"Insensibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the French nation, just recovering from a debauch of irreligion and anarchy, should begin insensibly to yield to the charms of a wooer so seductive? For some time past the soldiers, as the Milan newspapers declared, had been a pack of tatterdemalions ever flying before the arms of his Majesty the Emperor; now they ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... 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 ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Material Pantheism runs insensibly into one or other of the forms of naked Atheism to which we have already referred. Ignoring the existence of mind, or of any spiritual Power distinct from Nature and superior to it, it must necessarily hold the eternal ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... in four columns, but so dense was the forest, so obstructed with undergrowth, that they could scarcely make their way, and, after a time, even the guides became confused in the labyrinth of trunks and boughs, and the four columns insensibly drew near to ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... were uttered, but he would not humble himself to say so. Alexina had taken Stephen's part and her manner to Josie assumed a tinge of coldness. Josie quickly noticed and resented it, and the breach between the two girls widened almost insensibly, until they barely spoke when they met. Each blamed the other and cherished bitterness in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the design of entering this recess was insensibly formed? Possibly it was locked, but its accessibleness was likewise possible. I meant not the commission of any crime. My principal purpose was to procure the implements of writing, which were elsewhere ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... publication of Hedda Gabler Ibsen passed into what we may call his final glory. Almost insensibly, and to an accompaniment of his own growls of indignation, he had taken his place, not merely as the most eminent imaginative writer of the three Scandinavian countries, but as the type there of what literature should be and the prophet of what it would become. In 1880, Norway, the youngest ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... 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 was ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on, occasional fields of maize or sugarcane. A faint blue level streak on the far eastern horizon indicated their close proximity to the sea, while certain shapeless irregularities that began to show up against that narrow streak of blue insensibly resolved themselves, as the ship sped onward, into a vast assemblage of enormous columns, isolated and in groups, some still upreared and perpendicular, others prostrate and broken, the remains of great temples and other buildings, that, judging from the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... These are not necessarily warlike. The accoutrement of spear and shield was in part decorative, in part a provision for making the necessary hubbub." (Here Miss Harrison reproduces a photograph of an Initiation dance among the Akikuyu of British East Africa.) The Initiation-dances blend insensibly and naturally with the Mystery and Religion dances, for indeed initiation was for the most part an instruction in the mysteries and social rites of the Tribe. They were the expression of things which would be hard even for us, and which for rude folk would be impossible, to put into definite ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... beguile our better judgments. Whether the coincidence which I have mentioned was really one of those singular chances which sometimes happen against all ordinary calculations; or whether Mannering, bewildered amid the arithmetical labyrinth and technical jargon of astrology, had insensibly twice followed the same clue to guide him out of the maze; or whether his imagination, seduced by some point of apparent resemblance, lent its aid to make the similitude between the two operations more exactly accurate than it might otherwise have ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the successful cover designer, and much practice in order to become proficient. A very successful cover may be due simply to a well-selected cloth with lettering properly drawn and placed so that the eye is perfectly satisfied and the whole has an air of distinction. Each designer grows insensibly into his or her own particular style, which those who are interested in book covers grow to know; but the more varied his style the more in demand ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... darling 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... began to be aware of a wonderful revolution, compared to which the fire of Mittwalden Palace was but the crack and flash of a percussion-cap. The countenance with which the pines regarded her began insensibly to change; the grass too, short as it was, and the whole winding staircase of the brook's course, began to wear a solemn freshness of appearance. And this slow transfiguration reached her heart, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the shot, the outlaw insensibly somewhat relaxed that choking arm. Merryfield tore loose. Half-blinded and gasping though he was, he flung himself again at his adversary and landed a blow in his face. Drake, giving backward, kicked over a row of peach jars, slipped on the slimy stream that poured over ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... "Dinner is upon the table," dissolved his reverie, and we all sat down without any symptoms of ill humor.... Mr. Wilkes placed himself next to Dr. Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and politeness, that he gained upon him insensibly. No man ate more heartily than Johnson, or loved better what was nice and delicate. Mr. Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to some fine veal. "Pray give me leave, Sir—It is better here—A little of the brown—Some fat, Sir—A little of ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... right judgment can ever be formed on any subject having a moral or intellectual bearing without benevolence; for so strong is man's natural self-bias, that, without this restraining principle, he insensibly becomes a competitor in all such cases presented to his mind; and, when the comparison is thus made personal, unless the odds be immeasurably against him, his decision will rarely be impartial. In other words, no one can see any thing as it really is through the misty spectacles of self-love. ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... loved the novelist much more. Of course I did not perceive then that Irving's charm came largely from Cervantes and the other Spanish humorists yet unknown to me, and that he had formed himself upon them almost as much as upon Goldsmith, but I dare say that this fact had insensibly a great deal to do with my liking. Afterwards I came to see it, and at the same time to see what was Irving's own in Irving; to feel his native, if somewhat attenuated humor, and his original, if somewhat too studied grace. But as yet there was no critical question with me. I gave ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ignorance and incredulity, madam, that they feed themselves. The mind, once rejecting useful information, insensibly leans to superstition and conclusions on the order of nature, that are not less prejudicial to the cause of truth, than they are at variance with the first principles of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... live. Yet perspective was lame, no distance true, But all came forward in one common view: 40 No point of light was known, no bounds of art; When light was there, it knew not to depart, But glaring on remoter objects play'd; Not languish'd, and insensibly decay'd. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of it, and though I can 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 ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... place. After this the creature creeps forward by degrees; drawing, first its wings, and then its body, out of the skin; it then sits at rest for some time. The wings, which were moist and folded together, now begin to expand. The body is likewise insensibly extended, until all the limbs have attained their proper size. The insect cannot at first make use of its new wings, and is, therefore, obliged to remain stationary until its limbs are dried by the air. It soon, however, begins to enter upon a more noble life ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... in love with her almost at once; insensibly but thoroughly. There had been an hour in which he had flung himself, metaphorically, at her feet (one never does the real thing now, because it spoils one's trousers so), and offered his heart, and all the ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... and a most useless labor, to attempt correcting in children every little fault against usage; they never fail themselves to correct these faults in time. Always speak correctly in their presence; order it so that they are never so happy with any one as with you; and rest assured their language will insensibly be purified by your own, without ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... had arrived at his journey's end for the day at noon, he had since insensibly walked about the town so far and so long that the lamplighters were now at their work in the streets, and the shops were sparkling up brilliantly. Thus reminded to turn towards his quarters, he was in the act of doing so, when a very little hand ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... levied almost insensibly to the taxpayer, goes on from year to year, increasing beyond either the interests or the prospective wants of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... breathing (see Breathing, Correct Method of). Articulation should be clear, and the words formed sonorously, and from the stomach, as it were. This, indeed, will apply to everyone. Such a method of producing the voice will not only be harmonious, but will exercise insensibly a beneficial influence on the nervous system and mental tone of ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Richard Bourke, who succeeded him, was the most able and the most popular of all the Sydney Governors. He had the talent and energy of Macquarie; but he had, in addition, a frank and hearty manner, which insensibly won the hearts of the colonists, who, for years after his departure, used to talk affectionately of him as the "good old Governor Bourke". During his term of office the colony continued in a sober ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... system. It does not debilitate the liver by over-stimulation, nor irritate the stomach and bowels by disturbing the delicate processes of digestion, neither does it act with severity upon the blood, but it operates so gently, insensibly, and yet with so much certainty, that it excites the surprise and admiration ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... be innocent, Sandy remained in contumacy, thereby falling somewhat into disrepute among the members of his church, the largest in the city. The effect of a bad reputation being subjective as well as objective, and poor human nature arguing that one may as well have the game as the name, Sandy insensibly glided into habits of which the church would not have approved, though he took care that they should not interfere with his duties to Mr. Delamere. The consolation thus afforded, however, followed as it was by remorse of conscience, did not compensate him for the loss of standing in the church, ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... old, he came into a singular compensation. In the summer, during his ten days' vacation, when he was tramping through the woods, he fell in with a party of Western people, who manifested much interest in New York. To Andrew there was only one New York, and with that his soul was identified. Insensibly, he began to talk of New York Society as if it were part of his daily experience. His careful, if restricted, study of its habits had made him sufficiently familiar with it to enable him to deceive the wholly ignorant. He described the ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... beautiful, gentle, large-eyed girl ... wholly feminine ... soft-voiced ... as a reaction from the nagging of his wife, from her blatancy and utter lack of sympathy with any of his projects, he insensibly drifted into a relationship closer and closer, with this girl ... they used to take long walks into the pines together ... and be observed coming back slowly out of the sunset ... hand in hand ... to drop each other's hands, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... trust himself with talking of the character and concerns of his neighbour, in a free, careless, and unreserved manner. There is perpetually, and often it is not attended to, a rivalship amongst people of one kind or another in respect to wit, beauty, learning, fortune, and that one thing will insensibly influence them to speak to the disadvantage of others, even where there is no formed malice or ill-design. Since therefore it is so hard to enter into this subject without offending, the first thing to be observed is that people should learn to decline ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... allegiance does not depend on either the tradition of Roum or the caliphate, but on essential unity with the Osmanli nation. Asia Minor is the nation. There, prepared equally by Byzantine domination and by Seljukian influence, the great mass of the people long ago identified itself insensibly and completely with the tradition and hope of the Osmanlis. The subsequent occupation of the Byzantine capital by the heirs of the Byzantine system, and their still later assumption of caliphial responsibility, were ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... opinion friendly, a little surprised, no doubt, but showing that readiness to believe in the man coming to the front, which belongs much more to the generous than to the calculating side of the English character. Insensibly his mental and moral stature rose. He exchanged a few words on his way out with one of the most distinguished members of the club, a man of European reputation, whom he had seen the week before in the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... power, many thousands must have taken a part in public affairs. National government was remote from the ordinary man; local government came close to him. The political institutions which surrounded him on all sides, insensibly controlling every action and forming the world to which his outward life conformed, were familiar to him and affected his habits and ideas, whether he remained at home or emigrated to the colonies, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... memory, as a natural consequence. Not only so, but its related objects or ideas are brought up by the principle of association, and they too make a deeper impression and are more closely remembered. In fact, one thing carefully observed and memorized, leads almost insensibly to another that is related to it, and thus the faculty of association is strengthened, the memory is stimulated, and the seeds of knowledge are deeply planted in that complex organism which we call the mind. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... that can be said, for certain, is, that such movements are part of the ordinary course of nature, inasmuch as they are going on at the present time. Direct proof may be given, that some parts of the land of the northern hemisphere are at this moment insensibly rising and others insensibly sinking; and there is indirect, but perfectly satisfactory, proof, that an enormous area now covered by the Pacific has been deepened thousands of feet, since the present inhabitants of that sea ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and Miss Effie both cry out "Oh!" in delighted doubt of his intention. They both insensibly drifted a little ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... Insensibly a change was coming over Pauline. The sharp, varied experiences of the past month had a decisive schooling influence upon her. It is often the case that simple untutored natures like her develop more rapidly in days of crisis than characters fashioned of sterner material. There is no preliminary ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... obligations, had aroused the realization of greater things. As he stood meditatively in the middle of the room he saw suddenly how absorbed he had become in these greater things. How, in the swing of congenial interests, he had been borne insensibly forward—his capacities expanding, his intelligence asserting itself. He had so undeniably found his sphere that the idea of usurpation had receded gently as by natural laws, until his own personality had begun to ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... them. As there is little to be seen at St. Denis but the Abbey, on quitting that part of it devoted to education, they proceeded to visit the church, with its various objects of interest; and as De Chaulieu's thoughts were now forced into another direction, his cheerfulness began insensibly to return. Natalie looked so beautiful, too, and the affection betwixt the two young sisters was so pleasant to behold! And they spent a couple of hours wandering about with Hortense, who was almost as well informed as the Suisse, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Lord Holderness, to beg of him to obtain his Majesty's leave for you to return to England for two or three months, upon account of your health. Two or three months is an indefinite time, which may afterward insensibly stretched to what length one pleases; leave that to me. In the meantime, you may be taking your measures ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... actually prevailed among the blacks, it was not altogether unmixed with a resolution to die with arms in their hands, in preference to yielding to savage clemency. Hatred, in a measure, supplied the place of courage, though both sexes had insensibly imbibed some of that resolution which is the result of habit, and of which a border life is certain to instil more or less into its subjects, in a form suited to border emergencies. Nor was this feeling ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... relieve more serious Thoughts, and prevent an Anxiety, which, the constant Application, You have always been inclin'd to give harder Studies, might probably draw on You, is an Amusement worthy the greatest Head-piece. But 'tis so deluding a Genius, Dramatick Poetry especially, that many are insensibly drawn into to it, 'till it becomes a Business. To avoid that Misfortune, I'm now almost fix'd to throw it intirely by, and wou'd fain aim at something which may prove more serviceable to the Publick, and beneficial to ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... the theory of development are these:—1. The different classes of plants and animals are not separated by broad lines of demarcation, but shade insensibly into each other. 2. The characteristics of the same species are not constant; the lion, for instance, the horse, the elephant, and the hyena of the present day differ in many minor points from the corresponding animals of the Tertiary ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... statesman—and he thought Lincoln "a Simple Susan." He conceived his role in the new administration to involve a subtle and patient manipulation of his childlike superior. That Lincoln would gradually yield to his spell and insensibly become his figurehead; that he, Seward, could save the country and would go down to history a statesman above compare, he took for granted. Nor can he fairly be called conceited, either; that is part ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the art of writing talismans from the second; and the story-teller taught me some of the tales with which his head was stored, lent me his books, and gave me general rules how to lead on the curiosity of an audience, until their money should insensibly ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... arrangement of two galleries running parallel with each other at a distance of about eighteen feet. The walls and ceilings are made of slab, anti the interstices are filled in with flints. These galleries are some thirty feet long, and their height insensibly increases from about three ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... we come at last to seek the happiness of others for their own sake;—so that, by this process, actions, which at first were considered only as inexpedient, from being opposed to self-love, at length and insensibly come to be considered as immoral. This can be considered as nothing more than an ingenious play upon words, and deserves only to be mentioned as a historical fact, in a view of those speculations by which this important subject has been ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... to-day; there were the same narrow strips of cultivation along the river banks, gigantic temples half buried by their own ruins, scattered towns and villages, and everywhere the yellow sand creeping insensibly down towards the Nile. The northern part of this province remained in the hands of the Saite Pharaohs, and the districts situated further south just beyond Abu-Simbel formed at that period a sort of neutral ground between their domain and that of the Pharaohs of Napata. While ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... restraint; neither inactivity nor omnipotence are in harmony with his nature. The absolute prince who is all-powerful, like the listless aristocracy with nothing to do, in the end become useless and mischievous.—In grasping all powers the king insensibly took upon himself all functions; an immense undertaking and one surpassing human strength. For it is the Monarchy, and not the Revolution, which endowed France with administrative centralization [1432]. Three functionaries, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... advantages that other girls had, socially and educationally, the pleasures they contrived, the attentions they received, the thousand and one slight things that make existence life for a woman. He saw her drooping insensibly day by day, growing a little paler, a shade more aloof and listless. And he became infinitely concerned ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... time I found that, almost insensibly, as it were, I had become separated from my old companions the Blacks, and that I was more than ever Alone. The greatest likelihood is, that Authority deemed it advisable to break up, for good and all, the Formidable Confederacy they had laid ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... 