity education—a man insensibly contracted the habit of clear thinking. At least, he could automatically co-ordinate his ideas, and the jealousy of these muddle-headed Colonels was inconceivable. We would understand that it was his duty to force on the retirement of his Colonel, who had been in the conspiracy against him; to ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... house, under fans, with plenty of ice, as was the luck of some. There must be no inner conflicts. Cranks soon suffer. Life becomes simplified. An oriental contempt of the West, with all its preoccupations, grows insensibly. When a dripping orderly came to rouse you to see some case, you understood perfectly the attitude of mind that has produced the idea of Kismet. Why move? If the man dies, it is Allah's will. It is Allah's will that he is sick. Let him remain in ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... numerous advantages now within her grasp. The only ray of hope darted through her mind when she recalled his allusion to a contemplated visit to the South Sea Islands, and the possibility of his long absence. Insensibly her dislike of the owner extended to everything he handled, and much as she had enjoyed the perusal of Dante, she determined to lose no time in restoring the lost volume, which she felt well assured his keen eyes would recognize ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Burns was so cast down by the prospect that he made no attempt to reply, beyond grunting something about preferring to drive a team of balky mules to making Jean do something she did not want to do. But, such is the mind trained to a profession, insensibly he drifted away into the world of his imagination, and began to draw therefrom the first tenuous threads of a plot wherein Jean's peculiar accomplishments were to be featured. Robert Grant Burns had long ago learned to ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... impossible to guess where they lay, or how numerous they might prove; and as we could not tell whether our guides might not be deceiving us, and whether ambuscades might not be laid for our destruction as soon as we should arrive where troops could conveniently act, our march was insensibly conducted with ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... holds either Thackeray's attention or ours who read; the narrative is steeped in the suffusion of the general tone, the sensation of the place and the life that he is recalling, and it is out of this effect, insensibly changing and developing, that the ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... Fothergill conceived this plan, and the society for the abolition of slavery, at London, have carried it into execution at Sierra Leone. Time and perseverance, will discover the policy and utility of this settlement. If it should succeed, the blacks will quit America insensibly, and Sierra Leone become the centre from whence general civilization will spread over ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... recognize them for turnips at all. She never afterwards believed them to be turnips; and as for cabbages, they were green inflorescences of majestic bloom. There is one position from which all common things can be seen with reflections of preciousness, and Ellen had insensibly taken it. The window and the shop behind were illuminated with the yellow glare of gas, but the glass was filmed here and there with frost, which tempered it as with a veil. In the background rosy-faced men in white frocks were moving to and fro, customers were passing ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... led a lonely yet healthful life. I came nearer to the earth than ever before; I mean her dirt, her stones, her odors and dews as well as to cows, sheep and horses, whose closer relation to the soil insensibly affects those who have the care of them. I felt myself a brother to the ox that I yoked and guided along the furrow. My nigh ox came from the pasture at my call and would lick my hand and stretch out his neck to be stroked. The whole barnyard was friendly, and I took pleasure, having none ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... way to show the lock without the key; and she was insensibly drawn nearer to him, speculating ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they felt it would be safer to have a larger margin, they feared they might be bored, they had made friends, and did not wish to sever the connection, they must provide a little more for their families: the whole programme had insensibly altered. Even so they were still planning to escape from something—from some boredom ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... occupations; even Warner's eyes were raised from his book, although his attention was involuntary and grudging. The attitude of the little circle attested the influence which the coming man wielded over every member of it; an influence which extended insensibly to every one with whom Nesbit Thorne's association was intimate. He was Mrs. Smith's nephew, and much in the habit, whenever he was in New York, of making her house his home—having ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... Paul felt insensibly attracted toward her. Their eyes met, and both started at the same moment. Paul was fascinated in an instant, and the girl's emotion was so evident that she turned aside ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... the copyist, the law stationer, the usurer, all sorts of money lenders, suitors of every description, haunters of the Chancery court and their victims, are for ever moving round about the lives of the chief persons in the tale, and drawing them on insensibly, but very certainly, to the issues that await them. Even the fits of the little law-stationer's servant help directly in the chain of small things that lead indirectly to Lady Dedlock's death. One strong chain of interest holds together Chesney Wold and its inmates, Bleak ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... charitable man as he was. Rather another idea. Because observing so singular a haggardness combined with a dark eye, averted as in trouble and shame, and then again recalling Don Benito's confessed ill opinion of his crew, insensibly he was operated upon by certain general notions which, while disconnecting pain and abashment from virtue, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... is not likely to propagate understanding," and so left the room. Our companion looked confounded, and I believe had scarce recovered the consciousness of his own existence, when Johnson came back, and drawing his chair among us, with altered looks and a softened voice, joined in the general chat, insensibly led the conversation to the subject of marriage, where he laid himself out in a dissertation so useful, so elegant, so founded on the true knowledge of human life, and so adorned with beauty of sentiment, that no one ever recollected the offence, except to rejoice in its consequences. ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... brightest flowers of domestic hope and joy, and mingles the poisonous bowl with the bitter drugs of misery. His government is absolute monarchy, and his subjects the most contemptible slaves. When he lays upon them his cursed hand, they reel to the ground. When he strikes the stunning blow, they drop insensibly to the earth. The oppressions and scourges of the most wretched slave are enviable in comparison with those severe wounds inflicted by this merciless tyrant, this infernal scourge of the human race. Intemperance is a monster that may ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... and leads," returned the pilot, recurring insensibly to his soliloquizing tone of voice. "I have been both in and out in darker nights than this, though never with a heavier draught ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and Hastings, Drake and Raleigh, Hengest and Horsa, walked with him. First of all men of his breed was he to enter this lone Northland village, and at the thought an exultancy came upon him, an exaltation, and his followers noted that his leg-weariness fell from him and that he insensibly quickened ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... the time they came into the sitting-room, looking white and sleepy in the flare of the common candles. All the house work they had formerly found hard, when counted in addition to their outside labour, she took entirely upon herself, and insensibly they both felt the relief very great. There was no coming home now, worn out and frozen, to a cheerless cabin, and being obliged to chop wood and light fires and split ice before they could get warm and rested. A glowing ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... step higher. The more we love them, and the more we see in them, in their characters, things worthy to be loved, the more we shall desire to be like them, to copy those parts of their characters which most delight us; and we shall copy them: though insensibly, perhaps, and unawares. ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... in the constant habit of taking snuff, are led on insensibly, until they consume enormous quantities. But as they are accustomed both to its stimulant and narcotic effects, they are not aware of the pernicious consequences. In the midst of interesting conversation, they frequently transcend ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... that he could not afford it yet, and could send it better in a little while. Many others have heard the same subtle suggestion from the same master of wiles and father of lies. Postponement in giving is usually its practical abandonment, for the habit of procrastination grows with insensibly rapid development. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... evidence of things not seen—is a powerful cordial to support and exhilarate us under the heaviest pressures of pain and temptation. By faith, we live upon the invisible, eternal God; we believe that in Him we live, move, and have our being; insensibly we slide from self into God, from the visible into the invisible, from the carnal into the spiritual, from time into eternity. Here our spirits are ever young; they live in and upon the very fountain of strength, sprightliness, ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... course, the explanation of the mystery was, that history, poetry, and fiction, books of travel, and the talk of tourists, had given me pretty accurate preconceptions of the common objects of English scenery, and these, being long ago vivified by a youthful fancy, had insensibly taken their places among the images of things actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, that I almost doubted whether such airy remembrances might not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a recollection in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with fainter ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... herself. Catherine knelt now, and took one of her mother's hands between her own. Insensibly the cold hand was comforted by ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... loftier still and still more perilous. He worked, moreover, as only a genius and an enthusiast could work. He began by winning his auditors. He went down to their level, humored them, pleased them, and then filled their ears with music that was ravishing even when only partially intelligible. Insensibly they grew to like it, and although defections were large and many refused to rise above the "popular" standard, there is no doubt that he succeeded in elevating the taste of the general public. Year by year he was bringing his audiences nearer to himself, and year ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... many ways. He was a striking figure in her small world. He was known in Edinburgh as likely to be a man of mark; and, of course, he had had a careful training in many subjects of which she, as yet, knew very little. Therefore, insensibly, she fell into a sort of admiration for Irving—an admiration which might have been transmuted into love. Irving, on his side, was taken by the young girl's beauty, her vivacity, and the keenness of her intellect. That he did not at once become her suitor is probably due to the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... their hands five or six times is fit only for making lint. No wonder then that Frenchmen, in general, wear coarse linen: a hop-sack could not long resist so severe a process. However, it must be confessed, that some good arises from this evil. These washerwomen insensibly contribute to the diffusion of knowledge; for, as they are continually reducing linen into rags, they cannot but considerably increase the supply, of that article for the manufacture ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... fold her to her bosom? Not even her anxiety to retain undivided possession of her son's heart restrained her. So Alice lived, quiet, affectionate, but undemonstrative, as was natural after the trials she had passed. Insensibly she became "the angel in the house"; mother and son felt drawn to her by an irresistible attraction. By every delicate kindness, by attention to every wish and whim, by glances full of admiration and tenderness, both showed the power which her beauty and goodness exerted. And, truly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... and generally used in every class of society. When the treaty of Verdun divided the territories of Charlemagne, the Romande, or Romance language, a corruption of the Latin, superseded the German in every part of France: it was insensibly refined into the modern French, but the German continued to be the only language spoken ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... the mortified monks made a deep and solemn impression on the tender hearts of the young visitors, who felt the delicacy of their position in enjoying a forbidden hospitality. The example of the evangelical perfection practised by these holy servants of God insensibly drew Charles and Henry to love the sublime virtues they practised. Nothing impressed them more than the solemn chant of the Office at midnight. The slow, solemn enunciation of each word by a choir of hoary anchorets rolled in majestic cadence through the precipices of the mountains, and died ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... any thing else than to pamper the appetite; so that it was a long time before she could be brought to desist from so pernicious a practice. As, however, the mind of Matilda strengthened, and she began to employ herself diligently in those new branches of education now imparted to her, she insensibly became weaned from this bad practice; and at length, inspired with a sincere desire to imitate her young friends, she broke herself entirely from this disgusting habit, and willingly adopted, in every thing, the simple wholesome fare partaken by her ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... litigants, were of no ulterior value. The most natural moment for declaring the changes he proposed to effect occurred therefore at his entrance on the praetorship, and hence, when commencing his duties, he did openly and avowedly that which in the end his English representative does insensibly and sometimes unconsciously. The checks on this apparent liberty are precisely those imposed on an English judge. Theoretically there seems to be hardly any limit to the powers of either of them, but practically the Roman Praetor, no less than ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... subject-matter of poetry, is perhaps only saying that the poet must be sincere. The mathematician is most sincere when he uses his intellect exclusively, but a reasoned portrayal of passion is bound to falsify, for it leads one insensibly either to understate, or to burlesque, or to indulge in a psychopathic analysis of emotion. [Footnote: Of the latter type of poetry a good example is Edgar Lee Masters' Monsieur D—— ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... then hastened forward, muffling himself in his cloak, and assuming a stooping and slouching gait, which diminished his apparent height. He was soon involved in the deep and dim alleys of the wood, into which he had insensibly plunged himself, and was traversing it at a great rate, without having any distinct idea in what direction he was going, when suddenly his course was arrested, first by a loud hello, and then by a ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott |
