"Insidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... recognizing, the fight against much of the remaining typhoid must be in the direction of the improvement of milk supplies, precautions against secondary infection, and attention to a large number of details surrounding the individual, which may effectively protect him against the insidious attack of the disease favored by ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... man come? Keep-sakes? Haggerty dearly wanted to believe that the intruder was the one man he desired in his net; but he refused to listen to the insidious whisperings; he must have proof, positive, absolute, incontestable. If it was Crawford's man Mason, it was almost too good to be true; and he did not care to ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... who have been in close touch with people who know what goes on, and what has gone on, since the year 1870, after the Franco-German war, can realize how insidious this German influence is, and so I say to you who love peace (and who does not love peace?) if you take part in any of these peace movements you are playing the German game and helping Germany. [Loud applause.] They talk of peace, but consider the position of our allies. The Germans in possession ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... exasperated by La Normande's dismissal of Monsieur Lebigre, proclaimed everywhere that her daughter was mad, and that the "long spindle-shanks" must have administered some insidious drug to her. When she learned the Cayenne story, her anger was terrible. She called Florent a convict and murderer, and said it was no wonder that his villainy had kept him lank and flat. Her versions of Florent's biography were the most horrible of all that were circulated in the neighbourhood. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... could tell just who brought this about—whether it was Mrs. Burton or Miss Allyn with their tears and tribulations; whether it was Nevins, with his bold accusations, or Petty, with his insidious tales, but between them all the old colonel was induced to send his adjutant and acting aid to examine certain baggage of Loring's stored at the hotel. Never having given up his room when hurrying off to Gate City; expecting to be back within a week and merely to pay room ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... of the readiest and the vilest resource; in another he remembered, not only that he could swim, but the insidious sympathy for this man which a darker scoundrel had sown in his heart. It had grown there like Jonah's gourd; only his flippancy affected it; and Steel was far from flippant now. Langholm signed to him to lead the way, and in a very few minutes they were ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... his Liberalism is rampant. With even fanatical faith he clings to Free Trade as the best guarantee for our national stability amid the crash of the dynasties and constitutions which went down in '48. He thunders against the insidious dangers of reciprocity. He desires, by reforming the laws which govern navigation, to make the ocean, 'that great highway of nations, as free to the ships that traverse its bosom as to the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... six or seven were leading persons of Bunyan's congregation. But, with all his ardent desire for religious liberty, Bunyan was too keen-witted not to see through James's policy, and too honest to give it any direct insidious support. "In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird." He clearly saw that it was not for any love of the Dissenters that they were so suddenly delivered from their persecutions, and placed on a kind of equality with the Church. The king's object was the ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... to Albert Weener there was the agitation for socialism and the expropriation of all private property, the attempt to deprive men of the fruit of their endeavor and reduce everyone to a regimented, miserable level. It is hardly necessary to say that I spared no effort to combat the insidious agents of the Fourth International. Fortunately for the preservation of the free enterprise system, I had ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Majesty on the happy event, though the situation of the unfortunate nobleman was little bettered by the change; indeed it appeared but as the signal for new persecutions, as one of the earliest public acts of the ungrateful monarch may be characterized as an insidious attempt to set aside the claims of his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is as insidious as the sleeping-draught of an Indian soothsayer, under its spell men go mad for gain and forget that to stand on the brow of a mountain at night, arms outstretched in kinship to Vega and Capella, is a golden moment of purer ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... ethical side becomes languid and relaxed. A man must be very careful, as Mr. Gladstone once incisively observed, to prevent his religion from damaging his morality. The simpleminded people with whom this sharp-witted and fresh-spirited young Englishwoman met had not fortified themselves against that insidious peril. One woman told a lie and the offense was sheeted home to her. 'Ah, well,' she replied, in a nonchalant and easy way, 'I do not feel that I have grieved the Spirit much!' George Eliot was horrified. She saw, to her disgust, ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... was that insidious preparation—that sending in of skirmishers of dry toast to attack the enemy before a bold advance ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... of the Society to the prevalence, at the present time, of puerperal fever of a peculiarly insidious and malignant character. "In the practice of one gentleman extensively engaged as an obstetrician, nearly every female he has attended in confinement, during several weeks past, within the above limits" (the southern sections and ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The insidious poison that was destroying him spread still further with a swift rush at that suggestion. She would be glad to have him out of the way for a while. Were not unfaithful wives always eager to send their husbands away? He closed his eyes resolutely and his hands gripped the arms of his chair. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... improvements, a new public garden, and so on. As yet roulette and rouge-et-noir are not permitted at Nice, the gambling at present carried on being apparently harmless. It is in reality even more insidious, being a stepping-stone to vice, a gradual initiation into desperate play. Just as addiction to absinthe is imbibed by potions quite innocuous in the beginning, so the new Casino at Nice schools the gamester ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... 2 п. 3 . 4 In connexion with these events, the 'Narratives of the School' and Sze-ma Ch'ien mention the summary punishment inflicted by Confucius on an able but unscrupulous and insidious officer the Shaou chang, Maou (֥f). His judgment and death occupy a conspicuous place in the legendary accounts. But the Analects, Tsze-sze, Mencius, and Tso Ch'iu-ming are all silent about it, and ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... in the mortars, otherwise, it would surely become amalgamated. The same remark applies to brass wire cloth and tinned plate. Unless the metal of which they are composed will not readily amalgamate with mercury, I should be chary of using new screen devices. Mercury is a most insidious metal and is often found most unexpectedly in places in the battery where it should not be. Probably aluminium steel would be better than any substance mentioned. It would be hard, light, strong, and not readily corrodible. I am not aware if ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... school of Evangelical literalism—a school which in after life both my brother and myself came to regard as the main obstacle to the complete overthrow of unbelief; we therefore looked upon it with something stronger than aversion, and for my own part I still deem it perhaps the most insidious enemy which the cause of Christ has ever encountered. But of this ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... of progress. Hitherto he had relied, with a far greater sense of security and comfort, on those who had enabled him not to think. Consultation with Max, insidious as the drug-habit, and as secretively employed, was henceforth to count for much in the development of the Constitutional Crisis. Hereditary monarchy had conceived the idea of turning its hereditary material to account. No doubt the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... in order to deliberate on such measures as might still be adopted to save those who had not yet conformed to his first and submitted to the royal authority. General Schuyler, apprehending some effect from this paper, issued a counter-proclamation, stating the insidious designs of the enemy—warning the inhabitants by the example of Jersey of the danger to which their yielding to this seductive proposition would expose them and giving them the most solemn assurances that all who should send deputies to this meeting or in ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... them, but could think of nothing feasible. I thought first of all of trying to slip the anchor and let the ship drift in their direction, but I was by no means sure that she would actually do this. Besides, I reflected, she might strike on some of the insidious coral reefs that abound in those fair but terribly dangerous seas. So I came to the conclusion that it would be better to let her remain where she was—at least, for the time being. Moreover, I felt sure that the captain, with his knowledge ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... there, by his gestures, induced him narrowly to examine it; and then Archer saw sufficient to assure him that he was in the house of murderers. Rendered desperate by the terrors of his situation, he burst into the room where the banditti were assembled, and wounded his insidious host by a pistol-shot; and in the confusion which the sudden explosion occasioned, he opened the door; and, notwithstanding he was fired at, accompanied by his dog Brutus, exerted all the speed which danger could call forth until ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... from the Chilean cruisers that turned their guns on everything not of their own kind, on the sea. The coast is extremely wild and utterly deserted, formed of lofty ledges of rock, hollowed into caverns underneath, by the insidious beating of the trade wind waves. The chiseled doorways to those caves are rare specimens of Nature's mysterious work; some large, some small and of queer, fantastic shapes; that black-mouthed gape at chance passers, while towering high above, a roof of table ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... seventeenth century regarded the Campbells. In the short compass of one page the Marquess of Argyle is designated as "the diabolical Scotch Cromwell," "the vile vindictive persecutor," "the base traitor," and "the Argyle impostor." In another page he is "the insidious Campbell, fertile in villany," "the avaricious slave," "the coward of Argyle" and "the Scotch traitor." In the next page he is "the base and vindictive enemy of the House of Maclean" "the hypocritical Covenanter," "the incorrigible traitor," ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that was affectionate in return. She distrusted Mrs. Carter, disliked her brilliant colouring and her fluent experiences, felt shy before her rollicking suggestiveness, and timid at her innuendoes. For a considerable time she held her defences against the insidious attack. Then there came a day when Mrs. Carter burst into reluctant but passionate tears, asserting that Life and Mr. Carter had been, from the beginning, against her; that she had committed, indeed, acts of folly in the past, but only when ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... proved sorcerer. Maximus, you have heard much from the lips of others, you have learned yet more by reading, and your own personal experience has taught you not a little. But you will say that never yet have you come across such insidious cunning or such marvellous dexterity in crime. What Palamedes, what Sisyphus, what Eurybates or Phrynondas could ever have devised such guile? All those whom I have mentioned, together with all the notorious deceivers of history, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... England for five years; and in that time a curious change, long silently proceeding, had made itself openly felt—becoming manifest, like an insidious disease, only when every limb and every organ were infected. A new spirit had been in action, eating into the foundations of the national character; it worked through the masses of the great cities, unnerved by the three poisons of drink, the Salvation Army, and popular ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... to the original author what the New Zealand rata is to the kauri. That insidious vine winds itself round the supporting trunk and thrives on its strength and at its expense, till finally it buries it wholly from sight and flaunts itself aloft, a showy ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Cambridge, for which his sudden attack of brain fever served as more than sufficient excuse. That there had been such a murder, the newspapers left her no room to question—but might not the relation in which he stood to the victim—the horror of her death, the insidious approaches of the fever, and the influences of that hateful drug, have combined to call up an hallucination of blood-guiltiness? And what at length all but satisfied her of the truth of her conjecture was that, when he began to recover, Leopold ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... I felt convinced; but my new-born pride revolted at the idea of dependence upon one on whom I had no claim whatever. What, then, was to be done? I examined my capital. I was handsome, but that was of no use to me; the insidious conduct of Monsieur de G—had raised to positive dislike the indifference that I felt for his sex, and I had no inclination to make a market of my personal advantages. I could sing and play well. I spoke French and English, and ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... with healthy progress, although in winter there is great temptation in the direction of overheating. Full time for development in moderate heat will bring stout joints, and impart a vigorous constitution that materially aids the plants in resisting the insidious attacks of disease. The waning autumn and dull winter days are the most troublesome periods of management, and it is remarkable that of two days equal in duration and apparently in other conditions, the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... dishonored me in the presence of these men—he has been the instrument through which I bear this badge, this brand-stamp on my cheek—he has come between my passion and its object—nay, droop not—I have no reference now to you, though you, too, have been won by his insidious attractions, while he gives you no thought in return—he has done more than this, occasioned more than this, and wonder not that I had it in my heart at one moment to-night to put my dagger into your bosom, since through you ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... this Colony, giving thereby encouragement to a general insurrection, which may induce a necessity of inflicting the severest punishments upon those unhappy people, already deluded by his base and insidious arts, and whereas, by an act of the General Assembly now in force in this Colony, it is enacted, that all negro or other slaves, conspiring to rebel or make insurrection, shall suffer death, and be excluded all benefit of clergy;—we think it proper to declare, that all slaves who have been or ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... so strange that your husband does not adore you—but men are blind to the best qualities in women like you. I never hear Mr Cheney praising other women without a sad and almost resentful feeling in my heart, realising how superior you are to all of his favourites." It was the insidious effect of poisoned flattery like this, which made the Baroness a ruling power in the Cheney household, and at the same time turned an already cold and unloving wife into a jealous and nagging tyrant who rendered the young statesman's home the most dreaded place on earth ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... from these and other chance words, which I have since forgotten, that M. de Rosny was pressing the king to accept the help of the King of Navarre, and warning him against the insidious offers of the Vicomte de Turenne. The mention of a Republic, however, seemed to excite his Majesty's wrath rather against Rosny for presuming to refer to such a thing than against Turenne, to whom he refused to credit it. He paused near ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... against us but we had a right to the laborious duties of the stations." No gravity could refuse to smile at this complaint—verbally so much in the spirit of primitive Christianity, yet in its tendency so insidious. For could it be possible that a competitor introduced by the law, and leaving the duties of the pastoral office to the old incumbent, but pocketing the salary, should not be hooted on the public roads by many who might otherwise have taken no part ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... weary heart, was passing sleepless nights thinking only of her daughter and Henry, the latter was seeking relief in that insidious enemy of the human race, the intoxicating cup. His wife did all in her power to make his life a pleasant and a happy one, for Gertrude was devotedly attached to him; but a weary heart gets no gladness out of sunshine. The secret remorse that rankled in his bosom ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... in its moral reactions lies the danger of the defensive, a danger so insidious in its working as to tempt us never to utter the word. Yet with the voice of Torrington, Kempenfelt, and Nelson in our ears, it would be folly to ignore it for ourselves, and still more to ignore the exhausting strain its use by our enemy may impose upon us. It must be studied, ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... to Goldite hurriedly and sought out his friend McCoppet. When the two were presently closeted together where their privacy was assured, a conspiracy, diabolically insidious, was about to have ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... orders, the conjunction of these squadrons had rendered the success infallible. When Holmes approached the Dutch, he put on an amicable appearance, and invited the admiral Van Ness, who commanded the convoy, to come on board of him: one of his captains gave a like insidious invitation to the rear-admiral. But these officers were on their guard. They had received an intimation of the hostile intentions of the English, and had already put all the ships of war and merchantmen in an excellent posture of defence. Three times ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... giving are manifold, and he now felt a novel glow of sheer beneficence. He was a victim to the craze for philanthropy. Too young to realize its insidious character, he was to embark upon a ruinous career. Ever it is the first step that costs. That carelessly given knife—with something to dig stones out of a horse's foot—was to wipe out, ere night again shrouded Newbern ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... revolutionaries, found itself once more firmly seated in the saddle, it returned to the attack on the Finnish Constitution, not indeed with the open and brutal methods of Bobrikoff, but by gradual and insidious means no less effective. And it must be admitted that the Russian Duma, as "reformed" by Stolypin, so far from being of any help to Finland in the struggle, has been made the instrument of the destruction of ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... successful forays (see i. 202, and ix. 387). This dissatisfaction and resentment are referred to by Neptune (xiii. 126), and by Agamemnon himself (xiv. 55). They had lately manifested themselves in the alacrity with which the whole army had caught at the insidious suggestion of abandoning the war; and, just before the second assembly, Thersites avails himself of the general feeling, constituting himself the representative of a popular grievance, to vent his ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... breeze for his pleasure. On landing, I visited the proprietor of my old tub, related my misadventure, and offered to pay damages, if the boat shall turn out in the morning to have sustained any. Meanwhile, I suppose, it is held secure against the next tidal revolution, however insidious.—But for my old gentleman. I have decidedly picked up an acquaintance, if not made a friend. I gave him a very good cigar; and before we reached home, we had become thoroughly intimate. In exchange for my cigar, he gave me his name; and there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... numerous scholars and writers of the Eastern States for New England. The very fallacy whereon treason based her machinations and the process whereby the poison of Secession was introduced into the nation's life-blood, found exposition in the insidious fiction of a Virginian—Mr. George Tucker—secretly printed years ago, and lately brought into renewed prominence by the rebellion. 'Our Cousin Veronica,' a graceful and authentic family history, from the pen of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... what cost she must make him care for her. Though she loathed the means she would make him love her. But even as she planned the doubt of her ability to succeed crept into her mind, torturing her with insidious recollections. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... normal, the inevitable outcome of the play of the sexual impulse. No doubt it may often become morbid, and is never a healthy process when indulged in to excess, as it is liable to be by refined young people with artistic impulses, to whom it is in the highest degree seductive and insidious.[230] As we have seen, however, day-dreaming is far from always colored by sexual emotion; yet it is a significant indication of its really sexual origin that, as I have been informed by persons of both sexes, even in these apparently non-sexual cases it frequently ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is taught that the Church has waged successful battle with Error in all its forms—paganism, Arianism, Socinianism, infidelity; and in all ages of her history, whether crouching in the lofty groves of the Druids, or in the more insidious forms of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... usual, a little back from the table, in the chair we always placed for "the spectre," whether it chose to fill it or not. I saw by his face that he was suffering from the effects of an overdose of his insidious comforter; but nobody spoke to him, and he spoke to nobody. A few sidelong glances, and a whispered observation, that "the ghost was come," was all the notice he drew by his appearance, and we went on with our merry carousals as before, till he startled ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... of Thrace,8 Melodious tamer of the savage race! 70 Thus train'd by temp'rance, Homer led, of yore, His chief of Ithaca9 from shore to shore, Through magic Circe's monster-peopled reign, And shoals insidious with the siren train; And through the realms, where griesly spectres dwell, Whose tribes he fetter'd in a gory spell; For these are sacred bards, and, from above, Drink large infusions from the mind of Jove. Would'st thou (perhaps ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... information from the free air. And there was to all of his speeches an almost wistful persuasiveness, as if, Abbott said, he picked one listener in each audience, each night, and sought anew to make him feel the insidious peril to the nation's soul that lay in personal complacency and indifference to the nation's spiritual welfare. Only Jonas, struggling to induce the Secretary to take a decent amount of sleep, nodded wisely to himself. He knew that Enoch made each speech to a lovely, tender ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... show herself off. They sat down to watch her, and a more insidious feeling crept over Peter as he did so. The girl bent her body this way and that; arched herself over and looked at them between her feet; twisted herself awry and made faces at them. They laughed, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... disadvantages in associating with people whose every word, as likely as not, may be an insidious falsehood. Thinking over what she had heard from Dymes, Alma was inclined to believe him; on the other hand, she knew it to be quite possible that he sought her with some interested motive. The wise thing, she knew, would be to disregard his reports, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... history of the struggle can be written that does not include the secret societies that abetted. They played as important a part as did the army which opposed us, and was vastly more dangerous by reason of the insidious character of ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... manfully in the thick of the combat and the press of battle, but to die poisoned in the tent of Chryseis. For who could foresee a tragedy so needless, so blind, so brutal in its lack of dignity, or know that such strength could perish through such insidious weakness, that so great a man could be stung to death by a mania ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Rather than not blast thine, he 'll blast his own. To ope the fountain whence sedition springs, To slander government, and libel kings; With Freedom's name to serve a present hour, Though born and bred to arbitrary power; To talk of William with insidious art, Whilst a vile Stuart's lurking in his heart; And, whilst mean Envy rears her loathsome head, Flattering the living, to abuse the dead, 300 Where is Shebbeare?[173] Oh, let not foul reproach, Travelling thither in a city-coach, The pillory ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of the Inquisition were cruel, and could not allow so notable a victim to escape their vengeance. Whether to burn a man is the surest way to convert him, is a question open to argument. Vanini disguised his insidious teaching carefully, but it required a thick veil to deceive the eyes of Inquisitors, who were wonderfully clever in spying out heresy, and sometimes thought they had discovered it even when it was not there. Vanini and many other authors would have been wiser if they had not committed ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... of bodily infirmities, with hints likewise of approaching old age, that he might allay in the senate all apprehensions of any great duration of his power, and repress in his adopted son, Germanicus, the emotions of ambition to displace him; form altogether a scene of the most insidious policy, inconsistency, and dissimulation. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... expression was exchanged for a look of pain. A harassing cough troubled her by day and prevented her resting at night; an accompanying weakness created some little anxiety as to what its issue might be; but, with the hoping spirit which is ever attendant on that insidious disease called consumption, she believed that the coming spring ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... there lurks an insidious danger. It comes easily and naturally to one to give some sign of assent or disapproval as to the correctness of the answer while it is being spoken. The slightest inclination of the head, the dropping of the eyelids, or a certain expression of the face, ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... about me—so another fortune. He died one night right in my arms, you know. (I saw his purple face for years thereafter. ) There was almost a scandal. I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman, Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich. My sweet apartment near the Champs Elysees Became a center for all sorts of people, Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English. I wed Count ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... Vergnuegen of the Germans). Those distinctions strove hard to save the three spiritual forms, which have been recognised as the triad of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, from confusion with the fourth form, still unknown, yet insidious through its indeterminateness, and mother of scandals. For us this triad has finished its task, because we are capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by welcoming even the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings, among the respectable forms of the spirit; ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... natives who understood little beyond the gestures, for the single purpose of warding off disintegration! It reminded the doctor of a stubborn retreat; from barricade to barricade, grimly fighting to keep the enemy at bay, that insidious enemy of the white man in the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... in order to protect the roads from hostile acts. The methods used by the railway agents in their political activity naturally varied all the way from legitimate agitation to crude and subtle forms of bribery. An insidious method of influencing both law-making and litigation was the pass system. Under it the roads were accustomed to give free transportation to a long list of federal and state judges, legislators and politicians. For a judge to accept such favors from a corporation which might at any time be haled ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... games; we are finding that if you wish to commit an act of cruelty and folly, the most costly one that you can commit is to contrive to shoot your fellow-men in war. So it is; and thank God that so it is; but Nature, insidious, inexpensive, silent, sends no roar of cannon, no glitter of arms to do her work; she gives no warning note of preparation; she has no protocols, nor any diplomatic advances, whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. Silently, I say, and insidiously she goes forth; no! she does not ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... necessarily more sincere. We do not think so much of that sincerity which affronted the fear of persecution; because, after all, the searching persecutions were rare and intermitting, and not, perhaps, in any case, so fiery as they have been represented. We think more of that gentle but insidious persecution which lay in the solicitations of besieging friends, and more still of the continual temptations which haunted the irresolute Christian in the fascinations of the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... case, that of 1828, between Messrs. Porter and Robinson, from 16,000 to 20,000 pounds, if not a larger sum, was said to have been expended in carrying the day. I recollect a worthy tobacconist, who kept a little shop in the town, who had a vote and was not inclined to sell it cheap. In every insidious way was he assailed to part with his vote. On the occasion of this election the list of voters was rapidly running out to the last drop; the hour of closing the poll was approaching, and it was found impossible to keep the poll open another ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... as nothing to the mental anguish which he suffered. Death was before him if he lay there—death in a painless, insidious form, no doubt; but still, death in all its horror to one so ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... Meantime, the two insidious intelligencers of the Landgrave returned to the palace with discoveries, not so ample as they were on the point of surprising, but sufficient to earn thanks for themselves, and to guide the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... in which we live. The obscurest epoch is to-day; and that for a thousand reasons of inchoate tendency, conflicting report, and sheer mass and multiplicity of experience; but chiefly, perhaps, by reason of an insidious shifting of landmarks. Parties and ideas continually move, but not by measurable marches on a stable course; the political soil itself steals forth by imperceptible degrees, like a travelling glacier, carrying on its bosom not only political parties ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... purchaser. Three wiry fellows crept cat-like among the mob, sheltering behind some tame cart-horses; on a mutual signal they rushed on the devoted animal; two—one bearing a halter—strove to fling each one arm round its neck, and with one hand to grasp its nostrils—while the insidious third, clinging to the flowing tail; tried to throw the poor quadruped off its balance. Often they were baffled in the first effort, for with one wild spring the pony would clear the whole lot, and flying with streaming mane and tail across the brook up the field, leave the whole work to ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... plays were not the work of a professional writer, but the recreation of a (temporary) professional soldier. Play-writing is a luxury to a journalist, as insidious as golf and much more expensive in time and money. When an article is written, the financial reward (and we may as well live as not) is a matter of certainty. A novelist, too, even if he is not in "the front rank"—but I never heard of one who ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... civilization brings in such quantity seemed all at once to mean the abeyance of some central life or power men ought to share with—Nature.... You shall read it all in my written report. I merely wish to show you now how the insidious thing got at me along the line of my special knowledge. I saw the truth that priests and doctors are the only possible and necessary 'professions' in the world, and—that they should be ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... and Mr. Lechmere were the principal interrogators, who, in this examination, of which there is printed an account not unentertaining, behaved with the boisterousness of men elated by recent authority. They are represented as asking questions sometimes vague, sometimes insidious, and writing answers different from those which they received. Prior, however, seems to have been overpowered by their turbulence; for he confesses that he signed what, if he had ever come before a legal judicature, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... serve, but proposed to use them as ladders to that exalted position of a Sylla or a Caesar, which, as Bonaparte subsequently proved, was no more, perhaps, beyond his grasp than his ambition; influenced by the insidious suggestions and doubts he carefully spread abroad, the queen, as he saw with pleasure, looked on the new commander of the National Guards as a "Grandison-Cromwell" (Mirabeau's damaging epithet), whose concealed ambition aimed at the constableship ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... herself to many, but some of her own sex she thought it best to encounter. This subjected her to the insidious attacks of curiosity admirably veiled with sympathy. The assailants were marvelously subtle; but so was the devoted wife. She gave kiss for kiss, and equivoque for equivoque. She seemed grateful for each visit; but they got nothing out of her except that Sir Charles's ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... talked with Moses has sent me to guard you while you sleep. No plague or fever, wild beast or earthquake, can molest you, for you are equally protected from the most powerful monster and the most insidious disease-germ. 'Blessed is the man whose offences are covered and whose sins are forgiven.' Sleep on, therefore, and be refreshed, for the body must have rest." "A man may rest indeed," replied Ayrault, "when he has a guardian angel. I had the most unbounded faith in your ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... turned to Paul with a look of more favour than he had yet shown him. "Bultitude," he said, "I am obliged to you. A severe cold in the head has rendered me incapable of detecting this insidious act of insubordination and self-indulgence, on which I shall have more to say on another occasion. Your moral courage and promptness in denouncing the evil thing ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... There is an insidious German propaganda suggesting that the Australians are very sore at the failure on Gallipoli and that we blame the British Government and staff for having sent us to perish in an impossible task. I want to say, that while in the Australian ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... to the contrary, the Navy was again segregating people by race. Evans, in the Department of Defense, charged that this was in fact the "insidious intent" of Hague's notice. He pointed out to Assistant Secretary of Defense Rosenberg that signs and notices of segregation were reappearing over drinking fountains and toilets at naval installations which had abandoned such practices, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... all the skill he possessed to make Gilbert speak; his insidious questions were inexhaustible: Gilbert was impenetrable. From time to time they looked steadily at each other, each seeking to embarrass his adversary, and to surprise his secret, but in vain; they fenced with glances, but they were both so sure in the parries, that ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... continue with little variety and little interruption during ten years. It was a repetition of what the pedantic Cotton Mather calls Decennium luctuosum, or the "woful decade" of William and Mary's War. The wonder is that the outlying settlements were not abandoned. These ghastly, insidious, and ever-present dangers demanded a more obstinate courage than the hottest battle in the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... uncorrupt youth, "skilled in manly exercises and fitted for war." When Aurelius thanks the gods that a brother had fallen to his lot, whose character was a stimulus to the proper care of his own, one sees that this could only have happened in the way of an example, putting him on his guard against insidious faults. But it is with sincere amiability that the imperial writer, who was indeed little used to be ironical, adds that the lively respect and affection of the junior had often "gladdened" him. To be able to make his use of the flower, when the fruit perhaps was useless or poisonous:—that ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... against the back of it. She was too tired, she said, to move, and her hands lay extended, one upon each arm of her chair, with the air of being left there to be picked up at her convenience. Arnold, over the teapot, agreed that walking in Calcutta was an insidious pleasure—one gathered a lassitude—and brought her cup. She looked at him for an instant ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... I. F. P., strikes at the insidious interests that are lashing high the war feeling between Earth ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... the Plains Indians are few, and in large part of modern origin, belonging properly to the so-called "transition period." That period must be held to begin with the first insidious effect upon their manners and customs of contact with the dominant race, and many of the tribes were so influenced long before they ceased to lead ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the idea of being able to forget all about Andrew J. Burris for a little while was almost insidious. Malone liked it more the more he thought about it. Burris went on naming vacation spots and drawing magnificent travel-agency pictures of how wonderful life could be, and after a while Malone left. There just wasn't anything else to say. Burris had given him an order for his vacation pay ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... me without fail towards the end of October. The letter was one of tender advice, as that of a sister to a beloved brother. She implored and ordered me, with the sovereign authority of love, to beware of that insidious disease which lurks beneath the flowery surface of youth, and often withers and consumes us at the very moment we think that we have overcome its power. Enclosed, she sent a consultation and a prescription from ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the desire to obtain aid in local matters from the national treasury. This has proved an exceedingly potent and insidious influence, leading state officials to surrender voluntarily state prerogatives in exchange for appropriations of federal money. Notable examples of this influence may be found in the field of river and harbor improvements, the creation of various new bureaus in the Department of Commerce, the ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... knowledge of the existence of this sentiment which has called into being the present epidemic of curious cults and catholicons—due, it would appear, more to this insidious temptation to such commercial enterprise than to any other cause—and which form so prominent a feature throughout all sections of the community—and especially in the press—throughout the length and ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... been speaking seriously and then incongruously adopt an ironic tone. How are our listeners, our readers to take us? They are puzzled; they do not know. In the second place, we offend—perhaps in insidious, indefinable fashion—the esthetic proprieties; we violate the natural fitness of things. For example, we have been speaking with colloquial freedom, sprinkling our discourse with shouldn't and won't; suddenly we be come formal and say should not and will ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... bitterness towards England, by reason of the treatment we experienced during the war, there was an instinctive feeling among Americans that the Queen desired peace and good will, and did not sympathize with the insidious efforts at our destruction, which had their origin in her dominions. It was fortunate that the disposition of the Queen, and not of her Ministry, was represented in Washington by Lord Lyons. The good sense and good temper of His Lordship were of inestimable value to both countries, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the protection was suddenly removed; of such nature must be the justification, if any, for bounties given in times of flood, fire, or public disaster, which, however, are really sustained only in the absence of objection and on the principle lex non curat de minimis. The most insidious form of the bounty, however, is that of exemption from taxation, or, still worse, granting subsidies or subscribing to the stock and bonds of public-service, or even ordinary private, corporations. Undoubtedly the exception has been established in the case ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... asked the question again as he sat in his own deep chair in the early morning hours. The heat in the hotel had been turned off and he had lit the gas logs in the grate—symbol of the artificialities of civilization that had played their insidious role in man's outer and more familiar personality. Perhaps they struck deeper. Habit more often than ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Aphis, in certain years, desolates our wheat fields. We have seen the heads black with these terrible pests. They pierce the grain, extract the sap, causing it to shrink and lose the greater part of its bulk. It is a most insidious and difficult ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... people's affairs by such correspondences as these; and he could himself bear witness to his success in cross-examination, as he had been surprised into an avowal of the rencontre between the brothers, by an insidious observation of the said Touchwood. He reported, therefore, to the Earl, after this interview, that, on the whole, he thought he had no reason to fear much on the subject of the traveller, who, though he had become acquainted, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... all praise of them would look plaguy suspicious. If necessary to be stated at all, the simple facts bear them out. They surely had a right to act as they pleased. My sole object is one which, I trust, my whole conduct has shown; viz. that I did nothing insidious—sent in no Address whatever—but, when applied to, did my best for them and myself; but, above all, that there was no undue partiality, which will be what the rejected will endeavour to make out. Fortunately—most fortunately—I sent in no lines ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... half rose, but sank back as if the effort exhausted her. There was a struggle for breath, and a low hollow cough. Was it possible that I had been mistaken, and that in that cough was heard the warning knell of the most insidious enemy ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Among other things, he said, "You know, it's a wonderful thing to stand up before my congregation on Sunday morning and be able to count the increasing number of people who depend upon me for my pastoral care." The temptation to exploit human need is insidious, and we have all succumbed to it many times and in many ways. That pastor might better have rejoiced in those of his congregation who, in spite of their dependence and need, were able to use his help in their own independent way and thus grow stronger and more resourceful. ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... in sowing discord, in saying, and (what is worse) in doing in the presence of company things churlish and flagitious, in bringing accusations, true or false, of wicked, shameful or flagitious conduct against one another; and in drawing gentlemen into base and nefarious practices by sinister and insidious arts. And by these wretched and depraved lords he is held most dear and best rewarded whose words and deeds are the most atrocious, to the great reproach and scandal of the world of to-day; whereby it is abundantly manifest that virtue has departed from the earth, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... God's wrath!"-(See vol. 2, p. 539). The answer of Christian, though somewhat rough, is so conclusive as to fortify every honest mind against all the arguments which the whole tribe of time-serving professors ever did, or ever can adduce, in support of their ingenious schemes and insidious efforts to reconcile religion with covetousness and the love of the world, or to render it subservient to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... It has been culled from the Plumber and Decorator, of all insidious prints, and forwarded to me by the untiring people who daily supply me with the thinkings ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... there in the desert of wheat had she felt sympathy for him. And now with intelligence and a woman's intuition, barring the old, insidious, dreamy mood, Lenore went over in retrospect all she could remember of that meeting. And the truth made her sharply catch her breath. Dorn had fallen in love with her. Intuition declared that, while her intelligence repudiated it. Stranger than all was the thrill which ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... jump? Would not Mr. Ducksmith merely turn his rabbit-eyes, set in their bloodhound sockets, vacantly on him, and assume that the detonations were part of the tour's programme? Could he not fill him up with conflicting alcohols, and see what inebriety would do for him? But Mr. Ducksmith declined insidious potations. He drank only at meal-times, and sparingly. Aristide prayed that some Thais might come along, cast her spell upon him, and induce him to wink. He himself was powerless. His raciest stories fell on dull ears; none of his jokes called ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... upon the reader's imagination, and that it rigorously refrain from assuming its reader to possess any particular information on any subject whatever. The author who writes over the head of the public is the most dangerous enemy of his publisher—and the most insidious as well, because so many publishers are in private life interested in literary matters, and would readily permit this personal foible to influence the exercise of their vocation were it possible to do so upon the preferable ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, Sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... of neck and wrist, and capable of vast enthusiasm; he gave two evenings a week to the evening classes of the organized science school in Overcastle, physiography was his favorite "subject," and through this insidious opening of his mind the wonder of outer space had come to take possession of his soul. He had commandeered an old opera-glass from his uncle who farmed at Leet over the moors, he had bought a cheap paper planisphere and Whitaker's Almanac, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... and patient to perform. What wondrous conduct in the chief appear'd, When the vast fabric of the steed we rear'd! Some demon, anxious for the Trojan doom, Urged you with great Deiphobus to come, To explore the fraud; with guile opposed to guile. Slow-pacing thrice around the insidious pile, Each noted leader's name you thrice invoke, Your accent varying as their spouses spoke! The pleasing sounds each latent warrior warm'd, But most Tydides' and coy heart alarm'd: To quit the steed we both impatient press Threatening to answer ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the workers long proved successful. But it was supplemented by other methods. To draw the labor leaders away from a hostile stand to the established political parties, and to prevent the massing of workers in a party of their own, the politicians began an insidious system of bribing these leaders to turn traitors. This was done by either appointing them to some minor political office or by giving them money. In many instances, the labor unions in the ensuing ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... a nature was the first insidious rupture of that routine she had grown to look upon as changeless for the years to come, of the life she had chosen for its very immutable quality. Even its pangs of loneliness had acquired a certain sweet taste. Partly from a fear of a world that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... coiled upon the national hearth. To-day, as in the days of Lee, the Mormon missionary is abroad in the world. He is in your midst; he makes his converts among your neighbors; within the month, on one detected occasion, he stood at the portals of your public schools and gave his insidious pamphlets, preaching Mormonism, into the ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... intruder made an effort to hold his theory together. He approached the bunk, and with an insidious craft sought to draw the old man out. But Clenk was now on his guard. His comrades had bitterly upbraided him with his self-betrayal, that indeed threatened the safety of all. In fact, their courage was so reduced by the untoward ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... M'Adam nourished dark designs against James Moore were somewhat confirmed in that, on several occasions in the bitter dusks of January afternoons, a little insidious figure was reported to have been seen lurking among the farm-buildings ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the 15 British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves 20 to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the downfall of the Princess Joceliande has never as yet been honestly inscribed. Doubtless there be few alive except myself that know it; for from the beginning many strange and insidious rumours were set about to account for her mishap, whereby great damage was done to the memory of the Sieur Rudel le Malaise and Solita his wife; and afterwards these rumours were so embroidered and painted by rhymesters that the truth has become, as you might say, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... menacing word, the whisper of which would destroy our trade; But dirt, and damp, and defective drainage will raise that ghost on a world afraid; And at thirty years our strength is sapped by insidious siege of the stifling fume, Or what if we linger a little longer? Scant rays of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... did not know all the insidious forces that were working in the silences of the hills, but he divined enough to feel the brewing of a storm, which, in its bursting, might strike closer and with more shattering force than the bolt that had scarred ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... abhorred Greek ideals is to say that the shepherd abhors the wolf. His life was one long fight with the insidious poison of the Greek. He did not,—at any rate in his best days—believe at all in Art for Art's sake; and had far too intimate an acquaintance with the "natural man" to do him even justice. What he wanted was to ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... to the monarchic and aristocratic constitution of the State arises from the insidious advance of the French revolutionary dogma of equality. The spirit of envy is undermining the social hierarchy in every country. That mean spirit of democratic envy is as old as the democratic institution itself. Ostracism in the nobler elements ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... affairs of the clan could not be balked by consideration for a stranger, who, in the opinion of the majority, should be driven from the country as an insidious mischief-maker. Ostensibly, the truce still held, but at no time since its signing had matters been so freighted with the menace of a gathering storm. The attitude of each faction was that of several men standing quiet with guns trained on one another's breasts. Each hesitated to fire, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... various-attempts, insidious and powerful, have been made, even here, to coerce in matters of conscience, and to overthrow those wise barriers to the destructive effects of sectarian fanaticism and intolerance, which the great founders of the Republic, to their ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... FEVERS. It is proper to make a thorough study of the early, insidious symptoms of fever, in order to understand what ought to be done. If it arises in consequence of malaria, the treatment must be suited to the case. If from irritation of the bowels and improper articles of diet, then a mild cathartic ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... blind to their own interests. This much, indeed, was admitted by the leaders among the Whigs, that once the tea was on sale Yankee principle might be sorely tempted by Yankee thrift. Indignant at the insidious temptation, determined that no such test should be made, and resenting the establishment of a practical monopoly throughout the colonies, the leaders resolved that the tea ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... him: That pursuant to this the Donation it self was without Delay, before several reputable Witnesses, tendered to him gratis, with the open Profession of not the least Reserve, or most minute Condition; but that yet immediately after Induction, his insidious Introducer (or her crafty Procurer, which you will) industriously spread the Report, which had reached my Ears, not only in the Neighbourhood of that said Church, but in London, in the University, in mine and his own County, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... found that their simple trading constitution would not serve. They had to piece it out with subordinate machinery, cumbrous, difficult to manage, ill-adapted to the original structure. Each limb of this subordinate machinery, moreover, was a point d'appui for insidious ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... soldier, whose trade is war. With us, your yeomen whenever they have a chance, I have observed, most uncivilly poke about the lieges with but and bayonet, or thump and rump them with their chargers, and entice the ill-broken brutes with insidious prods of the spur to swish their tails, if tails they have, into the upturned ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power |