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 ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... most solemn injunctions of uncle and keeper, enforced by the direst threats, had purloined and broken an egg; and still dinner-time delayed. Perhaps, too, the cold blighting wind, which soon made her look blue and pinched, tamed her insensibly. At any rate, she got up after about an hour, and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 and fainter impress ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... travellers rode on, the evanescent ardour of Don Cornelio's roadster insensibly cooled down; while the student himself, fatigued by the incessant application of whip and spur, gradually allowed to languish a conversation, that had enabled them to kill a long hour of their ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... thousands of years—even in that case the final result would be this: it would be (and in part perhaps it really is) true or not true as to its minor or petty chronology—not true, as having been altered insensibly like any human composition where the internal sense was not of a nature to maintain its integrity. True, even as to trifles, in that sense which the majestic simplicity and self-conformity of truth in a tale originally ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... altogether approve; and if you tell a man to do things you can't altogether approve, and keep on telling him, it wears into you, and a thing you once held in abhorrence you come to think of with indifference. You change insensibly. Old friends rage at you, and because of it you rage at them—not knowing how you have changed. You dare not let what you believe lie in abeyance or say things inconsistent with it, else to-morrow you'll be puzzled to say ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... demonstrates to us, that no condition is privileged from the turns of fortune; this must of necessity cause terror in us, and consequently abate our pride. But when we see that the most virtuous, as well as the greatest, are not exempt from such misfortunes, that consideration moves pity in us, and insensibly works us to be helpful to, and tender over, the distressed; which is the noblest and most godlike of moral virtues, Here it is observable, that it is absolutely necessary to make a man virtuous, if we desire he should be pitied: we lament not, but detest, a wicked man; we are glad when we behold ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... came to an end. Hamilton went away to his office with a light heart, and a smile on his lips. The Commissioner had given him some of his own reminiscences, and Hamilton had sympathised. The two men had drifted insensibly onto common ground, and the Commissioner finally had promised to help Hamilton as far as he could. Hamilton was pleased. That he had merely been twisting a piece of straw, that would be bent into quite another shape ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... one of the whole century about exact grammatical sequence, and seems to have had no objection on any critical grounds to the long disjointed sentence which was the curse of the time. But his own ruling passion insensibly disposed him to a certain brevity. He liked to express his figurative conceits pointedly and antithetically; and point and antithesis are the two things most incompatible with clauses jointed ad infinitum in Clarendon's manner, with labyrinths of "whos" and "whiches" ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... matter of the first half, Kumara's fight with the demon the matter of the second half. Further, it must be admitted that the interest runs a little thin. Even in India, where the world of gods runs insensibly into the world of men, human beings take more interest in the adventures of men than of gods. The gods, indeed, can hardly have adventures; they must be victorious. The Birth of the War-god pays for its greater unity by ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... been insensibly led, by the general complexion of the times, from the particular case of Geneva, to those to which it bears no similitude. Of that we hope good things. Its inhabitants must be too much enlightened, too well experienced ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... broke now. Few days passed unmarked by fresh arrests. The phrase "the Queen" had almost insensibly passed from Jane to Mary. But for a little while yet the crisis was political, not religious. When the danger was over, and before Mary reached her metropolis, the scene was shifted, and the first Protestant arrest took ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... young female friend of the Sessionses', in a small flat with gentlemen lodgers and just one bathroom. Una was saved by not having a spinster friend with whom to share her shrinking modesty. She simply had to take waiting for her turn at the bathroom as a matter of course, and insensibly she was impressed by the decency with which these dull, ordinary people solved the complexities of their enforced intimacy. When she wildly clutched her virgin bathrobe about her and passed a man in the hall, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... aeolian blandness of trees swinging under the weight of the restless birds, became once more an idealistic accompaniment to the book. I read, or rather declaimed inarticulately, to the singularly pleasing strain until light and sound failed—the one as softly and insensibly as the other. I ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... imitations of other writers, however frequent, have no semblance of study or labour. They seem to have been self-suggested, and to have glided tacitly and insensibly into the current of his thoughts. This is evinced by the little pains he took to work upon and heighten such resemblances. As he did not labour the details injudiciously, so he had a clear conception ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Hester, as though her visit were in no sense of the word unpleasant, or an extraordinary event. But when he returned to his seat under the cedar tree his whole expression was changed. The lines about his face had insensibly deepened. He leaned a little forward, looking with weary, unseeing eyes into the tangled shrubbery. Had all men, he wondered, this secret chapter in their lives—the one sore place so impossible to forget, the cupboard of shadows ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... be no less so of the different shades of the same colour, that each of them produces a distinct idea, independent of the rest. For if this should be denied, it is possible, by the continual gradation of shades, to run a colour insensibly into what is most remote from it; and if you will not allow any of the means to be different, you cannot without absurdity deny the extremes to be the same. Suppose therefore a person to have enjoyed his ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the light of temptation and danger. For the first time in his life, an influence serene, natural, healthy, and sweet breathed over him from the mind of a woman,—an influence so heavenly and peaceful that he did not challenge or suspect it, but rather opened his worn heart insensibly to it, as one in a fetid chamber naturally breathes freer when the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... its passions and prejudices—to be the philosophic guides of humanity, and to lay down, with the serene logic of truth, the bases of moral and political progress. The inevitable sympathy between the editor and his daily readers—the action and reaction which constantly take place and insensibly lead the journalist into the paths of popular opinion and passion—these are too apt to render him altogether unfit to be an oracle in the great work of social organization and government. The common sense of ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... maintain the usual degree of order and discipline. The lures to desertion continually thrown out by the Americans, and the facility with which it can be accomplished, exacting a more than ordinary precaution on the part of the officers, insensibly produce mistrust between them and the men, highly prejudicial ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... from a severe illness, and was a softened woman: she sent Fanny off to keep Zoe company. That poor girl had a bitter time, and gave Doctress Gale great anxiety. She had no brain fever, but seemed quietly, insensibly, sinking into her grave. No appetite, and indeed was threatened with atrophy at one time. But she was so surrounded with loving-kindness that her shame diminished, her pride rose, and at last her ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... starless night, and there seemed no air to breathe in those narrow alleys. The gondolier was half asleep. Eustace called him as we jumped into his boat, and rang our soldi on the gunwale. Then he arose and turned the ferro round, and stood across towards the Salute. Silently, insensibly, from the oppression of confinement in the airless streets to the liberty and immensity of the water and the night we passed. It was but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said good-night, and