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More "Insecure" Quotes from Famous Books



... girls and in whispers directed them to gather all the mattresses and pile them on the platform under the somewhat insecure plank. Amelia, her eyes sparkling through the holes in the pillow-slip, held ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr

... and Darrow belonged to each other, and that he was right in saying no past folly could ever put them asunder. If there was a shade of difference in her feeling for him it was that of an added intensity. She felt restless, insecure out of his sight: she had a sense of incompleteness, of passionate dependence, that was somehow at variance with her ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... to man," "violates the law of love," "degrades man, the image of God, into a thing," "necessarily tends to pollute the soul of the slave," "to defile the soul of the master," "restricts education, keeps the Bible from the slave, makes life insecure, deprives female innocence of protection, sanctions adultery, tears children from parents and husbands from wives, violates the divine institutions of families, and by hard and hopeless toil makes existence a burden," "eats out the heart of nations and tends every year more and more ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... the ju ju would drive the English out of Benin. It was poor ju ju, for it drove the young man himself out of Benin, and now he is a king in exile. As far as I could see, the social position of the king is insecure, and certainly in Calabar he does not move in the first circles. One afternoon, when the four or five ladies of Calabar and Mr. Bedwell, the Acting Commissioner, and the officers of the W.A.F.F.'s were at the clubhouse ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... to my eyes, and driving me stark mad: for the earth is full of these contortions, sudden monstrous grimaces and apparitions, which are like the face of Medusa, affrighting a man into spinning stone; and nothing could be more appallingly insecure ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... and most precarious plight, indeed; and I could not help wondering how they had possibly managed to cling for so many hours to so insecure a refuge—assuming, of course, that the brig had capsized on the previous ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... much as its rider could do to balance himself on its hump, which, of course, he had to do Arab-fashion, sitting upon the saddle as on a chair, with his feet resting upon the back of the animal's neck. It was this position that rendered his seat so insecure, but no other could have been adopted in the saddle of a maherry, and the sailor was compelled to keep it as well as ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... their victim. They were mistaken. The new king, by this time, had forgotten even the existence of the favourite of the prince. But Guzman, who, while affecting to minister to the interests of Uzeda, was secretly aiming at the monopoly of the royal favour, felt himself insecure while Calderon yet lived. The operations of the Inquisition were too slow for the impatience of his fears; and as that dread tribunal affected never to inflict death until the accused had confessed his ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the Protestants seemed to leave him nothing but a critical choice between the two. In his present necessities a general contribution from the Estates was indispensable to him; and yet he could not conciliate the one party without sacrificing the support of the other. Insecure as he felt his situation to be in his own hereditary dominions, he could not but tremble at the idea, however remote, of an open war with the Protestants. But the eyes of the whole Roman Catholic world, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... peat. Of course he looks to the raising of the blockade as the only radical cure; but he was not very hopeful of this being achieved thoroughly or permanently except through revolutions in other countries. Peace between Bolshevik Russia and capitalist countries, he said, must always be insecure; the Entente might be led by weariness and mutual dissensions to conclude peace, but he felt convinced that the peace would be of brief duration. I found in him, as in almost all leading Communists, much less eagerness than existed ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... chap," said the young midshipman, as he sat on the bulwarks in a very insecure position. "I wish I was filling the buckets and holding up the fish for the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... set up for independence; but this you may at the same time rely on, that none of them will ever submit to the loss of those valuable rights and privileges which are essential to the happiness of every free state, and without which life, liberty, and property are rendered totally insecure.... Again give me leave to add as my opinion that more blood will be spilled on this occasion, if the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, than history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of North America, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... was delivered for the purpose of calling attention to the present condition of the marble monument erected at Stone Arabia, N.Y., to the memory of Colonel Brown in 1836, now insecure because the cemetery in the rear of Stone Arabia ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe

... tendency as that of Theology. And consequently, both Religion and Philosophy mean to us things having roots in Reality, while Theology and Metaphysics seem like broken reeds, rooted in the quicksands of ignorance, and affording naught but the most insecure support for the mind or soul of Man. we do not insist upon our students accepting these definitions—we mention them merely to show our position. At any rate, you shall hear very little about Theology ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... a front yard, about as large as a blanket, surrounded by an insecure brick wall and paved with mud. You went up two steps, pushed at a door, and instantly found yourself in the principal reception-room, which no earthly blanket could possibly have covered. Behind this chamber could be seen obscurely an apartment so tiny that an auctioneer ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... reported on the uncertain authority of the newspapers—whether it is to be to-morrow or the day after, this year or the next, that we are to be murdered. So that one might seek in vain in history an epoch more insecure, more crushed under the weight of suffering" [footnote: "Le ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... annihilated. "As soon as we demand to pass beyond mere awareness to a genuine knowledge, we discover our deplorable poverty, and must confess that what is termed certain seems on clearer investigation to rest upon a totally insecure foundation."[75] "It is not natural science itself which leads to naturalism, for, indeed, no natural science could arise if reality exhausted itself in the measurements of naturalism; but it is rather the weakness of the conviction of the spiritual life; it is the failure of certitude in ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... herself was, at twenty-two, unmarried, her background insecure, the very ground on which she walked treacherous. Braxmar knew, and Beales Chadsey, and Cowperwood. At least three or four of her acquaintances must have been at the Waldorf on that fatal night. How long ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... felt sure that when he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid may run their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous "uh-ah, uh-ah" which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the background of ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... themselves responsible to the king or to the royal governor, rather than to their fellow-citizens; and it would be easy for the governors, by appointing corrupt men as judges, to prevent the proper administration of justice by the courts, and thus to make men's lives and property insecure. Most Americans in 1750 felt this danger very keenly. They had not forgotten how, in the times of their grandfathers, two of the noblest of Englishmen, Lord William Russell and Colonel Algernon Sidney, had been murdered ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... up your final doubt. Does not the admission of such an unguaranteed chance or freedom preclude utterly the notion of a Providence governing the world? Does it not leave the fate of the universe at the mercy of the chance-possibilities, and so far insecure? Does it not, in short, deny the craving of our nature for an ultimate peace behind all tempests, for a blue zenith above ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... it is fair to say that in comparison with Dickens he felt himself a man of the world. Nevertheless, that world of which he was a man is coming to an end before our eyes; its aristocracy has grown corrupt, its middle class insecure, and things that he never thought of are walking about the drawing-rooms of both. Thackeray has described for ever the Anglo-Indian Colonel; but what on earth would he have done with an Australian Colonel? What can it matter whether Dickens's clerks talked cockney ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... with respect to apparent solidity and stability, it was found that nearly all are in fair or good condition. The only portion that would seem in special danger is the central section of the southern exterior wall. This section seems insecure, and might at any time be overthrown by a heavy wind following a rain storm. This section was not, unfortunately, braced or tied to the stronger interior wall when the protective works were carried ...
— The Repair Of Casa Grande Ruin, Arizona, in 1891 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... screamed "no" so loudly. He felt that the project was not only dangerous, but impracticable, yet something, which he chose to term his over-will, had warned him that he must not upon any account give way to fear lest he weaken his already insecure hold upon himself. Again, Donnelly had appealed to him in a way hard to resist. He was not only flattered by the Chief's high regard for his courage, but grateful to him for having relieved him of the ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... into submission. He longed to possess this lithe, beautiful creature from over the sea. In all his life he had not hungered for anything as he now craved Beverly Calhoun. He saw that his position in the army was rendered insecure by the events of the last day. A bold, vicious stroke was his only means for securing the prize he longed for more than he longed for ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... the complicity of Magyar officials whom the Serbs had not removed, they managed to escape to Hungary. But as a rule they thought it wiser to stay peacefully in the Banat than seek their fortunes in a land so insecure as Hungary was then. While Count Michael Karolyi's Government was doing its utmost to cultivate good relations with France, England and America—printing in the newspapers cordial articles in French and English, surrounding ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... caused by the facility of the previous marches, but to which the knowledge of the negotiations going forward between King and Emperor may partly have contributed. In any case, security was certainly insecure with such a fort as Lychnidus untaken in their rear. The garrison of that fort had been reinforced by many cohorts of the regular army who had flocked thither at the general's signal, and with these Sabinianus prepared a formidable ambuscade. He sent a considerable number of infantry round by unfrequented ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... there are stretches of pale-coloured mud the round pits dotted all over it give one the impression of an immense Gruyere cheese. The streets, heaped with debris, and with houses fallen helplessly forward into their midst, were full of sunshine. From ruined cottages—whose insecure walls tottered—one saw here and there some Zouaves or a little French "marin" appear. Most of these ran out with letters in their hands for us to post. Heaven knows what they can have to write about ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... dusted their fingers, folded their hands, composed their lower thoughts, and invited the naked muse of poetry to deliver her most improving message. They had greeted Carol affectionately, and she tried to be a daughter to them. But she felt insecure. Her chair was out in the open, exposed to their gaze, and it was a hard-slatted, quivery, slippery church-parlor chair, likely to collapse publicly and without warning. It was impossible to sit on it without folding the hands and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... moment to lose. Ida put out from shore, rowed swiftly to a point as near the drowning and freezing men as was possible, then with her oars broke the ice sufficiently to make a channel for her boat. As she came near to them she found that the insecure ice, melted by the strong sun, had given way under them, while they were evidently trying to take a short cut ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... Street—and its owners conducted a brokerage business as a side line. There was a perfect plague of State banks, great and small, in those days, issuing notes practically without regulation upon insecure and unknown assets and failing and suspending with astonishing rapidity; and a knowledge of all these was an important requirement of Mr. Cowperwood's position. As a result, he had become the soul of caution. Unfortunately, for him, he lacked in a great measure the two ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... pines; we encamped about three miles further on; and in the course of the next day's march perceived several holes on the ice, and many unsafe places for the sledges. Our companions said the ice of this river is always in the same insecure state, even during the most severe winter, which they attributed to warm springs. Quitting the river, we crossed a portage and came upon the Methye Lake, and soon afterwards arrived at the trading posts on its western side. These were perfect huts, which had been ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... deserves a few words of description. He found Thebes in a state of anarchy; civil war raged on every side; all the traditions of the past were forgotten; noble fought against noble; the poor were oppressed; life and property were alike insecure; "there was stability of fortune neither for the ignorant nor for the learned man." One night, after he had lain down to sleep, he found himself attacked in his bed-chamber; the clang of arms sounded near at hand. Starting from ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... thou beholdest far away to the west?" Whereupon Wattie, who was agile enough, and anxious to help the stranger, began to climb up, stone by stone, the outer wall of the ruined fortress. A larger man might have felt giddy and insecure; but he, with his tiny figure, sprang from ledge to ledge so swiftly, holding firmly by the tufts of grass and the trailing ivy, that ere he had time to think of danger, he had reached the spot where, a moment ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... partly in the surrender by land-owners of their estates to churches or powerful men, to be received back again and held by them as tenants for rent or service. By the latter arrangement the weaker man obtained the protection of the stronger, and he who felt himself insecure placed his title under the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... ice being slack for a short distance, we shifted the Hecla half a mile to the northward, into a less insecure berth. I then walked to a broad valley facing the sea near us, where a considerable stream discharged itself, and where, in passing in the ships, a large fish had been observed to jump out of the water. In hopes of ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... routes, by junks, by strange Oriental craft, by river-boats, by caravans of camels, trains of mules, in wagons, on horses, or on human shoulders, the products of the East were brought within reach of the merchants of the West. These routes were insecure, the transportation over them difficult and expensive. They led over mountains and deserts, through alternate snow and heat. Mongol conquerors destroyed, from time to time, the cities which lay along the lines of trade, and ungoverned wild tribes plundered the merchants who passed through the regions ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... everybody, that to eject a person from his estate on the ground of some injustice committed in the time of the Tudors would produce all the evils which result from arbitrary confiscation, and would make all property insecure. It concerns the commonwealth—so runs the legal maxim—that there be an end of litigation. And surely this maxim is at least equally applicable to the great commonwealth of states; for in that commonwealth litigation means the devastation of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the earliest notices of the metal is in connexion with the conquest of Judea by the Philistines. To complete the subjection of the Israelites, their conquerors made captive all the smiths of the land, and carried them away. The Philistines felt that their hold of the country was insecure so long as the inhabitants possessed the means of forging weapons. Hence "there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel; for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears. But ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... object was really less dear to them than the first. If the hated Raoul could be slain, or made to fly in ignominy and disgrace, they cared little who reigned in his place. Their own tenure at Carregcennen under existing circumstances they knew to be most insecure, and although they had organized and were to lead the attack, they were to do so disguised, and those who knew the share they were to take were pledged ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... convenient geographical position, a good climate, considerable mineral and some agricultural resources, are all to be found in Persia. All that is wanted at present is the development of the country on a solid, reliable basis, instead of the insecure, unsteady intrigues upon which business, whether political or commercial, is unfortunately carried on in ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... halted like a wild thing at bay, with their backs to the last stronghold, the richest plot of earth on the face of the globe, the Black Hills country, and as a cornered animal ever fights, had battled ferociously for a lost supremacy. But, robbers themselves, holding the land on the insecure title of might alone, fighting to the end, they had at last succumbed to the inevitable: the all-conquering invasion of the dominant Anglo-Saxon. Here and there a name stood out: "Scarlet Point," "Strikes-the-Ree," ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... sweet? There is no new business, no foreign trade, sufficient to take up old obligations and renew those which are unpayable. Lessened incomes mean lessened consumption and lessened demand for goods. Hence the credit system is based on an uncertain and insecure foundation, dependent wholly upon contingencies far in the future which may, or may not, take the non-liquid assets out of cold storage and give them ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... is said and thought concerning Holy Scripture, to know at least something about Modernism and other phases of current opinion is necessary, without making a study of their subtilties, for the most insecure attitude of mind for girls is to think they know, in these difficult questions, and the best safeguard both of their faith and good sense is intellectual modesty. Without making acquaintance in detail with the phenomena of spiritualism and kindred ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... alternative in her case. She knew no other eligible man half as well. If Peter Coleman went out of her life, what remained? A somewhat insecure position in a wholesale drug- house, at forty dollars a month, and half a third-story bedroom in ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... from Washington to commit it. All this would be proved by unimpeachable witnesses. The attorney added that the duty of the jury, however painful it might be, would be plain and simple. They were citizens, husbands, perhaps fathers. They knew how insecure life had become in the metropolis. Tomorrow our own wives might be widows, their own children orphans, like the bereaved family in yonder hotel, deprived of husband and father by the jealous hand of some murderous female. The attorney sat down, and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... of the insecure footing on which they stood, were careful not to provoke the hostility of the Commons. They sent no messages; they passed no bills; but exchanging matters of state for questions of religion, contrived to spend their time in discussing the form of a ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... It was insecure enough, anyway, but they felt it ought to be left in readiness for a flight that might have no second to waste. Now, with eyes sharply challenging the shadows, they stole along the edge of ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... sees with his whole soul: what he paints, he paints with his whole might. Sir Joshua sees partially, slightly, tenderly—catches the flying lights of things, the momentary glooms: paints also partially, tenderly, never with half his strength; content with uncertain visions, insecure delights; the truth not precious nor significant to him, only pleasing; falsehood also pleasurable, even useful on occasion—must, however, be discreetly touched, just enough to make all men noble, all ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... at his bidding, he showed no gesture of that ceremonious courtesy of which he had been formerly lavish. On the contrary, he made the signal of advance with an air of command; and when, arm in arm, and with insecure steps, the sisters approached the spot where he stood, it was with a warning frown that he pressed his finger to his lips, as if reiterating his condition of absolute silence, while, stalking before them, he led the way into the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... accordingly we read of pirates as early as we read of commerce by sea. (Thucydides, i. 5.) The disturbances in the Roman State had encouraged these freebooters in their depredations. Caesar, when a young man, fell into their hands (Life of Caesar, c. 1); and also P. Clodius. The insecure state of Italy is shown by the fact of the pirates even landing on the Italian coast, and seizing the Roman magistrates, Sextilius and Bellienus. Cicero in his oration in favour of the Lex Manilia (c. 12, c. 17, &c.) gives some particulars ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... Tennessee, and the strategic advantage (especially for offenso-defensive operations) which that vast natural fortress afforded us. While that region was firmly in the Confederate grasp, one half of the South was safe, and the conquests of the Federal armies of the rest were insecure. It is apparent at a glance that so long as we held it, communication between the armies of Northern Virginia and of Tennessee would be rapid and direct; co-operation, therefore, between them would be secure whenever necessary. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... the differential diagnosis between perplexity and stupor has already been touched upon. Here again the affect is a point of contrast. The patient has not too little emotion but too much. The feeling of intangible, puzzling ideas and of an insecure environment causes the subject distress, of which complaint is made and which can be witnessed in the furrowed brow and constrained expression. There is also, as we have seen, a rich ideational content in these cases, if one can get at it. The mind is not a blank, as in the stupor, or concerned ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... soldiers on board the transports were too numerous and effective to be silenced or ignored. These soldiers were not regulars without influence or connections; they were volunteers who everywhere had relatives and friends to demand an inquiry. Their complaints of overcrowding and of insecure, broken-down ships poured in, and aroused the whole country. A great stir resulted. Congress ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... than that of the Hollander; it is not. The Austrian should be better off than the Switzer; he is not. If a nation's wealth is really subject to military confiscation, and needs the defence of military power, then the wealth of those small states should be insecure indeed—and Belgian national stocks stand 20 points higher than the German. If nations are rival units, then we should benefit by the disappearance of our rivals—and if they disappeared, something like a third of our population would starve to death. If the growth ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... double the point and find some safer harbour for our boats. At every flood-tide the sea broke in great swells against the rocks and drifted the trees against our establishment, so as to render it very insecure. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... handsome fellow; delicate straight profile, slender limbs, beautifully made, inky-black hair and brows, pure olive skin—the two doctors were both in raptures. Well, they thought affairs in Mexico insecure, so they sold the poor woman's estate and carried her off to Texas. No; was it? I really can't remember where; but, at any rate, Diego stuck to her wherever she went, and when she died, to her child; nursed him like ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it. The Legislative Assembly not only considered the rules an infringement upon their privilege of law-making but an infringement upon the civil rights of His Majesty's subjects and subversive of the laws of the province, rendering the enjoyment of liberty and property altogether insecure and precarious, and giving to the judges an arbitrary authority. And the Assembly without further ceremony proceeded to impeach the Chief Justices of Quebec and Montreal, at the instance of Mr. Stuart, the Anglo-American Barrister. It was said ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... they? Has Love learnt the spell That will charm them hither, Near our hearth to dwell? Insecure are all her treasures, Restless is her anxious gaze:- Where are they, then, ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... evidently endeavoring to shore up the walls of the falling temple. He sees the cracks; he knows that the building is out of plumb; he feels that the foundation is insecure. Lies can take the place of stones only so long as they are thoroughly believed. Mr. Beecher is trying to do something to harmonize superstition and science. He is reading between the lines. He has discovered ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... averaging 15 inches, and extremely capricious. No other district suffers so much from famine as Hissar. The crops are extraordinarily insecure, with a large surplus in a good season and practically nothing when the rains fail badly. They consist mainly of the cheap pulses and millets. With such fluctuating harvests it is impossible to collect the revenues with any regularity, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... to time, serious accidents have taken place, and the progress of work stopped, by the sudden snapping of driving belts in machinery, and, as a general rule, it is found that the collapse is attributable either to faulty leather or insecure joining. A great improvement of the leather intended for belts has been brought about during the last few years, by the introduction of improved processes for currying and the subsequent treatment. Paterson has worked successfully a patent for rendering belt leather more pliable, and lessening the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various

... seen straw placed over the joints of pipes, but it seems an inconvenient and insecure practice. Long straw cannot be well placed in such narrow openings, and it is likely to sustain the earth enough, so that when thrown in, it will not settle equally around the pipes; whereas a shovelfull of gravel ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... some old people deeply shaken; they feel insecure. One confirmed drunkard has come to me, and is, I believe, now a saved man. Some little children are evidently saved. All that I have yet seen are related to converts of my own. One, eleven years old, is a singular instance of divine grace. When ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... came out, a very unfavourable opinion is formed of the safety of the port. Gage's roads afford a very good anchorage during the summer months; but, being exposed to the north-west winds, it is a very insecure station during the winter, the ground being rocky and a loose sand; but this evil, I am happy to say, is in a great measure obviated by the discovery of a good anchorage about four miles to the southward of the mouth of the river, and marked in the map ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various

... knows how many millions of dollars and thousands of lives to render the holding of slaves possible to her, coolly proposes to withdraw herself from the Union and take with her one of the keys of the Mexican Gulf, on the plea that her slave-property is rendered insecure by the Union. Louisiana, which we bought and paid for to secure the mouth of the Mississippi, claims the right to make her soil French or Spanish, and to cork up the river again, whenever the whim may take her. The United States are not a German Confederation, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... exhibited in the moral judgments of individuals or of peoples are of minor significance. They are facts to be dealt with in the light of some theory. An ethical theory which ignores them must rest upon a narrow and insecure foundation. It is exposed to assault from many quarters. It may, in default of better means of defence, be compelled to take refuge behind the blind wall of dogmatic assertion. On the other hand, a theory which gives them frank recognition, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... accustomed to that method and on the lookout for it. Horses have a way of stiffening their forelegs and sliding their hind feet and giving a lot of dramatic finish to the performance. But there is no dramatic sense at all in the tin brain of a Ford. It just stopped. And the insecure fourth Bohunk in the tonneau went hurtling forward into the front seat straight on his way through the windshield. Casey threw up an elbow instinctively and caught him in the collar button and so avoided breakage and blood spattered around. Three other foreigners were scrambling ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... there is a return to the older practice of placing objects in the grave itself. At present we are unable to point out the reasons for this. Possibly experience had taught men that endowments and craved walls left to the care of descendants were insecure supports for a life after death which was to last forever. At any rate, the custom arose of making small models in wood or stone or metal of those scenes and objects which were carved in relief ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... election of his successor. He chose his own cousin Bruno, "a man of holiness, of wisdom, and of virtue,"—news, to quote the same saintly writer, more precious than gold and precious stones. His throne was insecure: the Roman noble Crescentius drove him from it, but he won his way back and overcame one who had been set up as an anti-pope. ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... shifting. He knew that if you stand on sound footing and look at a subject from the true angle, you may safely modify your plan of action as often and as rapidly as may be necessary to fit changing conditions. But if your footing is insecure or your angle of vision distorted, the most attractive programme in the world ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... of tiny baby-shoes, half-worn, hung over a picture-frame in the poet's study, and told their sad tale of the little feet that had gone on before. Like Sydney Smith, Lowell learned to think that "children are horribly insecure,—that the life of a parent is the life of a gambler;" and he held the one who still remained to him with a trembling grasp for a long time. Happily, she was spared to him, and still adds interest and pleasure ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... rose in a sharp gust, rattling the insecure windows and sighing forlornly about the corners of the house. The door unlatched itself, swung inward hesitatingly, and hung wavering for a moment on its sagging hinges. A formless cloud of gray fog blew into the warm, steamy room. But whatever ghostly visitant had paused ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... would dislike to show the pain: but she had not the presence of mind or ready wit to give a skilful turn to the conversation. All this annoyed Roger, he could hardly tell why. He determined to take the metaphorical bull by the horns. Until that was done, his footing with Molly would always be insecure; as it always is between two friends, who mutually avoid a subject to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... be impossible at Lapton. It was a curious attitude that she found difficult to explain, but it seemed to her that to tackle Mrs. Considine in her husband's house was dangerous, that it would give to Gabrielle an unreasonable but inevitable advantage. At Lapton Mrs. Payne felt she was a stranger, insecure of her ground, and therefore in an inferior position; and this struck her more forcibly when she reflected that, though she was confident of the rightness of her conclusions, the actual evidence that she possessed was ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... powers from committing such violations of the rights of the neutral party as may, first or last, leave no other option. From the best information I have been able to obtain it would seem as if our trade to the Mediterranean without a protecting force will always be insecure and our citizens exposed to the calamities from which numbers of them have but ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... the Roman Empire, commerce was rendered insecure, and, indeed, it was almost completely put a stop to by the barbarian invasions, and all facility of communication between different nations, and even between towns of the same country, was interrupted. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... or headlands, often used synonymously with gulf; though, in strict accuracy, the term should be applied only to those large recesses which are wider from cape to cape than they are deep. Exposed to sea-winds, a bay is mostly insecure. A bay is distinguished from a bend, as that a vessel may not be able to fetch out on either tack, and is embayed. A bay has proportionably a wider entrance than either a gulf or haven; a creek has usually a small inlet, and is always much less ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... all that had then been determined lost its force and authority.[184] But the Queen and her counsellors did not wish to go so far. They remarked that to declare a Parliament invalid for some errors of form was a step of such consequence as to make the whole government of the nation insecure. But even without this it was not the Queen's purpose merely to revert to the forms which had been adopted under her brother. She did not share all the opinions and doctrines which had then obtained the upper hand: she held far more to ceremonies and outward forms than Edward VI or his counsellors: ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... own interests rashness was good policy. Unless he could succeed in desperate enterprises against tremendous odds and so make himself a military hero and a favorite of the multitude, his throne was insecure. He succeeded; but it was only by staking everything upon the venture—his own safety and that of his army, which, if the French had exercised but a little more discretion, would inevitably have been cut to pieces or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... name, Margaretha Thome. There were many fluctuations in Tabea's mind and many persuasive notes from Scheible before the nun at length promised to forsake the convent, now grown bitter to her, for the joys of a home. Even then Daniel could not help feeling insecure in regard to a piece of good fortune so dazzling, and he sent note after note to urge her to have the day for the ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... gossamer silk socks, which in their turn were incased by patent-leather, low-cut shoes. The latter exhibited the square knobbiness that only fashion artists can impart to the footgear of their models, while the broad laces that held them by the insecure hold of two eyelets were knotted in a bow that might have been appended to the collar of Mr. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... scarcely any snow to put on the valances of the tents, and the wet salt soaked the bags, and you knew that there was only about six or ten inches of precarious ice between you and the black waters beneath. Altogether I decided that I for one would lie awake in such an insecure camp. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... street. We are all more or less bitten with this martial insanity. Nescio qua dulcedine ... cunctos ducit. I confess to some infection of that itch myself. When I see a Brigadier-General maintaining his insecure elevation in the saddle under the severe fire of the training-field, and when I remember that some military enthusiasts, through haste, inexperience, or an over-desire to lend reality to those fictitious combats, will sometimes discharge their ramrods, I cannot but admire, while ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... his own account, or in lending it to others to be so employed, there is always some additional risk over and above that incurred by keeping it idle in his own custody. This extra risk is great in proportion as the general state of society is insecure: it may be equivalent to twenty, thirty, or fifty per cent, or to no more than one or two; something however, it must always be; and for this the expectation of profit must be ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... you on your expeditions. May your 'finds' be frequent, cheap, clean, tall, perfect, and broad of margin, and may you never suffer from borrowers, bookworms, acid-tanned leathers, clumsy letterers and insecure shelf-fastenings. May good scribbling paper, sharp pencils, uncrossed nibs, clean ink and blotting-paper be ever at your hand, and may your days be passed in wholesome leisure, in the divine fellowship of ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... forest; but these, not considering their houses safe as hiding-places, took him into the forest, where he lay hidden for three days under a great fallen fir tree, they bringing him food and drink. Finding even this place insecure, he went deeper into the woods and sought shelter under a lofty fir tree which stood on a hill in the midst of a marsh. The place has ever since been ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... glass herself, and then moved chattels and personals into the vacancy, and given it a more homelike appearance than it had worn for half a century. If the truth were known, Helen's chief fancy for the room, shaky and insecure as both floor and ceiling seemed, was that dim panel-portrait blistering there above the fire or peeling off with mouldy flakes in past days,—for she had still many a longing for the old family-pictures that once her shiftless father, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... and all the shades of dishonesty. I give a few of his topics. The dry bones he covered with flesh and blood and beauty. The tendency of theft was to destroy all moral and social good. For were it once to prevail so far as to make property insecure, industry would lose heart, enterprise and frugality be crushed, and at last the honest turn thieves in self-defense. Nearly every act of theft had a baneful influence on the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... of St. Stephen, of which Lanfranc was the first abbot. But fair as were the proportions of that exquisite building, noble as were its clustered columns, and rich as were the zigzag mouldings of its deep arches, its foundation was insecure, for it was on iniquity. It stood on ground violently taken from a number of poor people; and where could the blessing ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... immediately; but his fleet was twice defeated by Pompey, and was at last completely destroyed by a storm (B.C. 38). This failure only proved the necessity of making still more extensive preparations to carry on the war with success. The power of Octavian was insecure as long as Pompey was master of the sea, and could deprive Rome of her supplies of corn. Nearly two years were spent in building a new fleet, and exercising the newly-raised crews and rowers. The command of the fleet and the superintendence ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... of the Negroes' admission into northern industries, and that with its removal there is a possibility of the Negroes becoming greater participants in them. This is foreign labor. This factor has worked along with that of racial antipathy, and has been the latter's most efficient ally in rendering insecure the interests of Negro labor in the North. As we saw, white workers for the most part have long objected to working with Negroes, and where this was the case, employers usually adopted the policy of non-employment of Negro laborers. With the coming of the hordes of immigrants ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... for the water hampered their movements and each one had some of the dynamite to carry. The footing, too, was insecure, for the icy bed of ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... provided Miss Gregg with, unlimited facilities for meeting Billy, who was always running over from Medlicott to the White House. Miss Gregg's passion for young Billy hung by so slender, so nervous, and so insecure a thread that it required the continual support of conversation with an experienced and sympathetic friend. Miss Gregg had never known anybody so sympathetic and so experienced as Mrs. Levitt. The first time they were alone together she had seen by Elise's face that she had some secret ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... gratification, except for the recurrent and essentially vicious desire that drew us back to each other again, we both fretted at a vexatious and unexpectedly binding intimacy. The interim was full of the quality of work delayed, of time and energy wasted, of insecure precautions against scandal and exposure. Disappointment is almost inherent in illicit love. I had, and perhaps it was part of her recurrent irritation also, a feeling as though one had followed something fine and beautiful into ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... think of desisting until we have imparted this quality to our laws; for it is ridiculous, after a great deal of labour has been spent, to place a thing at last on an insecure foundation. ...
— Laws • Plato

... precepts he took up the Gospels, opened the book, and happened on a passage he often repeated and knew by heart: 'Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief!'—and he put away all the doubts that had arisen. As one replaces an object of insecure equilibrium, so he carefully replaced his belief on its shaky pedestal and carefully stepped back from it so as not to shake or upset it. The blinkers were adjusted again and he felt tranquillized, and repeating his childhood's ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy

... not the least intention of holding to their bargain when more favourable circumstances presented themselves. Now they held fair speech with the puppet princes of North Africa; the day was to come when they should chase them from their insecure thrones. It was at this time, shortly after the treaty with the Sultan of Tunis was concluded, that the younger Barbarossa received from the Grand Turk the glorious name of Kheyr-ed-Din, or "The Protector of Religion." It was a somewhat ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... Hilda's terrific egoism might have got fresh books somehow from somewhere, had she really believed in the virtue of books. Thus far, however, books had not furnished her with what she wanted, and her faith in their promise was insecure. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... lost Washington sought to make its occupation inconvenient and insecure by rendering it inaccessible to the British fleet. With this design works had been erected on a low, marshy island in the Delaware, near the junction of the Schuylkill, which, from the nature of its soil, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... President Washington in his message had declared: "To secure respect for a neutral flag requires a naval force organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression.... Our trade to the Mediterranean, without a protecting force, will always be insecure. Will it not then be advisable to begin without delay to provide and lay up materials for the building and equipping of ships of war and to proceed with the work by degrees, in proportion as our resources shall render it ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin

... error is the human mind, And human bliss is ever insecure; Know we what fortune yet remains behind? Know we how long ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie

... said Dr. Etherington, laughing, "for no other reason than that it is an uncertain calling—one that is liable to sudden reverses—what is termed gambling—and whatever renders property insecure is sure to obtain odium among those whose principal concern is its accumulation; those who consider the responsibility of others of essential importance ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Law was equally unpopular: No stealing from the Honourable H. B. Company. If a man bought bacon or corned-beef or any other delicacy, and stored it an insecure place, or if he left fish on the beach over night, his dogs might act according to their inclination. Though Pichou did not understand how honest dogs could steal from their own master, he was willing to admit that this was their affair. His affair was that nobody should ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... allowed them to sink into disuse. He forbade the further mooting of the confiscation project; and to him is due the first permission of the bishops to send heretics to the stake.[87] If English tradition is to be trusted, the clergy still felt insecure; and the French wars of Henry V. are said to have been undertaken, as we all know from Shakspeare, at the persuasion of Archbishop Chichele, who desired to distract his attention from reverting to dangerous subjects. Whether this be true or not, no prince of the house ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... emulation, debased the generous spirits of men, and depressed that noble flame by which all the refined arts must be cherished and enlivened. The military government, which soon succeeded, rendered even the lives and properties of men insecure and precarious; and proved destructive to those vulgar and more necessary arts of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; and, in the end, to the military art and genius itself, by which alone the immense fabric of the empire could be supported. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... which called the princes of the blood royal to the throne in order of succession was of celestial origin, and that any Act of Parliament inconsistent with that rule was a nullity. It is evident that, in a society in which such superstitions prevail, constitutional freedom must ever be insecure. A power which is regarded merely as the ordinance of man cannot be an efficient check on a power which is regarded as the ordinance of God. It is vain to hope that laws, however excellent, will permanently restrain a King who, in his own opinion, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... on with his hands and rested his feet on a pile of driftwood. A piece of floating debris struck the drift, sweeping it away. The man hung with his body immersed in the water. A pile of drift soon collected and he was enabled to get another insecure footing. Up the river there was a sudden crash, and a section of the bridge was swept away and floated down the stream, striking the tree and washing it away. All three were thrown into the water and were drowned before the eyes of the horrified spectators just ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... up at any moment," he explained to the manager, "so that my position as owner of the property is altogether insecure. I feel this so thoroughly that were I forced at the present to choose between the two I should keep my clerkship in the office; but as the condition of things is so extraordinary, perhaps the directors will allow me six months in ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... or two she could walk upright as long as she could retain her insecure footing on the glassy, uneven floor of rock; and a vague demi-light reigned there making objects distinct enough for her to see the stalactites and stalagmites like ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... bed in front of the window, and by pushing the wardrobe door three parts out of the window and lodging the inside end of it under the rail at the head of the bed, he had provided himself with a sort of insecure platform outside the window. All this he did without making the least sound. He must then have got through the window, and stood on the little platform. With his fingers he would just be able to reach the outer edge of the wide cornice under the roof of the hotel. By main strength of arms he ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... interests, and be glad to amuse us by stipulating with the Court for our security without putting us in possession of it, and by ending the civil war in the confirmation of our slavery. "The Parliament," I said, "inclines to an insecure and scandalous peace. We can make the people rise to-morrow if we please; but ought we to attempt it? And if we divest the Parliament of its authority, into what an abyss of disorders shall we not precipitate Paris? But, on the other ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... very far off. However, we were quite reassured by the arrival of the soldiers, and the sight of Rio Frio was very reviving. We got a very tolerable dinner from the Bordelaise in the forest-valley; and although the next part of the road is reckoned very insecure, we had no longer any apprehension, as besides having an escort, the fact that some of the robbers had been taken a few hours before, made it very unlikely that they would renew their ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... ruin, the Ruler had gone out from his dark abode; and, carried in his chariot by black horses, he cautiously surveyed the foundations of the Sicilian land. After it was sufficiently ascertained that no place was insecure, and fear was laid aside, Erycina,[44] sitting down upon her mountain, saw him wandering; and, embracing her winged son, she said, Cupid, my son, my arms, my hands, and my might, take up those darts by which thou conquerest all, and direct the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... know, dear. And romantic people always prefer windows to doors and darkness to light. The windows here are so insecure," added Lady Garvington, glancing at the facade above her untidy hair. "He could easily get in by sticking a penknife in between the upper and lower sash of the window. It would ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... in outside commercial enterprises running into the millions, was made the text for showing how money, professedly raised in the Philippines for charities, was not so used and was invested abroad in fear of that day of reckoning when tyranny would be overthrown in anarchy and property would be insecure. The belief of the pious Filipinos, fostered by their religious exploiters, that the Pope would suffer great hardship if their share of "Peter's pence" was not prompt and full, was contrasted with another newspaper story of a rich dowry given to a favorite niece by a former ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... confirmations, to the old newspapers; these were the things that no one wrote about because every one understood and every one had taken up an attitude. There were in England and America, and indeed throughout the world, two great informal divisions of human beings—the Secure and the Insecure. There was not and never had been in either country a nobility—it was and remains a common error that the British peers were noble—neither in law nor custom were there noble families, and we altogether lacked the edification one found in Russia, for ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... interview took place had a sordid and miserable look. Rotten, and covered with a thick coat of dirt, the boards of the floor presented a very insecure footing; the bare walls were scored all over with grotesque designs, the chief of which represented the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar. The rest were hieroglyphic characters, executed in red chalk and charcoal. The ceiling had, in many places, given way; ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... her, and that delicately made, which gave the governor a thrill of desire to make her his own for the rest of his life or hers. He had also gone through much since they had last met, and he had seen his own position in the balance—uncertain, troubled, insecure. He realized that he had lost reputation, which had scarcely been regained by his consent to the use of the hounds and giving Dyck Calhoun a free hand, as temporary head of the militia. He could not put him over the regular troops, but as the general commanding ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Maurice's misdoings. And for herself and Stephen, no less than for her father, Maurice was still the darling and Benjamin of the family, commended to them by a precious mother whose death had left the whole moral structure of their common life insecure. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... provision of the Wilson-Gorman act was declared null and void. Probably no decision since the Dred Scott case, with the single exception of the Legal Tender cases, has put the Supreme Court in so unfortunate a light. Certainly in none has it seemed more swayed by class prejudice, and so insecure and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... to lower myself, anyhow," he observes, for he has the notion that everything about the Africa is insecure. ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... of the whole being, using all its powers of sensitiveness, all its feeblest and most inarticulate feelers and tentacles, in the effort somehow to touch by these that which cannot be grasped by the definite senses or analysed by the conscious reason. What we gain thus is an insecure but a precious possession. We gain no dogma, at least no safe dogma, but we gain much more. We gain something hard to define, which lies at the heart not only of religion, but of art and poetry and all the higher strivings of human emotion. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... breath. It seemed that the woman must fall from her perch, so insecure it seemed. He controlled himself, thinking rapidly. Then ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... however, the Natives again felt that the outbreak was only a matter of days. In the country, especially the Orange "Free" State, our people are helplessly mixed up with the Boers, and it can readily be understood that they felt somewhat insecure, notwithstanding the Government's assurances. One native farmer sent the following letter to the author in ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... nerves. Ever since the revision Marie and I have gone over and over the same reasoning, trying to get at why we were arrested. To write it all out may help the restlessness and anxiety and—yes—the panicky fear that rises in my throat like nausea. Life is so terribly insecure. I feel as though I had been stripped naked and turned out into the streets, with no person or place ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... the Missouri river at St. Charles, is 550 yards. Its alluvial banks however are insecure, and are not unfrequently washed away for many yards at its annual floods. The bed of its channel is also precarious, and is elevated or depressed by the deposition or removal of its sandy foundation. Hence the elevation or depression of the surface of this river, affords no criterion ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... frequently departing from its normal state, deviating from the laws which now seem to control it, and multiplying so-called 'freaks of nature,' abnormal works in the physical world, calculated to derange the comfort of mankind and render all things uncertain and insecure. In a word, it would be in the power of such a force, or combination and opposition of forces, to turn the earth again to its original chaos. With such a belief, then, we must assume that God has delegated the care of the material world to other ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... State bonds as securities for the redemption of their circulation. As these bonds were nearly all of Southern origin, the beginning of the war had materially affected their value. The banks found their securities rapidly becoming insecure, and hence there was a depreciation in the currency. This was not uniform, but varied from five to sixty per cent., according to the value of the bonds the respective banks were holding. Each morning and evening bulletins were issued stating the value of the notes of the various banking-houses. ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... or twenty together. They are at most ten feet high, generally about ten or twelve feet square, constructed with loose stones, covered with the trunks of date trees, and closed with a wooden door and lock. These buildings are altogether so slight, and the doors so insecure, that a stone would be sufficient to break them open; no watchmen are left to guard them, and they are in such solitary spots that they might easily be plundered in the night, without the thief being ever discovered. But such is the good faith ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... we say? it shall be testified That living men who burn in heart and brain, Without the dead were colder. If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand. Precipitate This old roof from the shrine, and, insecure, The nesting swallows fly off, mate from mate. How scant the gardens, if the graves were fewer! The tall green poplars grew no longer straight Whose tops not looked to Troy. Would any fight For ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... the preceding analysis serves to prove that Q. P. one, as the second move of Black, is not a tenable defence; since, play as he can afterwards, if the best moves are adopted by the first player, he will always have a very insecure ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"

... uneasiness which had taken possession of him when he discovered the inexactitude in his work. Every time a bell sounded it seemed to him a warning. Early the next morning he went to the roof-door with his ladder in his hand. He had already noticed how insecure his step was as he climbed the tower stairs; now, when through the open door the distant mountains began to nod so curiously to him and the firm tower to rock beneath him, he became frightened. That was dizziness, the slater's worst, most malicious ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... a drain having its outlet in some distant but lower spot, such as is found to have led from the Broad Moor Collieries to Cinderford, a mile and upwards in length. The shaft of the pit was made of a square form, in order that its otherwise insecure sides might be the better supported by suitable woodwork, which being constructed in successive stages was occasionally used as a ladder, the chief difficulty being found in keeping the workings free from water, which in wet seasons not unfrequently gained the ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... insecure, because this would defeat its eugenic purpose. Society, therefore, as a matter of self-preservation, must ensure to woman her mental and economic security. Civilization's margin is large enough to provide this. We spend large amounts on luxuries and evils which are contrary to ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.

... ours is invaded, large numbers of such troops must suddenly be called into the field. Not knowing the designs of the invaders, much time will be lost in marches and countermarches; and if there be no safe places of resort the operations must be indecisive and insecure. ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... portion of the railways in the United States are single lines; and secondly, that the labour performed is of a far less solid and enduring character. A most competent civil engineer told me that the slovenly and insecure nature of many of the railway works in the United States was perfectly inconceivable, and most unquestionably would not stand the inspection required in England. A friend of mine has travelled upon a railway in America, between ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... honeycomb the land in all directions, and extend in galleries of grottoes for two miles under the sea. By the falling in of the more ancient collieries numerous houses have been swallowed, as if by an earthquake, and a consternation spread, like that of Lisbon, in 1755. So insecure and treacherous was the site of the place now about to be assailed by a desperado, nursed, like the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... made the path of faith a steep one to tread is partly that it has got terribly encumbered with ecclesiastical traditions; it has been mended, like the Slough of Despond, with cartloads of texts and insecure definitions. And partly too the old simple undisturbed faith in the absolute truth and authority of the Bible has given way. It is admitted that the Bible contains a considerable admixture of the legendary element; and it requires a strong intellectual and moral ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Insecure in the hearts of his people, uncertain even of the continued favor of the volatile monster who was lounging then in his Caprian retreat, it was with the idea of pleasing the one, of flattering the other, that he had instituted the games. For here in his brand-new Tiberias, a city which he had ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... can have an infinite force such as is manifested in the eternal motion of the world. Creation cannot be demonstrated with scientific rigor, hence it is not safe to build so important a structure as the existence of God upon an insecure foundation. Show that eternity of the world leads to God, and you are safe no matter what the ultimate truth turns out to be concerning the origin of the world. For if the world originated in time there is no doubt that ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... Chirry chose the spot, without consulting me; Such a very public place, and insecure for it, I can scarcely sleep at night for nervousness; but he Says I am a silly thing and ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... given to them for an inheritance, and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the heathen, as were the Jews of old. Living in the midst of a native population much larger than themselves, and at fountains removed many miles from each other, they feel somewhat in the same insecure position as do the Americans in the Southern States. The first question put by them to strangers is respecting peace; and when they receive reports from disaffected or envious natives against any tribe, the case assumes all ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... place, where, though he feared no other enemies, the damps and frosts of the chill sea-air in that exposed situation might be death to him in his weak state; or whether he had better climb the next hill, and pierce the depth of some shady wood, in which he might find a warm and sheltered though insecure repose, subject to the approach of any wild beast that roamed that way. Best did this last course appear to him, though with some danger, as that which was more honourable and savoured more of strife and self-exertion, than to perish without ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Tyuonyi there was occasional intercourse, and a fairly beaten trail led from one place to the other; but this intercourse was so much interrupted by hostilities, and the Navajos rendered the trail so insecure beside, that she had never paid much attention to it. Still, there was no doubt in her mind that if she reached the habitations of the Tehuas, above where the pueblo of Santa Clara now stands, a hospitable reception would be extended to her. But ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... Greatorex, which was the most intolerable of all her fears. It was as if Nature itself were aware that, if Ally were not dispossessed of that terror before Greatorex's child was born her own purpose would be insecure; as if the unborn child, the flesh and blood of the Greatorexes that had entered into her, protested against her ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... No teacher of morals had ever reached the point of inculcating upon men the belief that it was the highest joy to spend the energies of life in contributing to the happiness of others. Though he saw in the system of Christ, as popularised and interpreted, a whole host of insecure assumptions, unverified assertions, and even degrading traditions, yet he could not doubt of the Divine force of the central message. If he was not in a position to affirm with certitude the truth of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... hen's: I felt sure that when he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid may run their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous "uh-ah, uh-ah" which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the background ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... in spite of certain solemn promises of evacuation; and the expedition of Marchand, which ended in the Fashoda incident, indirectly questioned the validity of the British occupation of Egypt by making that occupation strategically insecure. In spite, however, of the deliberate manner in which France raised this question and of the highly irritated condition of French public opinion, she could not, when the choice had to be made, afford the consequences of a Franco-English ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... cultivated, owing to the perpetual wars and feuds amongst the chieftains and tribes in these parts, and the bad and unsettled governments which now exist in Tigre, and, in fact, in all Abyssinia. Travelling in these parts is difficult and insecure, owing to the plundering dispositions of the people, and the rapacity of the chiefs, who live beyond the control of any commanding or great sovereign power. At Gatera Mr Krapf was robbed of every thing that he had by the ferocious Woollo-Galla ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... find some old people deeply shaken; they feel insecure. One confirmed drunkard has come to me, and is, I believe, now a saved man. Some little children are evidently saved. All that I have yet seen are related to converts of my own. One, eleven years old, is a singular instance of divine grace. When I asked if she desired to be made holy, ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... been determined lost its force and authority.[184] But the Queen and her counsellors did not wish to go so far. They remarked that to declare a Parliament invalid for some errors of form was a step of such consequence as to make the whole government of the nation insecure. But even without this it was not the Queen's purpose merely to revert to the forms which had been adopted under her brother. She did not share all the opinions and doctrines which had then obtained the upper hand: ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... been dreadfully nervous all night and almost afraid to stop to rest anywhere, but now her fatigue had quite overcome her. Her position against the tree was uncomfortable and insecure, so, drawing her head very gently down until it rested on my shoulder, and shading her eyes with her mantilla, I let her sleep on. Her face looked strangely worn and pallid in that keen noonday ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... opposite, diversified by a future Lind practicing her scales unweariedly; water-pipes bursting in the frost, walls streaming in the thaw, the lower offices reeking and green with damp, and the upper rooms too insecure for unrestricted movement—all these, and more miseries of the same kind, she willingly encounters rather than shift into a locality relatively unfashionable to her sphere, but where she could have substantiality and comfort ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... Kenneth; but the latter could not pull for laughing. And besides, he had the whole of the young gillie's weight to bear, while his foothold was exceedingly insecure. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... for the start, when the 'cellist, who was restless, discovered that the stand which had been placed for him was insecure; rising from his scat, he went to fetch another from the back of the platform. In the delay that ensued, Maurice looked round at the audience. He saw innumerable heads and faces, all turned expectantly towards him, like ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... their song numbers, might with equal plausibility represent a mountain in Arizona, the front veranda of a house or a banquet table in the gilded dining-hall of some licentious multi-millionaire. They got up on the insecure thing and tried to dance; that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... evident to all that the position of Cromwell at court had become very insecure. While England was threatened with an European coalition he had suggested an alliance with the Protestant princes of Germany, and as Henry's third wife Jane Seymour had died (1537), after having given birth to a son (later on Edward VI.), he determined ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... peasant-woman; the other was for the passenger. There was a small arm-piece, at the outside of each seat, and generally there was a cushion. This was once a favorite means of travel between Bayonne and Biarritz. It was expeditious, enlivening,—and highly insecure; that was one of its charms. Throughout the ride there was a ludicrous titillation of insecurity; but it was greatest at the start and at the finish. For, the seats being evenly balanced, to mount was in itself high art. Driver and passenger needed ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... gentlemen say they have no orders to cross Biram river. They have their quarters in Horseneck, and some troops are north of that place. Thus, notwithstanding my endeavours, the country will be unprotected, and I am insecure. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... the days of Slavery, did much to make the infernal system insecure, and to keep alive the spirit of freedom in liberty-loving hearts the world over, wherever such deeds of noble daring were made known. But of his heroism, but little can be reported here, from the fact, that such accounts as ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... woman. She could not separate him from his genius; and his genius had long ago overleapt the social gulf. And now, without poor Flossie, without the safeguard of his engagement, she felt herself insecure and shelterless. More than ever since he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... Albans in '55, was declared Lord Protector of the realm during Henry's imbecility; that the next year the King recovered and the Protector's office was abolished; that in '57 both parties stood at bay; in '58 an insecure peace was patched up between them; in '59 they appealed to arms, the Yorkists gained a victory at Bloreheath, but being defeated at Ludiford, Duke Richard, with one of his sons, fled for ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... kind of restlessness seems to have come over the Prince at this time. It was only by being constantly on the move that he could escape from anxious and painful thoughts. Possibly he may have felt a little insecure in the midst of the Clan MacLeod (though he had met nowhere with more devotion than that of the three cousins); he certainly seems to have bestowed far more affection and confidence on Malcolm than ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... on the steep hillside, his rifle was in his left hand, downhill, and his footing, caught as he was with one foot half raised, was insecure. At no time these last four hours had his opportunity been so close—or ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... remaining seven to five villages, till at length they emigrated in a body to the Ricara nation, where they formed themselves into two villages, and joined those of their countrymen who had gone before them. In their new residence they were still insecure, and at length the three villages ascended the Missouri to their present position. The two who had emigrated together still settled in the two villages on the northwest side of the Missouri, while the single village took a position ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... by the demoralizing influences of civil war and by the rancorous passions which the contest has engendered. But that these people are maintaining local governments for themselves which habitually defeat the object of all government and render their own lives and property insecure is in itself utterly improbable, and the averment of the bill to that effect is not supported by any evidence which has come to my knowledge. All the information I have on the subject convinces me that the masses of the Southern ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... Paowang's tribe had been planned. The chief of the party into whose hands he had fallen was, he found, called Oamo; he appeared to be a fierce, sanguinary savage, and he felt that his own life, while he remained in the chief's power, was very insecure. So, finding that he could much more easily reach us than get back southward, and that his captors were less likely to look out for him on our side, he resolved to escape; and that very ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... selected as a body-guard for the young Angadhohua, who was prince of all the isle, but on an insecure tenure, for the French, in New Caledonia, were showing a manifest inclination to annex ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the sovereign in the elevation of those able servants of the crown. The consequence was, success in all the enterprises of Catharine, the rapid advance of the nation in European influence, the establishment of an insecure throne on the strongest footing of public security, the popularity of a despotism, the comparative civilization of a people half Asiatic, and who but half a century before had been barbarians, and the personal attachment of the nation to Catharine in a degree scarcely less than adoration. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... plateau cannot be dispensed with. It is practically certain that the plateau is not caused entirely by necessity for rest or unconscious learning. It frequently is due, we must regretfully admit, to poor early preparation. If at the beginning of a period of learning an insecure foundation is laid, it cannot be expected to support the burden of more ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... of the aristocracy in this respect displeases certain clear-sighted personages at the palace. If I were a great lord, instead of being, as I am, a mere country gentleman who seems to be placed where he is to transact your business for you, the monarchy would not be as insecure as I now think it is. What becomes of a throne which does not bestow dignity on those who administer its government? We are far indeed from the days when a king could make men great at will,—such men as Louvois, Colbert, Richelieu, Jeannin, Villeroy, Sully,—Sully, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... Ireland. Given that, he would be confident of possessing the foundation for the structure of an Irish Army—an army which would be regarded as Ireland's own. Without it, the whole fabric of his efforts must be insecure. He desired to build, as in England they built, upon the voluntary effort of a people in whom entire confidence was placed. In the War Office undoubtedly men's minds were set upon finding a regular supply of Irish troops ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... and chuckling negro, Tom and Ned went to the rather insecure stable where the mule Boomerang was kept. That is, the stable was insecure from the standpoint of a jail. But the sight of the giant Koku marching up and down in front of the place, armed with a ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton

... her glossy yellow braids. Her situation was fast becoming tragic; but Louise gathered herself up anew and turned to the right, only to plunge in deeper than before; to the left, to meet with the same fate. Desperately she tried one spot after another. Now painfully scrambling to an insecure footing on top of the crust, now violently descending into the depths again, until the snow about her was marked thick with deep, round holes, and her feet were drenched and well-nigh frozen with the icy water which trickled up and down inside her shoes, as she lifted now her toes ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... myself. I seem to be a consciousness, vague and insecure, placed between two worlds. One of these worlds seems clearly "not me," the other is more closely identified with me and yet is still imperfectly me. The first I call the exterior world, and it presents itself to me as existing in Time and Space. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... I am omnipotent. All else had been subdued to me; alone The soul of man, like unextinguished fire, 5 Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt, And lamentation, and reluctant prayer, Hurling up insurrection, which might make Our antique empire insecure, though built On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear; 10 And though my curses through the pendulous air, Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake, And cling to it; though under my wrath's night It climbs the crags of life, step after step, Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... immediately, well acquainted with the whole state of the Canaanites; for at first, before they were at all discovered, they took a full view of the city of Jericho without disturbance, and saw which parts of the walls were strong, and which parts were otherwise, and indeed insecure, and which of the gates were so weak as might afford an entrance to their army. Now those that met them took no notice of them when they saw them, and supposed they were only strangers, who used to be very curious in observing everything in ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... acknowledged here that Canadians have no answers for such questions and short shift for the questioner. They are too busy making history to talk about it. It is only the woman insecure of her social position who prates about it. It is only the nation uncertain of herself that bolsters a fact with an argument. Canada is too busy with facts for any flamboyant arguments. It is an even wager that if you ask the average well-informed ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... the east of Bursley; and Bursley, which has been the home of the potter for ten centuries, is the most ancient of the Five Towns in Staffordshire. The boys, dressed for the most part in shirt, trousers, and boots, all equally ragged and insecure, were playing at prison-bars. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... Commission appear to be highly punishable, if not a just ground for forfeiture of their Charter, more especially being conjoyned with this of a great many of that Colony, their keeping a continued Correspondence with the Pirates, which renders the fair Traders very uneasy, and insecure. All which I humbly submit to their Lordships Consideration, and pray for redress, suitable encouragement, and support to ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... of their little territories is almost exclusively confined, for no other branch can grow up among so turbulent a set, whose quarrels with their chiefs, or among each other, are constantly involving them in civil wars, which render life and property exceedingly insecure. Besides, as I have stated, their propensity to keep bands of thieves, robbers, and murderers in their baronial castles, as poachers keep their dogs, has scared away the wealthy and respectable capitalist and peaceful and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Has Love learnt the spell That will charm them hither, Near our hearth to dwell? Insecure are all her treasures, Restless is her anxious gaze:- Where are they, then, ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... had gone out from his dark abode; and, carried in his chariot by black horses, he cautiously surveyed the foundations of the Sicilian land. After it was sufficiently ascertained that no place was insecure, and fear was laid aside, Erycina,[44] sitting down upon her mountain, saw him wandering; and, embracing her winged son, she said, Cupid, my son, my arms, my hands, and my might, take up those darts by which thou conquerest all, and direct the swift arrows against the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... over-hanging the water. Above the doorway was placed a sign whereon might be read the words, "Beaver Beach, Mike's Place." The shore end of the pier was so ruinous that passage was offered by a single row of planks, which presented an appearance so temporary, as well as insecure, that one might have guessed their office to be something in the nature of a drawbridge. From these a narrow path ran through a marsh, left by the receding river, to a country road of desolate appearance. Here there was a rough enclosure, or corral, with some tumble-down sheds which ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... several projects which were devised in order to give them a hold over this State. In Kelantan, internal troubles have aided Siamese intrigues, the present Raja and his late brother both having so insecure a seat upon their thrones that they readily made concessions to the Siamese in order to purchase their support. Thus, at the present time, the flag of the White Elephant floats at the mouth of the Kelantan river on State occasions, though the administration of ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... no new business, no foreign trade, sufficient to take up old obligations and renew those which are unpayable. Lessened incomes mean lessened consumption and lessened demand for goods. Hence the credit system is based on an uncertain and insecure foundation, dependent wholly upon contingencies far in the future which may, or may not, take the non-liquid assets out of cold storage and give them their ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... sent you the whole of Reka Dom this mail. But a most unexpected fall of snow has made the travelling so insecure that it is considered a risk to wait till Monday, and I must send off what I can to-day. It is so nearly done that I am not now afraid to send off the first part (which will be more than you will want for May), and you may rely on ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... balances due, and pay the Government demand punctually in future. This arrangement enabled him to reduce his fiscal, military, and police establishments a good deal for the time, and his tenure of office was too insecure to admit of his bestowing ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... Wales was still an insecure portion of the English dominion. In 1287, Rees ap Meredith, whose services to Edward had been largely rewarded with grants of land and a noble English wife, commenced levying war against the king's sheriff. His excuse ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... had found that his hold on the Greek cities of Asia Minor was insecure so long as they could look for armed help to their kindred beyond the Archipelago, and he had sent his satraps to raid the Greek mainland. That first invasion ended disastrously at Marathon. His son, Xerxes, took up the quarrel and devoted years to the preparation ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... been despatched for that purpose, rushed to meet them; but by dint of superior fighting and the greater weight of the horses, they fell in a moment like flax before a storm. The road to the castle was open, but escape thither was insecure and too far away, because the Zmudzian horses were fleeter than those of the Germans. The blue knight ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... it annoyed him to feel that he could not let himself go like the others. But it was so long since he had mixed with his own countrymen, that he felt insecure of his footing and almost like a foreigner among them. Besides, in a few hours now they should sight the skerries on the Norwegian coast; and the thought awoke in him a strange excitement—it was a moment ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... piratical posts, and accordingly we read of pirates as early as we read of commerce by sea. (Thucydides, i. 5.) The disturbances in the Roman State had encouraged these freebooters in their depredations. Caesar, when a young man, fell into their hands (Life of Caesar, c. 1); and also P. Clodius. The insecure state of Italy is shown by the fact of the pirates even landing on the Italian coast, and seizing the Roman magistrates, Sextilius and Bellienus. Cicero in his oration in favour of the Lex Manilia (c. 12, c. 17, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... life," he echoed and stood up. Father and daughter regarded each other warily, each more than a little insecure with the other. He made a movement toward her, and then recalled the circumstances of their last conversation in that study. She saw his purpose and his doubt hesitated also, and then went to him, took his coat lapels, and kissed ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... the dissertation does not produce a very clear impression, inasmuch as there is too great a readiness to plunge, in medias res, checked by too great a tendency to harking back, and re-stating some conclusion in modified terms and with insecure corollaries. Two points which Mr. Tupper chiefly insists upon are: (1) that the subject in a work of art affects the beholder in the same sort of way as the same subject, occurring as a fact or aspect of Nature, affects him; and thus whatever in Nature excites the mental and moral emotion of man ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... they succeeded in getting up. Wilkins at once presented in the direction of the lions and again fired. Whether any of them fell is a matter of dispute, but certain it is that Wilkins fell, for the recoil of the gun knocked him back, his footing being insecure, and he went down on the top of a tent which had been pitched on the other side of the wagon, and broke the pole of it. After this several more shots were fired, apparently without success. While they were reloading a lion leaped on a goat, which was tethered to the grass-hut, and carried ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne

... and then moved chattels and personals into the vacancy, and given it a more homelike appearance than it had worn for half a century. If the truth were known, Helen's chief fancy for the room, shaky and insecure as both floor and ceiling seemed, was that dim panel-portrait blistering there above the fire or peeling off with mouldy flakes in past days,—for she had still many a longing for the old family-pictures that once her shiftless father, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Mazarin his true interests, and be glad to amuse us by stipulating with the Court for our security without putting us in possession of it, and by ending the civil war in the confirmation of our slavery. "The Parliament," I said, "inclines to an insecure and scandalous peace. We can make the people rise to-morrow if we please; but ought we to attempt it? And if we divest the Parliament of its authority, into what an abyss of disorders shall we not precipitate Paris? But, on the other hand, if we do not raise the people, will the Parliament ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... legs was slow work, and such friends as Hueffer, Clifford and Galsworthy had to do a lot of arduous log-rolling. Even after the splash made by "Youth" his publishing arrangements seem to have remained somewhat insecure. His first eleven books show six different imprints; it was not until his twelfth that he settled down to a publisher. His American editions tell an even stranger story. The first six of them were brought out by six different publishers; the first eight by no less than seven. But today he has a regular ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... sluggishly, and every now and then the water swashed across her cabin with extra impetus, making footing insecure. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... danger of rebellion going too far. The barriers confronting it are too solid, and the Idol of the Herd is too carefully enshrined. A perpetual rebellion of every one against everything would give us an insecure, though exciting, existence, and we are protected by man's disposition to obedience and his solid love of custom. Against the first vedettes of rebellion the army of routine will always muster, and it gathers to itself the indifferent, the startled cowards, the thinkers whose thought ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In the very conquest for this baser type a man blights his sensibilities, minifies his present enjoyment, and destroys his prospect for a full measure of happiness by and by. With but one interest his happiness is insecure; for when that fails or ceases to satisfy he has nothing on which to rely. Midas craves for gold, and when he gets it his senses become as metallic as the object of his affection. Therefore, if we are of this type, simply seeking the Golden Fleece for what it will net us in dollars and cents, we ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given

... San Gabriel, overlooking the lowland vines and fruit groves, Mother Nature is most ruggedly, thornily savage. Not even in the Sierra have I ever made the acquaintance of mountains more rigidly inaccessible. The slopes are exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot of the explorer, however great his strength or skill may be, but thorny chaparral constitutes their chief defense. With the exception of little park and garden spots not visible in comprehensive views, the entire surface is covered with it, from the ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... very gravely, "there is one way of escape. I have often thought of it, and once I thought I had taken the first step towards it; but it is beset with many great obstacles, and to be a priest makes one timid and insecure." ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... for counting the money came round, it was found that the walls were so insecure that there was danger of their giving way and crushing some of the clerks under the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Mexicans from passing the border and committing depredations on our remote settlers. A state of anarchy and violence prevails throughout that distant frontier. The laws are a dead letter and life and property wholly insecure. For this reason the settlement of Arizona is arrested, whilst it is of great importance that a chain of inhabitants should extend all along its southern border sufficient for their own protection and that of the United States mail ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... no Victorian writer before him to whom he even suggests a comparison, technically considered, except perhaps De Quincey; who also employed the long rich rolling sentence that, like a rocket, bursts into stars at the end. But De Quincey's sentences, as I have said, have always a dreamy and insecure sense about them, like the turret on toppling turret of some mad sultan's pagoda. Ruskin's sentence branches into brackets and relative clauses as a straight strong tree branches into boughs and bifurcations, rather ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... be by that time a general habit of saving throughout the community, a habit more firmly established perhaps in the propertied than in the wages-earning class. People will be growing accustomed to a dear and insecure world. They will adopt a habit of caution; become desirous ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... securities that Hallam deemed insecure, and by this time Hallam had begun to wonder what was the matter with Tandy. He knew, or thought he knew, that the man must have greatly more money invested somewhere than these things represented. He had ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... the sixteenth century. They were notorious in the eighteenth century for their lawlessness, and gave the imperial Mughal officers much trouble in the neighbourhood of Agra, rendering the communications between that city and Etawah insecure. In the Mutiny they broke out again, and are generally a turbulent, ill-conducted sept, always ready for petty acts of violence and cattle-stealing. They are, however, recognised as Rajputs of good position and intermarry ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him—in which, in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing conditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be— often is—at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his ship may go down, his speculations may go wrong, ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde

... Calemri, amid which, divided into two distinct groups by a wide, open space, were numerous herds of cattle just being watered. How melancholy came afterwards the recollection of that busy scene, when on his return, three and a half years later, he found it an insecure wilderness, infested by robbers, the whole of the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... bishoprics—the one West Saxon, the other Mercian. The first, founded by Birinus, when Wessex extended far north of the Thames, was divided seventy years later into two sees—Winchester and Sherburne. For some years the city was without bishops, owing to its insecure position during the strife between Wessex and Mercia, but later it appears as the seat of the great Mercian bishopric, retaining its jurisdiction until after the Norman conquest, when the see was transferred to Lincoln. Therefore Dorchester ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... affairs now exists in some of the States of the Union rendering life and property insecure and the carrying of the mails and the collection of the revenue dangerous. The proof that such a condition of affairs exists in some localities is now before the Senate. That the power to correct these evils is beyond the control of the State authorities I do not doubt; that the power of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... among other means of opposing their progress they perceived that the central gangway (corsia) had been torn up, or they slipped upon planking which had been smeared with butter, oil, or even, it is said, with honey, to render the footing insecure. So efficient were the nettings and other precautions with which Don John of Austria defended the bulwarks of his ships that he was able to inform Philip II that not a Turk had set foot upon a single deck ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... murder,' said the agent. 'Simpkins, you are constable, take this man in charge, while I make out his committal. Stay!' he added, 'the cage is very insecure, and this is no trifling case. You had better take him up to the castle, my lord will examine him in the morning, and there is a strong room there; meantime, Mrs. Ally will perhaps see to his wound, it looks ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... hurled by radionic tubes against the back wall of snowy marble from Mars' arctic quarries. Besides, that glass, proof though it was against anything but an atomic explosion, still made every true art lover feel disquietingly insecure. ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro

... high-minded as he was, he was not willing to kick away the ladder. To prevent that principality from being extinguished in the crown, he severed it by act of Parliament. He had a motive, such as it was: he thought his title to the crown unsound, and his possession insecure. He therefore managed a retreat in his duchy, which Lord Coke calls (I do not know why) "par multis regnis." He flattered himself that it was practicable to make a projecting point half way down, to break his fall from the precipice of royalty; as if it were possible for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... over that, for when I was about to speak I made an uncertain sort of noise, which turned off suspicion. That the head labourer had some doubt about me, I verily believe. I thought at first I would try to get to London, but the roads thereto, I learnt, were so bad and travelling so insecure, even for the poorest, that I considered it best to remain in this neighbourhood, as I wanted to see Mademoiselle P—- once more, and settle with her uncle for the money of mine in his hands. I thought if I ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... those insecure times, for some faithful domestic to sleep at night within the tent of every great baron, that, if danger arose, he might not be unsupported or unprotected. Guarine accordingly drew his sword, and, taking it in ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... by the Philistines. To complete the subjection of the Israelites, their conquerors made captive all the smiths of the land, and carried them away. The Philistines felt that their hold of the country was insecure so long as the inhabitants possessed the means of forging weapons. Hence "there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel; for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears. But the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... revered mother's pardon for disturbing her so ridiculously," he said, seizing her hand and pressing it to his lips. "It was not my fault, and only occasioned by the insecure fastening upon the door. It was by a right fortunate accident that your grace commanded your valet to station himself close to the door of the cabinet, for he thereby saved me ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... weave the thread of my miseries anew? Ye know them more fully than I myself. I, pursued to the death by my stepfather, scorned by my mother, spat upon by friends, have passed my years in pitiable wise, and my days in adversity; and my insecure life has teemed with fear and perils. In fine, I passed every season of my age wretchedly and in extreme calamity. Often in your secret murmurings together you have sighed over my lack of wits; there was none ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... swam. He no longer heard the shouts of encouragement from the cowpunchers. He was clinging desperately to his insecure seat, with legs pressed tightly against the pony's sides. As yet he had not seen ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... headed. Reaching them they entrenched themselves in what they could not but feel was an immensely insecure position. ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... to appreciate the danger, and shuffled forward as quickly as they could. All got over in safety except the last three. The treacherous sand, rendered still more insecure by the heavy tread of so many ponderous animals, now gave way entirely, and the three hapless elephants were left floundering in the tenacious hold of the dreaded fussun. Two of the three were not far from the firm bank, and managed to extricate themselves ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... make it as brief as possible. It had become so powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that year, in his message to Congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." A Joint Select Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in 1872, to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary States, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... not only his words, but his manner, his expression, his singular, yet sombre, beauty, bore convincing testimony. He had matured with an almost unnatural rapidity, leaving her far behind. In his presence she felt diffident, mentally insecure, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... of jealousy and suspicion, though he was naturally unambitious and devoid of energy. The attempt failed at the time, and Seneca was able triumphantly to refute the charge of any treasonable design. But the fact of such a charge being made showed how insecure was the position of any man of eminence under the deepening tyranny of Nero, and it precipitated the conspiracy which two years ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... Hill. There was a rival building, Mr. Bateman's Monastery, at Old Windsor, which is said to have had more uniformity of design than Strawberry Hill. Horace used indeed to call the house of which he became so proud a paper house; the walls were at first so slight, and the roof so insecure in heavy rains. Nevertheless, his days were passed as peacefully there as the premature infirmities which came upon ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... with his gaze on the black hole in the pistol-barrel, soon made a discouraging discovery; the position in which he had been arrested was insecure and uncomfortable, and the unusual strain that it brought upon his muscles became painful and exhausting. To shift his position even in the smallest way would be to invite the bullet. As the moments flew the strain upon ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... faith? Could all depend on a last sensation? And as to her life. Failure, failure through headstrong blindness and self-will, resulting in the agony of the innocent. Was this ground of hope? She tried to think of progress and purification beyond the grave; but this was the most speculative, insecure fabric of all. There was no habit of trust to it—no inward conviction, no outward testimony. And even when the extreme danger subsided, and Francis Temple was known to be better, Rachel found that ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of it—a Survey which, meseemed, it would have been well had Others made with similar Attentiveness—I found that the Arch thereof looked shaky and insecure; moreover, that a Great and Irregular-shaped Cleft or Crack ran, after the fashion of a Lightning-flash in a Painted Sea-scape, athwart the structure thereof from Keystone to Coping. As I was regarding this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various

... President. He fell into disfavour, however, with the Court on account of his opposition to a claim for two million francs by a distant relative of the Empress Eugenie. Finding that his position was insecure, he tendered his resignation to the Emperor, who accepted it. About this time he met Clorinde Balbi, an Italian adventuress, who endeavoured to induce him to marry her. Carried away for the time being, Rougon ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... seemed that the woman must fall from her perch, so insecure it seemed. He controlled himself, thinking rapidly. Then ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... as they were congratulating themselves on their escape, came a dull, reverberating explosion—and as they clung to their insecure footholds, a volcano of snow and ice rose ahead. Thousands of tons of debris ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... and set out straightway on his homeward journey. A tramp of thirty or forty miles over the hills is ordinarily no great matter for a young and active shepherd. But now snow was falling; already it lay to some depth, making the footing toilsome and insecure. Moreover, a curious yellow mist had spread over the hills, shrouding the hollows from sight; darkness must be on him hours before he could hope to reach home, and the night promised to be wild. But what would daunt ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... the race would have been annihilated. "As soon as we demand to pass beyond mere awareness to a genuine knowledge, we discover our deplorable poverty, and must confess that what is termed certain seems on clearer investigation to rest upon a totally insecure foundation."[75] "It is not natural science itself which leads to naturalism, for, indeed, no natural science could arise if reality exhausted itself in the measurements of naturalism; but it is rather the weakness of the conviction of the spiritual life; it is ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... vow himself to a life of hard service in a convent would be the way to win his brother's life; but he had ceased to be able to feel that such bargains were the right course, or that a convent necessarily afforded sure way of service, and he never felt more insecure of the way and means to prayer than in ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... wide, stern gray rocks all round us, a foaming torrent only faintly visible in the prevailing gloom a thousand feet below. Our mules, obtained at the last village in the fertile region, move at the speed of snails, for the path is slippery and insecure, and one false step would mean death for both ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... it occurred to anyone that actors might also be remunerated in a similar way. In olden days the actor's profession was not favourably regarded by the general public; his social position was particularly insecure; he was looked upon as of close kin to the rogue and the vagabond, and with degrading possibilities in connection with the stocks and whipping-post never wholly remote from his professional career. An Elizabethan player, presuming to submit ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... from committing such violations of the rights of the neutral party as may, first or last, leave no other option. From the best information I have been able to obtain it would seem as if our trade to the Mediterranean without a protecting force will always be insecure and our citizens exposed to the calamities from which numbers of them have but just ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... predilections of an individual poet or historian, combine to render the early history of the Arabs, so far as precision in dates, the definite order and mutual relations of events, characters, and localities are concerned, perplexing and insecure, or tantalizing by the wealth of detail, impressive indeed, but eluding the test of historical criticism. Their tactics and the composition of their armies make the precise share of this or that general in determining the result of a battle or a campaign difficult to estimate. Yet by (he concord ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... sore straits. It distresses me to hear how much you are suffering, and at the same time not to be near enough to speak a word of good cheer, or to do anything for your comfort. It grieves me to find how insecure my health is, for I had promised to myself to be your loving nurse, should any turn in your disease make it desirable. Miss Lyman boards here, but rooms at the Sykes', and her friend Miss Warner is also here, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... through the staring and threatening mob. No hand was raised against us at that moment, but danger lay about us on every side, and it was no pleasure to recognise the fact that the sword of Damokles always hung by a hair over our head. Feeling very uneasy at our insecure condition, I was sent, on the part of the rest, to the authorities of the canton, especially to Abbe Girard,[137] and the mayor, Eduard Pfyffer, to beg that they would provide for our safety with all the means in their power. On my way I was recognised ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... of pluralism. Its world is always vulnerable, for some part may go astray; and having no 'eternal' edition of it to draw comfort from, its partisans must always feel to some degree insecure. If, as pluralists, we grant ourselves moral holidays, they can only be provisional breathing-spells, intended to refresh us for the morrow's fight. This forms one permanent inferiority of pluralism from the pragmatic ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... answer was an incredulous laugh, and an instant later the man's shoulder struck the panels with a crash that cracked one of them and partly tore the bolt from its insecure fastenings. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... journeyed o'er a field All covered up with snow in heaps, By melancholy fogs concealed. Amid the snowdrifts which surround A stream, by winter's ice unbound, Impetuously clove its way With boiling torrent dark and gray; Two poles together glued by ice, A fragile bridge and insecure, Spanned the unbridled torrent o'er; Beside the thundering abyss Tattiana in despair unfeigned ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... four-pound loaf; wine, 25s. a bottle. By the time they returned, we had struck our tents, intending to cross a muddy-banked creek that lay in our road that evening, as we were told that the waters might be too swollen to do it next day. The water reached above their waists, and as my usual post was very insecure, I was obliged to be carried over on their shoulders, which did not prevent my feet from being thoroughly soaked before reaching the other side, where we ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... fired instantly, and my footing was too precarious to let me even duck. My left arm tingled and went numb, but before he could draw a pistol I stepped to safer ground and launched my rock at him. It caught him lower than I intended, but that was the result of my insecure foothold. I meant it for his head. It took him between neck and shoulder. He dropped like an ox, and his musket went clattering down the steep. He lay still across the path, very near to the place where, as I looked, I could see again Black Boy's straining eyes and ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... very large possessions, part of which consisted in Crown debts due to the Vice-Admiral for sums he had advanced for the sea service. No moneys were at that time more insecure than those owing from the king. Penn was obliged to go more than once, and "thee" and "thou" King Charles and his Ministers, in order to recover the debt; and at last, instead of specie, the Government invested him with ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... frequent rains, or rather waterspouts, (and from the position of the place, between the two vast oceans of the Atlantic and Pacific, they have considerably more than their own share of moisture,) washing away the soil and sand from between the stones, render the footing for bass of all kinds extremely insecure. There are five monasteries of different orders, and a convent of nuns, within the walls, most of which, I believe, are but poorly endowed. All these have handsome churches attached to them; that of La Merced is very splendid. The cathedral ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... servant had done his lordship's bidding, and Mr. Caryll stood weaponless amid his enemies. He mastered himself at once. Here it was plain that he must walk with caution, for the ground, he perceived, was of a sudden grown most insecure and treacherous. Rotherby and Green in league! It gave him matter ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... nothing about wrong. I simply assert that it is uncertain. The very existence of such a periodical must in itself be most insecure." Sir Marmaduke, amidst the cares of his government at the Mandarins, had, perhaps, had no better opportunity of watching what was going on in the world of letters than had fallen to the lot of Miss ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... retraced our steps along the edges of chasms where the ice was disintegrated and insecure, and succeeded at length in finding a bridge which bore us across the crevasse. This error caused us the loss of an hour, and after walking for this time we could cast a stone from the point we had attained to the place whence we had been ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... this, hushed only for a moment by the passage of the Bland Act, had been going on ever since demonetization in 1873. The fall in prices, which the new output of gold had not yet begun to arrest; the money stringency since 1893; the insecure, bond-supplied gold reserve, and the repeal of the silver-purchase clause in the Sherman Act combined to produce a wish for increase in the nation's hard-money supply. Had the climax of fervor synchronized with an election day, a free-coinage President ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... be necessary, that those of an abject and moderate genius, because they never encounter danger, nor aspire after the summit of excellence, are for the most part without error and remain in security; but that great things become insecure through their magnitude?" Indeed it appears to me, that whenever this exuberance, this Bacchic fury, occurs in the diction of Plato, it is owing to the magnitude of the inspiring influence of deity with which he is then replete. For that he sometimes ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... homes in distant and widely separated provinces, would spread the fame of the courageous Galilean Prophet. Many in Jerusalem believed on Him at the time, mainly because they were attracted by the miracles He wrought; but He refused to "commit himself unto them," realizing the insecure foundation of their professions. Popular adulation was foreign to His purpose; He wanted no motley following, but would gather around Him such as received the testimony of His Messiahship from the Father. "He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... being given, as the wind baffled, and as often was it countermanded, to take advantage of its reviving. These were feverish moments, for the ship was now so near the reef as to render her situation very insecure in the event of the wind's rising, or of a sea's getting up, the sand of the bottom being too hard to make good holding-ground. Still, as there was a possibility, in the present state of the weather, of kedging the ship off a mile into the offing, if necessary, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... up unsteadily on his insecure perch, and there was the mysterious grey car, which now was become a veritable nightmare, mounting the hill ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... raised her high in my estimation. She replied, that Mr. Barclay's being detached from Lady Angelica Headingham by your superior merit was to her the strongest argument in his favour. She must, she said, have felt insecure in the possession of a heart, which had been transferred directly from Lady Angelica to herself, because she was conscious that her own disposition was so different from her ladyship's; but in succeeding to the affection which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... be financially insecure, because this would defeat its eugenic purpose. Society, therefore, as a matter of self-preservation, must ensure to woman her mental and economic security. Civilization's margin is large enough to provide this. We spend large amounts on luxuries and evils which are contrary to the genesis of self-preservation, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.

... of the persons who become leaders of society, and would remain so. They alone are "good society." Their imitators may masquerade for a time, and tread on toes, and fling scorn and insult about them while in a false and insecure supremacy; but such pretenders to the throne are soon unseated. There is a dreadful Sedan and Strasburg awaiting them. They distrust their own flatterers; their "appanage" is not a ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... herself with a liberal sum. Then the atmosphere round her became less trying; yet her temper remained changeable, and had it not been that she was good-looking and witty, her position might have been insecure. As it was, she ruled in a neutral territory where she was the only woman. One night, after an inclement remark to Jacques, in the card-room, Blanche came back to the bar, and not noticing that, while she was gone, Soldier ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... much to the fun of swimming. The boards are generally made so that the plank will bend, being dressed down thin at one end and fastened. The thinness of the plank, or an insecure fastening, causes many a plank to snap in two or come loose from its ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... knowledge whatever of the many thoughts regarding her father which had begun to occupy her mother's mind. To her, strange and unnatural as it may seem, he was simply an object of fear and abhorrence. She hated him as the cause of her mother's sufferings, of their false and insecure position, and of the self-loathing which possessed her when she thought of their relationship. The idea of any wifely duty owing to him could never have struck her, for what visions of married life she had, belonged to a world totally unlike that of her parents' experience, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... the moonlight, trailing their long shadows up the straight avenue of chestnuts. The marquise, a royalist of course, had been mayor of the commune which includes Ploumar, the scattered hamlets of the coast, and the stony islands that fringe the yellow flatness of the sands. He had felt his position insecure, for there was a strong republican element in that part of the country; but now the conversion of Jean-Pierre made him safe. He was very pleased. "You have no idea how influential those people are," he explained to his wife. "Now, I am ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... Etherington, laughing, "for no other reason than that it is an uncertain calling—one that is liable to sudden reverses—what is termed gambling—and whatever renders property insecure is sure to obtain odium among those whose principal concern is its accumulation; those who consider the responsibility of others ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... gold. But the Clerk of the Court was really unsophisticated, or he would have seen that Carmen played the guitar badly because she was not interested in Jean Jacques' singing. He would have known that she had come to that stage in her married life when the tenure is pitifully insecure. He would have seen that the crisis was near. If he had had any real observation he would have noticed that Carmen's eyes at once kindled, and that the guitar became a different thing, when M. Colombin, the young schoolmaster, one of the guests, caught ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... independent investigation, until our knowledge of the child becomes sufficient for us to infer from general laws of procedure what the procedure in a particular case should be. We venture to infer what ought to be done in some cases, but generally we feel insecure till we have proved our inference correct by trying out different ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle

... be for them, Ronald? I have heard that bands of discharged soldiers and others make travelling insecure; but I had no idea that it was necessary to ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... l'amour! The most mysterious of all mysteries, the most inexplicable of all that can't be explained, the most precarious of all that's insecure. ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... with his back to the fire, and, cigarette in mouth, dictated to the self-effacing young woman. She took down his words with anxious humility, for she looked upon him as a god sphered on Olympian heights—and what socially insecure young woman of lower-middle-class England could do otherwise in the presence of a torturingly beautiful youth, immaculately raimented, who commanded in the great house with a smile more royal and debonair than that of the master thereof, Member ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... Religion and Philosophy mean to us things having roots in Reality, while Theology and Metaphysics seem like broken reeds, rooted in the quicksands of ignorance, and affording naught but the most insecure support for the mind or soul of Man. we do not insist upon our students accepting these definitions—we mention them merely to show our position. At any rate, you shall hear very little about Theology and Metaphysics ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... sober, even stately. But soon, either from the steep, insecure nature of the ground or from less obvious and material cause, her pace quickened until it became a run. She ran neatly, deftly, all of a piece as a boy runs, no trace of disarray or feminine floundering ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... necessary to commence war immediately; but his fleet was twice defeated by Pompey, and was at last completely destroyed by a storm (B.C. 38). This failure only proved the necessity of making still more extensive preparations to carry on the war with success. The power of Octavian was insecure as long as Pompey was master of the sea, and could deprive Rome of her supplies of corn. Nearly two years were spent in building a new fleet, and exercising the newly-raised crews and rowers. The command of the fleet and the superintendence of all the necessary preparations for the ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... am not angry, Tuan," answered Babalatchi, descending from the insecure heights of his indignation into the insincere depths of safe humility. "I am not angry. What am I to be angry? I am only an Orang Laut, and I have fled before your people many times. Servant of this one—protected ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... other confirmations, to the old newspapers; these were the things that no one wrote about because every one understood and every one had taken up an attitude. There were in England and America, and indeed throughout the world, two great informal divisions of human beings—the Secure and the Insecure. There was not and never had been in either country a nobility—it was and remains a common error that the British peers were noble—neither in law nor custom were there noble families, and we altogether lacked the edification ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... CAVE.—On "the old Lewis Martin place," 11/2 miles west of Rowlett's Station, a section of roof, 20 or 25 feet across, has dropped into a deep cavity. The sides are still insecure. The descent to a spring under what appears to be the original roof is somewhat more than 40 feet. The ceiling is not more than 6 ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... at least in the capital, the basso popolo was royalist, as was the scarcely less ignorant nobility. The bulk of the clergy and the army was also loyal. All this support made the Bourbon regime look not insecure to those on the spot, who failed to understand the ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... irregular pages—it may be a volume of controversial divinity or outworn philosophy—it seems impossible to imagine that it can ever have been woven out of the live brain of man, or that any one can ever have been found to follow those old, vehement, insecure arguments, starting from unproved data, and leading to erroneous and fanciful conclusions. The whole thing seems so faded, so dreary, so remote from reality, that one cannot even dimly imagine the frame of mind which originated it, and still less ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... turned his attention to the Eastern Shore. He realized that so long as Berkeley had there a base of operations, from which he could launch sudden attacks, his position was insecure. So he sent Captain George Farloe, "one of Cromwell's men," with forty soldiers across the bay to surprise and capture Berkeley. But it was not easy to cross so large a body of water in small boats, and Farloe was taken and hanged. Equally futile was a manifesto to the people ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

... personal attraction, with mutual respect and self-respect as its dedicated corner-stone. This does not mean that one cannot see any faults in the friend, or know that one's own are seen, without losing affection. There is always something flimsy and insecure about a friendship that simply idealizes. Any relation should be all the stronger for a frank acknowledgment of its imperfections. If a girl cares enough she will be willing to admit her own faults and wish to make herself more ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks

... the walls with respect to apparent solidity and stability, it was found that nearly all are in fair or good condition. The only portion that would seem in special danger is the central section of the southern exterior wall. This section seems insecure, and might at any time be overthrown by a heavy wind following a rain storm. This section was not, unfortunately, braced or tied to the stronger interior wall when the protective works were carried ...
— The Repair Of Casa Grande Ruin, Arizona, in 1891 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. Two little visual Spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the UNFATHOMABLE, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon,—make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... place: but at present I suppose they will. I wish it also, because M. de Hector, his only competitor, has on some occasions shown little value for the connection with us. Lambert, the Comptroller General, is thought to be very insecure. I should be sorry also to lose him. I have worked several days with him, the Marquis de la Fayette, and Monsieur du Pont (father of the young gentleman gone to America with the Count de Moustier), to reduce into one Arret whatever concerned ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... coat and feel dressed. This life is to last until Friday, Saturday or Sunday next. It is a strange affair to be an emigrant, as I hope you shall see in a future work. I wonder if this will be legible; my present station on the wagon roof, though airy, compared to the cars, is both dirty and insecure. I can see the track straight before and straight ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton

... of the rights they gave, or of the means of oppression they took away: while the time-honoured dwellings of the Cavendishes and Russells were menaced and assailed, nothing but the most senseless tyranny could render the cottage insecure; but the abolition of the seignorial rights in France, free communication between her provinces, equal taxation, impartial justice—these were blessings which it required no economist to illustrate, and no philosopher to explain. Every labourer in France, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... not all of them, in the public room of the jail, discussing the qualities of the keepers liquors. Accordingly he held his way through the silent streets of the village, directly to the small and insecure building that contained all the unfortunate debt ors and some of the criminals of the county, and where justice was administered to such unwary applicants as were so silly as to throw away two dollars in order to obtain one from their neighbors. The arrival of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper









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