went our way and left the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Brutus should slay his sons. By that sacrifice he saved his country! What did this poor dupe of an exaggeration save? Nothing but his own name. He could not lift the crime from his son's soul, nor the dishonor from his son's memory. He could but gratify his own vain pride; and insensibly to himself, his act was whispered to him by the fiend that ever whispers to the heart of man, 'Dread men's opinions more than God's law!' Oh, my dear brother! what minds like yours should guard against the most is not the meanness ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was illustrating, the artist insensibly followed lines she deemed imaginary, yet when the sketch was completed, the ensemble suddenly confronted her as a miniature reproduction of a very distant scene, that had gladdened her childish heart in the blessed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... offspring? And finally, besides all these crimes, is there not naturally in the familiar sight of the exercise, but more especially in the exercise itself, of uncontrolled power, that which vitiates the internal man? In seeing misery stalk daily over the land, do not all become insensibly hardened? By giving birth to that misery themselves, do they not become abandoned? In what state of society are the corrupt appetites so easily, so quickly, and so frequently indulged, and where else, by means ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... course"—she so qualified the statement—and had expressed a lively sense of his courage, and perhaps implied (for I suppose the arts of ladies are the same as those of men) a modest consciousness of his good looks, our bear began insensibly to soften; and it was already part as an apology, though still with unaffected heat of temper, that he volunteered some ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the man without ancestors who is worthy to be added to the ranks of the nobly born. Novae res are things without antecedents, nay revolution itself. Novae res should only be introduced partially gradually, insensibly and progressively into ancient things, as "new men" into the community of the old nobility. Law is more aristocratic than aristocracy itself, hence democracy is the natural enemy of laws ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... teacher refuse to those poor disciples any guidance or consolation it was in her power to bestow? No; quietly and meekly she instructed the ignorant, consoled the afflicted, led inquirers to her Saviour, and warned the impenitent to flee to him; and if insensibly she thus came to fill a place from which her nature would instinctively have shrunk, there was still about her such a modest and womanly grace, combined with such a serious and dignified purpose ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... Insensibly he had to modify certain sweeping convictions. He was not conscious of this inner compulsion when he concluded to try and meet Sam Carr without making theology an issue. Somehow this man Carr began to loom in the background of his thought as a commanding figure. At ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... let a person speak, Percival," returned his wife, with dignity, "you shall have an answer:" and then she looked up in his handsome, good-natured face, and her manner softened insensibly. "Poor dear Mrs. Challoner has had losses! Some one has played her false, and they are obliged to leave Glen Cottage. But Hadleigh is a nice place," she went on, turning to Nan: "it is ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Insensibly the two children had in addressing one another changed the homely singular pronoun to the more polite, if less grammatical, second person plural. The boy laughed, nodded his head, and said, 'You are a ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there is no need to conceal the fact—for we do not all make use of it involuntarily?—that alcoholism is a powerful auxiliary in the propagation of our ideas, and that the dealer in wines and spirits constitutes a valuable vanguard pioneer for our Western civilisation. Races, insensibly depressed by the abuse of our "appetisers," become more supple, more easy to lead in the true path of ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... lies crouched the lordly stag, The dreaming terrier's tail forgets its customary wag; And plodding ploughman's weary steps insensibly grow quicker, As broadening casements light them on toward home, or ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... to have attracted the long and frequent visits of Valentinian; who was consequently more despised at Rome than in any other part of his dominions. A republican spirit was insensibly revived in the senate, as their authority, and even their supplies, became necessary for the support of his feeble government. The stately demeano of an hereditary monarch offended their pride; and the pleasures of Valentinian were injurious to the peace and honor of noble families. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... army creeps dully along the mid-distance, in the detached masses and columns of a whitish cast. The columns insensibly draw nearer to each other, and are seen to be converging from the east upon the banks of the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Monte, I stood upon my balcony looking out upon the lovely scene before me, with a kind of pensive dreamy rapture, which if not quite pleasure, had at least a power to banish pain: and thus hours passed away insensibly— ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... noble and magnificent views in that vast sylvan scene Hagley, where, in a spot which once delighted Mr. Pope, is inscribed an urn to his memory, "which, when shewn by a gleam of moonlight through the trees, fixes that thoughtfulness and composure to which the mind is insensibly led by the ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... his firmness, and ever and anon, in spite of his efforts, his labouring bosom and faltering tones proclaimed the struggle within. He sat beside his daughter, with her thin fingers clasped in his, and spoke to her on every consolatory topic that suggested itself. This discourse, however, insensibly took a serious turn, and the grocer became fully convinced that his daughter was not merely reconciled to the early death that to all appearance awaited her, but wishful for it. He found, too, to his inexpressible grief, that the sense ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... rocks, round which we wound; the snow was in 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
... silent, and he let her kiss him, sit near at hand, and wait on my mother, whose coming had, as it were, insensibly taken the bitterness away and made him as a little child in her hands. He could follow prayers in which she led him, as he could not, or did not seem to do, with any one else, for he was never conscious of the presence of the clergyman whom Thomson hunted up and brought, and ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... long in the twilight, now; rising insensibly about him. The garden had become a grave, yet not unfriendly, place; the white straining Nereids were taking on a tinge of violet, the verdure was of a deeper hue, that was all; and the fountain plashed unhurriedly, as though measuring a reasonable interval (he whimsically ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the conversation went on in a lower tone, but in a few minutes they insensibly forgot their neighbour, and the voices rose again ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... the highest ambition of my time, I had set my barque on a great circle, and almost before I realized it the barque was burdened with a wife and family and the steering had insensibly become more difficult; for Maude cared nothing about the destination, and when I took any hand off the wheel our ship showed a tendency to make for a quiet harbour. Thus the social initiative, which I believed should ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... were secured; that if she rejected me, I was cast away for ever. Such was my feeling for Susannah Temple, who, perfect as she was, was still a woman, and perceived her power over me; but unlike the many of her sex, exerted that power only to lead to what was right. Insensibly almost, my pride was quelled, and I became humble and religiously inclined. Even the peculiarities of the sect, their meeting at their places of worship, their drawling, and their quaint manner of talking, became no longer a subject of dislike. I found out causes and good reasons for ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... stories, sometimes listlessly turning the leaves of a book, and again smiling scornfully as she thought how impossible it was that the fastidious Arthur Carrolton should have been at all pleased with a girl like Anna Jeffrey; and positive as Maggie was that she hated him, she insensibly began to feel a very slight degree of interest in him; at least, she would like to know how he looked; and one day when her grandmother and Theo were riding she stole cautiously to the box where she knew his ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... kiss from her! What bliss! How heroic of me! How exquisitely romantic! In the moonlight the hero beguiles the fair maid with burning words and kisses! Bah! what rubbish! In such a cursed little hole as this one insensibly ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... College, and his pupils were transferred to Dr. Adams; so that had Johnson returned, Dr. Adams would have been his tutor. It is to be wished, that this connection had taken place. His equal temper, mild disposition, and politeness of manners, might have insensibly softened the harshness of Johnson, and infused into him those more delicate charities, those petites morales, in which, it must be confessed, our great moralist was more deficient than his best friends could fully justify. Dr. Adams paid ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... darkened and shortened his days. In the mean time the multitude, comprehending not only those who have neither ardour of sensibility, nor compass of understanding to give weight to their suffrage, but those also whom accident had not brought into close and perpetual contact with the events, were insensibly detached from the revolution; and, before they were well aware that they had quitted their old 'position', they ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... pilgrimage by which the saints of the Most High have "passed into the skies," is neither a faint nor fruitless emotion, but a healthful exercise of the moral sympathies. It purifies, while it elicits; the affections of the heart. As we trace the formation of their character, we are insensibly forming our own; and the observation by which we mark the development of their Christian virtues, is among the most efficient means by which we are ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... The struggling rill insensibly is grown Into a brook of loud and stately march, Cross'd ever and anon by plank or arch; And for like use, lo! what might seem a zone Chosen for ornament—stone match'd with stone In studied symmetry, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the horizon. The military families did not wantonly show contempt towards the Court. But in some districts the stewards were more powerful than the owners of the estates, and the constables were more respected than the provincial governors. Thus insensibly the influence of the Court waned day by day and that ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... depending on catfish and an occasional turtle. Hennepin thus describes one of their encounters: "I shewed Picard [Du Gay] a huge Serpent, as big as a Man's Leg, and seven or eight Foot long. She was working herself insensibly up a steep craggy Rock, to get at the Swallows Nests which are there in great Numbers. We pelted her so long with Stones, till at length she fell into the River. Her Tongue, which was in form of a Lance, was of an extraordinary Length, and her Hiss might be ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... swardy sod along the canon floor. Pine woods, the short-leafed Balfour and Murryana of the high Sierras, are sombre, rooted in the litter of a thousand years, hushed, and corrective to the spirit. The trail passes insensibly into them from the black pines and a thin belt of firs. You look back as you rise, and strain for glimpses of the tawny valley, blue glints of the Bitter Lake, and tender cloud films on the farther ranges. For such pictures the pine branches make ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... night, her mind carrying her back over all that had gone before, had no doubt that this was the end of everything. Not originally a subtle discerner of character, she had come insensibly to know Richard so well that certain results from certain combinations of circumstances in his life were as plain and inevitable to her as the outcome of a simple sum in mathematics. "He'd got 'most out of his track for once," she groaned ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... elapsed without one word to clear up the mystery that haunted us, would have driven us mad. We were compelled to turn to each other, and talk in those dismal winter nights; and as the one subject was insensibly acquiring a monopoly of our thoughts, we could not help constantly reverting to it. At last we brooded so much over it, that, whatever subject we began upon, we were sure to drop into and end ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... dinners: the unseemly 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 ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Insensibly the antipathy that Lord Colambre had originally felt to Lady Dashfort wore off; her faults, he began to think, were assumed; he pardoned her defiance of good breeding, when he observed that she could, when she chose it, be most engagingly ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... details of his explorations. Among these people Juve picked out the Princesse de Krauss, a stout woman with exaggerated blonde hair and red spots on her face, barely disguised under a thick layer of powder. She seemed to be ready for a more personal conversation which Juve insensibly brought to ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... have determined the most remarkable changes in the number and development of the instruments of organisation are incontestably much more the consequence of the tendency, inherent in organic matter, which leads it insensibly to rise to higher states of organisation, passing through ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... commentary, upon the yet unfulfilled prophecies, lay, the records of missionary labor and success. The sewing circle busied her active fingers, and the Sabbath-school kept her affections warm, and rendered her knowledge practical and thorough. But at length the things of the world began insensibly to win upon her regard. She was the child of wealth, and fashion spoke of her taste and elegance. She was very lovely, and the voice of flattery mingled with the accents of honest praise. She was agreeable in manners, sprightly in conversation, and was courted and caressed. She heard ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... because he gets accustomed to the sight of only such good as seeks for notice, and therefore easily succumbs to the temptation to live himself for appearances. Not only must one be resigned to obscurity, he must love it, if he does not wish to slip insensibly into the ranks of figurants, who preserve their parts only while under the eyes of the spectators, and put off in the wings the restraints imposed on the stage. Here we are in the presence of one of the essential elements of the moral life. And this which we say is true not only for those ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... roll through flow'ry meads, Here woods, Lycoris, lift their verdant heads; Here could I wear my careless life away, And in thy arms insensibly decay. Instead of that, me frantick love detains, 'Mid foes, and dreadful darts, and bloody plains: While you—and can my soul the tale believe, Far from your country, lonely wand'ring leave Me, me your lover, barbarous fugitive! Seek the rough Alps where snows eternal shine, And joyless borders ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of keeping in shore, she should stand out to sea; but he soon saw that she would pass, like most vessels bound for Italy, between the islands of Jaros and Calaseraigne. However, the vessel and the swimmer insensibly neared one another, and in one of its tacks the tartan bore down within a quarter of a mile of him. He rose on the waves, making signs of distress; but no one on board saw him, and the vessel stood on another ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... but their daily wages, and no hope of acquiring it, refrain from over-rapid multiplication, the cause, I believe, has always hitherto been, either actual legal restraint, or a custom of some sort which, without intention on their part, insensibly molds their conduct, or affords immediate inducements not to marry. It is not generally known in how many countries of Europe direct legal obstacles are opposed ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... enforcing or regulating this species of servitude, were enacted in the reign of Henry VII. And though the ancient statutes on this subject remain still unrepealed by parliament, it appears that before the end of Elizabeth, the distinction of villain and freeman was totally, though insensibly abolished, and that no person remained in the state, to whom the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... 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 northern extremity ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... means. The frivolous will like it, and those who may have more sense, although they may think that Mouton does not at all assist your travelling researches, are too well acquainted with the virtues of the canine race, and the attachment insensibly imbibed for so faithful an attendant, not to forgive your affectionate mention of him. Besides it will go far to assist the verisimilitude of your travels. As for your female readers, they will prefer Mouton ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... also B. You attempt to make everybody rich by reckoning their property in pence instead of pounds, and the process, though at first sight attractive, is unsatisfactory. In fact, this phase of opinion generally slips back into the preceding. We find that exceptions are insensibly made, and that after pronouncing nature to be divine, it is tacitly assumed there is an indefinite region which is somehow outside nature. Few people have the reasoning tendency sufficiently developed to follow out this ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... women splendidly gowned, its decorously muted murmur of voices penetrated and interwoven by the strains of a hidden string orchestra—caressed his senses as always, yet with a difference. To-night he saw it a room populous with lovers, lovers insensibly paired, man unto woman attentive, woman of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... are grave perils in worshipful services corresponding to their supreme values. Mystical preaching has the defects of its virtues and too often sinks into that vague sentimentalism which is the perversion of its excellence. How insensibly sometimes does high and precious feeling degenerate into a sort of religious hysteria! It needs then to be always tested and ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... at Mustapha. They had gained immeasurably in importance. Comment rained upon them. Conflict swirled about them. Expectations centered upon them. And they had the air of those upon whose footsteps the goddess, Success, is following. Gillier began to lose his regret for his lost opportunity. He was insensibly drawn to the Heaths by the spell of united effort. Now that Claude did not seem to care twopence for him, or for anyone else, Gillier began to respect him, to think a good deal of him. In Charmian ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... official life in England at that time. Probably no great injustice would be done in suggesting a baser motive. The ministry doubtless aimed at one or both of two things: to keep a certain personal hold upon him, which might, insensibly to himself, mollify his actions; and to discredit him among his countrymen by precisely such fleers as had been cast against him in the Massachusetts Assembly. More than once they sought to seduce him by offers of office; it was said that ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... rapid expansion of her mind, which develops surprisingly. She is the most mature child I have ever met, and I presume it is attributable to the fact that she has never been thrown with children, and having always associated with older persons, has insensibly imbibed their staid thoughts, and adopted their quiet ways. I should not be more astonished to see my prim puritanical grandmother yonder step down from the frame, and turn a somersault on the carpet, or indulge in leap-frog, than to find Regina guilty of any boisterous hoidenish ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... she strove to extricate from disgrace the man upon whom rested all her political hopes, Madame de Chevreuse, not daring to attack Mazarin overtly, insensibly undermined the ground beneath his feet, and step by step prepared his ruin. Her experienced eye enabled her promptly to perceive the most favourable point of attack whence to assail the Queen, and the watchword she passed was to fan and keep alive to the utmost the general ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... sheriff next year; and, in one generation more, of passing for a great patriot. Charles Lamb complained that, by gradual changes, not on his part, but in the spirit of refinement, he found himself growing insensibly into 'an indecent character.' The same changes which carry some downwards, carry others up; and Shylock himself will soon be viewed as an eminent martyr or confessor for the truth as it is in the Alley. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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
... remarks in this and the preceding chapter apply to all men-of-war. There are some vessels blessed with patriarchal, intellectual Captains, gentlemanly and brotherly officers, and docile and Christianised crews. The peculiar usages of such vessels insensibly softens the tyrannical rigour of the Articles of War; in them, scourging is unknown. To sail in such ships is hardly to realise that you live under the martial law, or that the evils above mentioned ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... being extended to Ireland, and the poverty of the country is about to be placed for support upon the property—especially upon the landed property." And again: "The English plan of out-door relief, in its worst form, will be almost insensibly communicated to Ireland, and their [the proprietors,] estates not only burthened but actually confiscated." The remedy for this, he says, is combination amongst the owners of land. The baronial sessions proved the possibility of such a combination, but they lasted only a part of a day—there ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... It was thus impossible for us to see who it was until the person was close abreast of us; but by the rustle of the gown we knew that it was one of the ladies, and dressed just as she had come from theatre or ball. Insensibly I drew back as the candle swam into our field of vision: it had not traversed many inches when a hand was clapped firmly but silently across ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... insensibly, and stood motionless for a long time, while she wiped her eyes and, woman-like, straightened out her gown and smoothed her hair ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... Baltzly in their recent careful study of European Warfare, Is War Diminishing? come to the conclusion that England during the period of her great activity in the world has been "fighting about half the time." We had begun to look on war as belonging to the past and insensibly fallen into the view of Buckle that in England "a love of war is, as a national taste, utterly extinct." Now we have awakened to realise that we belong to a people who have been ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... space inclosed by them. The Monakadze is the highest, but that is not more than a thousand feet above the flat valley. On account of this want of hills in the part of the country which, by gentle undulations, leads one insensibly up to an altitude of 5000 feet above the level of the sea, I have adopted the agricultural term ridges, for they partake very much of the character of the oblong mounds with which we are all familiar. And we shall yet see that the mountains which are ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... and his sister and Marthe were bewildered among the possibilities to which this opinion gave rise; and yet, in the process of thinking them over, their minds insensibly took hold of them in a certain way. The absolute doubt which Descartes demands can no more exist in the brain of a man than a vacuum can exist in nature, and the mental operation required to produce it would, like the effect of a pneumatic machine, be exceptional and anomalous. Whatever ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... Yusuf the Physician wanted. So in the end the big Christian came along. Zeyn, interpreting fealty to Yusuf to mean care in some measure for this infidel's well-being, began at once with a few minutes' riding each day beside him. These insensibly expanded to more than a few. He presently liked the infidel. "He is a man!" said Zeyn and that was the praise that he considered highest. The big Christian rode strongly a strong horse; he did not fret over small troubles nor apparently fear great ones; he did not say, "This is my way," ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... this kind of deception, it may be stated that navigators, whose actual experience has not extended to the tropical regions, are very apt, in poring over the voyages of others, to acquire, insensibly, a very confident notion that each of the great Trade-winds blowing on different sides of the Line (the North-east and the South-east by name), are quite steady in their direction; and that, in the equatorial interval which lies ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... And then, insensibly, evil thoughts glided one by one into her brain. She sought for subjects of bitterness, for excuses for ingratitude to her mistress. She compared with her own wages the wages of which the other maids in the house boasted vaingloriously. She concluded ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Lanzut that he had given my mother the rendezvous. Having arrived there before her, and not in the least suspecting that she would be escorted by a commissary of police, he came out to meet her, full of joy and confidence. The danger to which he was thus, insensibly, exposing himself, transfixed my mother with terror, and she had barely time to give him a signal to return back; and had it not been for the generous presence of mind of a Polish gentleman, who supplied M. Rocca with the means of escaping, he ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... the scientific historian, who endeavors honestly to record the progress of research, and to trace the influence of the work of some individual on the times in which he lived, is by no means an easy one; for, in scientific work one discovery frequently passes so insensibly into another that it is often difficult to know just where one stops and the other begins, and much difficulty constantly arises as to whom the credit should be given, when, as is too often the case, these discoveries are made by different individuals. It is only when some ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... continent on the first waves of advancing settlement. Its anecdotes and its simplicity of thought commended it to children both at home and at school, and, passing through edition after edition, its statements were widely spread, and it colored insensibly the ideas of hundreds of persons who never had heard even the name of the author. To Weems we owe the anecdote of the cherry-tree, and other tales of a similar nature. He wrote with Dr. Beattie's life of his son before him as a model, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... steward of the household to the duke his master: the fellow could not, in his shallow imagination, conceive that there could be anything greater than a Duke of Savoy. And, in truth, we are all of us, insensibly, in this error, an error of a very great weight and very pernicious consequence. But whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image of our mother nature, in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in her face shall ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Sistine Madonna. Several other esthetic trifles, artistically arranged, completed the furnishings of the "beauty corner." The children took great delight in their little retreat, especially in the exquisite coloring of the stained glass window. Insensibly their conduct and demeanor were affected by the beautiful objects with which they daily associated. They became more gentle, more refined, more thoughtful and considerate. A young Italian boy, in particular, who had been incorrigible before the establishment ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... yet sung their matin hymn to awaken the earth. Deep silence rested upon the august face of nature. Not a breath of air stirred the branches, heavy with dew-drops. The hour was full of beauty and mystery. An awe fell insensibly upon the heart, as if it saw the eye of God visibly watching over the sleeping world. Its holy influence was felt even by ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... 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 has got until he visits Europe and draws comparisons between the condition of the laboring ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... rambled back insensibly to a period which has been already examined: let us, therefore, return to that which we were reviewing a little before. Cotemporary with Sulpicius was P. Antistius,—a plausible declaimer, who, after being silent for several years, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... add that, in my opinion, many men fall into this reticence because as they grow older the question seems to settle itself without argument, and they cease by degrees to worry themselves about it. It dies in sensible men almost insensibly with the death of egoism. At twenty we are all furious egoists; at forty or thereabouts—and especially if we have children, as at forty every man ought—our centre of gravity has completely shifted. We care a great deal about what happens to the next generation, we care something ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Insensibly, too, as Roschen grew out of childhood into girlhood, her attitude towards her adoptive father changed. In the great matters of her life he still cared for her, planning always for her good, and withholding from her nothing suited to her ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... head to fall on the back of the divan; looking at this man as she well knew how, and insensibly creeping closer to him, she breathed in his ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... last observation she smiled graciously, and stole her eyes almost insensibly round to seek those of the Earl of Leicester, to whom she now began to think she had spoken with hasty harshness upon the unfounded ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott |
