"Insidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little work. If accompanied by the Divine blessing, it will test your faith and practice in the crucible and by the fire of God's word. It is intended to turn your spirit inside out—to lay bare every insidious enemy that may have crept in and lie lurking in the walls of Mansoul. It exhibits sin in all its hideous deformity, stript of its masquerade and disguises; so that it appears, what it really is, the great enemy to human happiness. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... relation, parents began to receive harsh and even cruel treatment. As we look back upon it now, it seems strange that the result was not anticipated, and the trend of events changed by a decided stand against such an unnatural course. But the approach to a crisis was insidious and, as I have said, history furnished no parallel from ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... drops distil each hour, To blight, to ruin and destroy, And find with dark, insidious pow'r, The heart of ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... fit the lanterns; and, a thin fleece of snow having fallen since the early part of the evening, those who had no leggings went to the stable and wound wisps of hay round their ankles to keep the insidious flakes from the interior of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... of our present industrial system. There was no indication of how it would grow. Every new advance was hailed with joy. No one ever thought of "capital" and "labour" as hostile interests. No one ever dreamed that the very fact of success would bring insidious dangers with it. And yet with growth every imperfection latent in the system came out. A man's business grew to such proportions that he had to have more helpers than he knew by their first names; but that fact was not regretted; it was rather hailed with joy. And yet it has since led ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... summers, her health had, at length, succumbed, not all at once, like fabrics sapped by gunpowder, but little by little, like those that are demolished piecemeal with the pickaxe of the workman. Day by day she grew more and more feeble, without those who were constantly by her side observing the insidious workings of disease. Like Mucius Scaevola, who held his hands in a burning brazier without uttering a word, she so effectually hid her griefs within the recesses of her own bosom, that no ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... the precepts of the Koran, in the month of Ramadan, which he enjoins as a fast; he interdicts wine, and inculcates the necessity of praying five times a day, facing the holy city, &c.; forming together a system of the most insidious character towards the establishment of pure Christianity. In the performance of the duties of their belief, the Mahomedan nations of Africa, upon the coast, are exact and scrupulous, but they have no idea ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... imagination, and that it rigorously refrain from assuming its reader to possess any particular information on any subject whatever. The author who writes over the head of the public is the most dangerous enemy of his publisher—and the most insidious as well, because so many publishers are in private life interested in literary matters, and would readily permit this personal foible to influence the exercise of their vocation were it possible to do so upon the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... seen not a little public spirit, a real subordination of interest to duty, and a decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces (whether in a greater or less number than former times I know not) daring profligates and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the world, because of the mixture of evil that will always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the value. They who raise suspicions on the good on account ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... safeguard in the area where they don't have the disease, in that you will detect the disease the quickest on the Japanese walnut, and in that way anyone would become wise to it, rather than if it was in the black walnut. It might be so insidious that it could be well spread before persons knew they had it at all. I wonder if the Japanese walnut, through its quickness in showing the disease, might not be a safeguard ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... and insolent, Of warlike aspect and defiant mien, With wall and rampart unassailable, Impregnable to the assaults of man— Surrender at the mold's insidious tread. ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... her? Already engaged, already having given her answer to Maurice Rodaine, this now would be an added incentive for her to follow her promise. It would mean a possibility of further argument with her father, already too weak from illness to find the means of evading the insidious pleas of the two men who had taken his money and made him virtually their slave. Could they not demonstrate to him now that they always had worked for his best interests? And could not that plea go even farther—to Anita herself—to persuade her that they were always laboring ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... sorrows, cried I, why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here—and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid? Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious—Then 'tis time to dance off, quoth I; so changing only partners and tunes, I danced it away from Lunel to Montpellier—from thence to Pescnas, Beziers—I danced it along through Narbonne, Carcasson, and Castle Naudairy, till at last I danced ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... more than insinuated a doubt of the legality of sentencing the traitors, was listened to by all present, with deep attention; and by the secret partizans of the conspiracy with joy and exultation. So sure did they esteem it that, in the teeth of this insidious argument, the Senate would not venture to inflict capital punishment on their friends, that they evinced their approbation by loud cheers; while many of the patrician party were shaken in their previous convictions; and many ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... dissatisfaction and resentment are referred to by Neptune (xiii. 126), and by Agamemnon himself (xiv. 55). They had lately manifested themselves in the alacrity with which the whole army had caught at the insidious suggestion of abandoning the war; and, just before the second assembly, Thersites avails himself of the general feeling, constituting himself the representative of a popular grievance, to vent his personal spite against Agamemnon. Ulysses saw how dangerous such a display might be at such a moment; ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... selfish of parasites. The world for a long time disregarded him, but now acknowledges him as one of the mightiest of conquerers; for while other devastators have slain thousands, millions have fallen beneath his insidious attacks. He is a foe to be dreaded, for he is forever lying in ambush ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... It might seem insidious if I were to praise his ode entitled Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, as an effusion of high poetical enthusiasm, and strong political feeling. His Sonnet to Schiller conveys a fine compliment to the author of the Robbers, and an equally ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... did he contemplate for me and my followers, when he entered on this insidious design?" ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... a close friend of President Wilson and one of his most intimate advisers, said to me, "The most insidious influence here is the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... twenty years. Mr. Molyneux spoke also in angry terms of the measure of abolition. To annihilate the trade, he said, and to make no compensation on account of it, was an act of swindling. Mr. Macnamara called the measure hypocritical, fanatic, and methodistical. Mr. Pitt was so irritated at the insidious attempt to set aside the privy council report, when no complaint had been alleged against it before, that he was quite off his guard, and he thought it right afterwards to apologize for the warmth ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... to me, indeed, that instead of courting a sense for the aromatic in literature, the critic should rather guard himself against its insidious approaches. Disporting himself in such pleasures of the fancy, he finds it easy to believe, and to make us believe, that a piece of literature gains in intrinsic value from its power to stimulate his historical sense. The modern appreciative critic, in ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... strike away the invisible hands of the Three," said Count Saurau, quickly. "Bonaparte seems to desire to force Venice, too, into the pale of his Italian republics. The city is full of French emissaries, who, by means of the most eloquent and insidious appeals, try to bring about a rising of the Venetians against their rulers, in order—but hark!" said the count, suddenly interrupting himself. "What is that? Don't you hear the clamor in the street, right ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... appalling to one's aesthetic sense was the clerk himself. Squatting behind his wretched desk, Elias Droom peered across the litter of papers and books with snaky but polite eyes, almost as inviting as the spider who, with wily but insidious decorum, draws the guileless into ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... and perhaps perjury, too. He had an insidious and unscrupulous enemy, who assumed the guise of repentance, and candor, and friendship, the better to lure him into his toils—it was the infamous Colonel Thorg, who received the command of the regiment, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... height of his promise, in consequence, it was said by some, of a certain mental shock, the young composer had fallen victim to a rare, insidious disease, arising apparently from an organic derangement, small in itself but deadly in its secondary effects. The chief characteristics of this malady were a general muscular prostration growing ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... of conservatism there is nothing much that can be counted on but that slow, random, and essentially insidious working of habituation that tends to the obsolescence of the received preconceptions; partly by supplanting them with something new, but more effectually by their falling into disuse and decay. There is, it will have to be admitted, little of a positive character ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Botticelli, Sir Peter Lely, Gainsborough, Burne-Jones. Some people said she was like a Sargent, others called her a post-impressionist type; there was no end to the old and new masters of whom she seemed to remind people; and she certainly had the rather insidious charm of somehow recalling the past while suggesting something undiscovered in the future. There was a good deal that was enigmatic about her. It was natural, not assumed as a pose of mysteriousness. She was not all on the surface: not obvious. ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... meant for a smile, and which was in constant requisition, in order to show off the said teeth, which Theophilus considered one of his greatest attractions. But my cousin had no personal attractions. There was nothing manly or decided about him. Smooth and insidious where he wished to please, his first appearance to strangers was always unprepossessing; and few persons on their first introduction had any great desire to ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... the errors contained in such publications as the /Augustus/ of Jansen and the /Frequent Communion/ of Arnauld he threw himself vigorously into the campaign against Jansenism. At court, in his conferences with bishops and priests, in university circles, and in the seminaries he exposed the insidious character of its tenets. At Rome he urged the authorities to have recourse to stern measures, and in France he strove hard to procure acceptance of the Roman decisions. And yet in all his work against the Jansenists there was nothing of the bitterness of the controversialist. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... in home waters, and every day sees some improvement in this line. This facility of communication carries with it, of course, the danger of "interfering," one of the most frequent causes of trouble in the past, in conducting the operations of both armies and fleets—a danger very real, very insidious, and very important. The very ease with which interference can be made, the trained instinct of the subordinate to follow the wishes of his superior if he can, the temptation to the superior to wield personally some military power and get some military glory, conspire to bring about interference. ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... words the beasts with men's heads wagged their tails, all of them, from right to left, and kept their jaws from motion, staring stupidly at the dishes; but the dishes began to send forth stealthy steams, insidious whispers to the nose, silver intimations of savouriness, so that they on a sudden set up a howl, and Shibli Bagarag puckered his garments from them as from devouring dogs, and hastened from that hall to a third, where at the entrance ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the apothecary, the clerk—all were of the same opinion. And they would start to relate other anecdotes. They reviewed the entire life of the deceased. The old folks took particular delight in recalling the cruelties of his youth. And that queer pleasure, intimate, mute, insidious, grew within me—a sort of moral tape-worm whose coils I tore out in vain, for they would immediately form again and ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... immersed, and was determined to abjure the littleness of pride, and the emptiness of sensual gratification. He did not now address his destined prize with the commendations of beauty. He bestowed upon her with profusion the epithets of discretion, integrity, and heroism; and poured into her ear the insidious flattery, that was most soothing to her temper. Full, as he pretended, of the infant purposes of virtue, he besought his captive in the most importunate manner, to remain with him for a time, to confirm his wavering rectitude, to instruct him in duty, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... nothing more insidious than the spirit of conformity, and nothing more quickly paralyzes the best parts of a man. A gleam of truth illuminates his mind, and forthwith he proceeds to compare it with the prevailing tone of his community or his set. If it agree not with that, he distrusts and perhaps ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... you will be, if settled at all. In your position at Hawarden, there would then be at once increased ease and increased attraction in the performance of your duties; nor can I overlook the fact that the life of the unmarried man, in this age particularly, is under peculiar and insidious temptations to selfishness, unless his celibacy arise from a very strong and definite course of self-devotion to the service of God and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... insidious as this, and none so fatal, has ever assailed the Christian church. She is passing through her greatest temptation. It is Mammon who has taken her up into an exceeding high mountain and shown her the kingdoms ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... fight the Black-Horse Cavalry, as the gang of "strike" legislators was called. One of the most insidious bills pushed by these rascals aimed at reducing the fares on the New York Elevated Railway from ten cents to five cents. It seemed so plausible! So entirely in the interest of the poor man! Indeed, the affairs of the Elevated took up much of Roosevelt's attention and enriched for years the Black-Horse ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... very easy for me to discover, from your obstinacy, that some woman had endeavored to entrap you, and by her insidious counsels inducing you to ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... hand closed upon them mechanically. A vague thought that he might some day make restitution conspired with McKee's insidious appeal to his hatred and jealousy to induce him to retain the blood-money, and he thrust it within an inside pocket ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... Mr Rogers began to look out anxiously for a danger that, though small, was terribly insidious, and one which, if not avoided, would bring a misfortune upon them that they would have ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... seven trying years which followed the close of the war, and bequeathed the constitution, after a season of peculiar danger, unshaken to his successors. The firm friend of freedom, he was on that very account the resolute opponent of democracy, the insidious enemy which, under the guise of a friend, has in every age blasted its progress and destroyed its substance. Discerning the principal cause of the distress which had occasioned these convulsions, his last act was one that ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... the jealousy with which man had ever eyed the slow aggressions of woman, warned you against the insidious proposition made by agents from that Society. We told you they would no doubt gladly receive the dollar, but that you would never be allowed to speak or vote in their meetings. Many of you thought us suspicious and unjust toward the temperance men of the Empire State. The fact that Abby ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... warnings, and although I know it to be a most dangerous commodity, I have ventured to offer the simple truth, as far as I have been able to discern it, consoling my advisers with the assurance that its insidious influence will be unlikely to do harm, because, however potent may be the direful latitude of other religious novels, this particular book can only interest those wiser folk who are best able ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... horrors." True, O Prince, but the French are determined to drive them out. Better still, in the month which witnessed the sinking of the Lusitania we read this panegyric of the Teuton in Die Welt: "Clad in virtue and in peerless nobility of character, unassailed by insidious enemies either within or without, girded about by the benign influences of Kultur, the German, whether soldier or civilian, pursues his destined way, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... According to the Japanese custom, the cups were only half full. After we had partaken of it, they supplied us with pipes and tobacco, and the conference began. They first inquired the name and rank of each of us, and then asked repeatedly, and in an insidious manner, where we came from, whither we were going, and why our countrymen had formerly ravaged their northern coasts. When we had returned guarded answers to these questions, they wanted to know how many men were in our vessel. As ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... has increased rapidly during recent decades throughout many portions of the world. This has been most marked in dairy regions. Its extremely insidious nature does not permit of an early recognition by physical means, and it was not until the introduction of the tuberculin test[85] in 1892, as a diagnostic aid that accurate knowledge of its distribution was possible. The quite general introduction ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... wings. Its owner grabbed at its legs, but too late to hold it. It had sprung from the perch and was circling slowly round the Queen's Hall with a dry, leathery flapping of its ten-foot wings, while a putrid and insidious odor pervaded the room. The cries of the people in the galleries, who were alarmed at the near approach of those glowing eyes and that murderous beak, excited the creature to a frenzy. Faster and faster it flew, beating ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... queen, he had no fixed intention of ultimately benefiting those he professed to serve, but proposed to use them as ladders to that exalted position of a Sylla or a Caesar, which, as Bonaparte subsequently proved, was no more, perhaps, beyond his grasp than his ambition; influenced by the insidious suggestions and doubts he carefully spread abroad, the queen, as he saw with pleasure, looked on the new commander of the National Guards as a "Grandison-Cromwell" (Mirabeau's damaging epithet), whose concealed ambition aimed at the constableship of France, as a step to that dread ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... prosperity of the grower, and but a few days later Southern Springs stood amidst bare brown fields of dry poppy heads, scarred by the cutter's knife, exuding in thick drops the poisonous juices—a striking picture in the eyes of all men of the fate awaiting the smoker, who, lulled by the insidious charm of the fascinating drug, would finally be the only one unable to see himself a hopeless, ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... say. But it has occurred to me that these people, whoever they are, that are trying to injure you, may not intend any physical violence at all, at least for the present, but may be depending solely upon the terrible and insidious power of suggestion. You must bear this possibility in mind, and try to control your fears. I can readily believe that thirty days of this sort of persecution, and you would be a physical and mental wreck. ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... of statesman altogether to the politician who did not make it his aim to establish the right, or, in other words, had no public ideal; such a man is only "that crafty and insidious animal vulgarly termed a statesman." But he insists that the truly wise statesman in pressing his ideal must always practise considerable accommodation. If he cannot carry the right he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong, but, "like Solon, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... of gold; With sudden flash vitrescent sparks reveal, 230 By fierce collision from the flint and steel; Or mark with shining letter KUNKEL's name In the pale Phosphor's self-consuming flame. So the chaste heart of some enchanted Maid Shines with insidious light, by Love betray'd; 235 Round her pale bosom plays the young Desire, And slow she wastes by ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... most grateful for any encouraging word spoken to him. The best of our men had been sent on board the brig, and we remained only with eight and the Helen's crew—a very fair complement, had we not always required two to stand sentry over the prisoners. We had another and a more insidious enemy on board, of whom we wot not, and whom no sentry could control— the plague—that fell scourge of Asiatic cities. How it came on board we could not discover. It might have been in some of the pirates' clothes, or some of our men might have caught ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... the first insidious rupture of that routine she had grown to look upon as changeless for the years to come, of the life she had chosen for its very immutable quality. Even its pangs of loneliness had acquired a certain sweet ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... who with their insidious propaganda, menace America through her industrial troubles, will be powerless, indeed, when American employers and employees can think in ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... murders of the Lusitania were justified. A German chemist friend of mine told me that the chemists of Germany were called on, after poison gas had been met by British and French, to devise some new and deadly chemical. Flame throwers soon appeared together with more insidious gases. And it is only because of the vigilance of other nations that German spies have not succeeded in sowing the microbes of pestilence in countries arrayed against ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... along the road, throw up at me an occasional greeting as the lorry goes by. Long lines of transport pass continually. "Sempre Avanti Savoia!" "Sempre Avanti Italia!" I find my eyes wet with tears, for the beauty and the glory and the insidious danger of that intoxicating war-cry; for the blindness and the wickedness and the selfish greed that lurk behind it, exploiting the generous emotions of the young and brave; for the irony and bitter fatuity of any war-cry in a world that should ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... strike to the very roots of history. We soon lose all inclination to doubt. We penetrate into another world and come to a stop all out of countenance. We no longer know where we stand; before and after overlap and mingle. We no longer distinguish the insidious and factitious but indispensable line which separates the years that have gone by from the years that are to come. We clutch at the hours and days of the past and present to reassure ourselves, to fasten on to some certainty, to ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Seville, he insisted that the fortress of Algeziras should be placed in his hands, on the pretence that if fortune were unpropitious he should have some place to which he might retreat. That Mahomet should have been so blind as to not perceive the designs involved in the insidious proposal is almost enough to make one agree with the Arabic historians that destiny had decreed he should fall by his own measures. The place was not only surrendered to the artful Moor, but Mahomet himself went to Morocco to hasten the departure of Yussef. He was assured of speedy succor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... McGivney. Peter could not conceal from McGivney the fact that he was troubled over his bereavement; and so McGivney took him in hand and gave him a "jacking up." It was dangerous work, this of holding down the Reds; dangerous, because their doctrines were so insidious, they were so devilishly cunning in their working upon people's minds. McGivney had seen more than one fellow start fooling with their ideas and turn into one himself. Peter must ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... wonder whether the rapid but insidious increase of ritual in India is understood at home. In England it is bad enough, but in a heathen and Mohammedan land it is, if possible, worse; and the worst is, the spirit of it, or the spirit of tolerance ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... communicants were not necessarily voters, no one could be a voter who was not a communicant; therefore the town-meeting was in fact nothing but the church meeting, possibly somewhat attenuated, and called by a different name. By this insidious statute the clergy seized the temporal power, which they held till the charter fell. The minister stood at the head of the congregation and moulded it to suit his purposes and to do his will; for though he could not when opposed admit an inhabitant to the sacrament, he could peremptorily ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... now, is the clumsiest and most expensive of all games; we are finding that if you wish to commit an act of cruelty and folly, the most costly one that you can commit is to contrive to shoot your fellow-men in war. So it is; and thank God that so it is; but Nature, insidious, inexpensive, silent, sends no roar of cannon, no glitter of arms to do her work; she gives no warning note of preparation; she has no protocols, nor any diplomatic advances, whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. Silently, I say, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... he showed the means insidious Used oft by those who sold the drunkard drink. To lure him on by stimulants oblivious, Till he lost self-command, and ceased to think. Then showed him tottering on the fearful brink Of the wide-opening grave and drunkard's hell, And truthfully described ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... by falsehood, by unfairness, by gloss; through dishonor, unkindness, and an unscrupulous conscience—he considers fair, and says: The law allows it. Men may spend a long life without an indictable action, and without an honest one. No law can reach the insidious ways of subtle craft. The law allows, and religion forbids men, to profit by others' misfortunes, to prowl for prey among the ignorant, to over-reach the simple, to suck the last life-drops from the bleeding; to hover over ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... attempts to corrupt the garrison unsuccessful, and fearing some sudden sally from the vigorous Adelantado, Roldan drew off to a distance, and sought by insidious means to strengthen his own power, and weaken that of the government. He asserted equal right to manage the affairs of the island with the Adelantado, and pretended to have separated from him on account of his being passionate and vindictive in the exercise ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... insidious in their nature that their very pulsation is invisible. Such cancers, madame, leave the ivory whiteness of the skin untouched, and marble not the firm, fair flesh, with their blue tints; the physician who bends over ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... and see whether the 1 費. 2 郈. 3 成. 4 In connexion with these events, the 'Narratives of the School' and Sze-ma Ch'ien mention the summary punishment inflicted by Confucius on an able but unscrupulous and insidious officer the Shaou chang, Maou (少正卯). His judgment and death occupy a conspicuous place in the legendary accounts. But the Analects, Tsze-sze, Mencius, and Tso Ch'iu-ming are all silent about it, and Chiang Yung rightly ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... see it all now. By an insidious mass hypnosis minions from that other dimension ... or was it one supreme intelligence ... had deliberately sown the seeds of dissension. The reduction of the world's mental power had been ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... been in close touch with people who know what goes on, and what has gone on, since the year 1870, after the Franco-German war, can realize how insidious this German influence is, and so I say to you who love peace (and who does not love peace?) if you take part in any of these peace movements you are playing the German game and helping Germany. [Loud applause.] They talk of peace, but consider ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dispersed the whole fickle fabric of sleep; and as if the momentary trance—this fugitive beguilement of my wo—had been conceded by a demon's subtle malice only with the purpose of barbing the pang, by thus forcing it into a stronger relief through the insidious peace preceding it. It is a well known and most familiar experience to all the sons and daughters of affliction, that under no circumstances is the piercing, lancinating torment of a recent calamity felt so keenly as in the first moments of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... as all the elements that combine to set off this fulmination l eve expended their force and unless fresh material be added everything must settle down to a local trouble. Or if the primary irritation is subjected to a light form of toxic infection the development of the disease will be much more insidious and will require much more time to come to its maturity, ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... is an insidious and wily person, and often presents himself to the soft-hearted celebrity in such humble and pathetic guise that one really hasn't the courage to snub him. He has come such a long way for such a little thing! it is such a lowly function he plies at the foot ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... but be a most surprising fact. His curiosity will lead him to inquire what kind of system that could have been which was pretending to guide and develop society, but which must be held responsible for this prodigious destruction, excelling, in its insidious result, war, pestilence, and famine combined; insidious, for men were actually believing that it secured their highest temporal interests. How different now! In England, the same geographical surface is sustaining ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... like these are taken on behalf of the people in general against the malignant influence supposed to be exercised by strangers, it is no wonder that special measures are adopted to protect the king from the same insidious danger. In the middle ages the envoys who visited a Tartar Khan were obliged to pass between two fires before they were admitted to his presence, and the gifts they brought were also carried between the fires. The reason assigned for the custom was that the fire purged away any ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... which has come about was uncertain in origin, insidious in growth, and has developed over a wide field. In searching for the cause, and in suggesting the remedies which may be applied, the Committee must not be thought to be laying the blame on any one section of the community ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... have dishonoured yourself again by breaking the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics. With still greater pain and indignation do I learn that your name has become in a few short days a byword, that you have discarded the weapon of false, insidious arguments against my class—the class to which you owe everything—for the sword of the assassin. It has come to my knowledge that you have an assignation to-morrow with my good friend M. de La Tour d'Azyr. A gentleman of his ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... said, "so you are leaving. Well, I don't blame you, nor wish you to remain. After all, it is no use trying to tinker up our rotten system, or to prop up society with such wretched supports as our friend here," and he pointed at Short. "What we need is to get round them by our insidious means, and then go ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... priest, or Sepoy, he is ever the same Asirvadam the Brahmin,—sleekest of lackeys, most servile of sycophants, expertest of tricksters, smoothest of hypocrites, coolest of liars, most insolent of beggars, most versatile of adventurers, most inventive of charlatans, most restless of schemers, most insidious of jesuits, most treacherous of confidants, falsest of friends, hardest of masters, most arrogant of patrons, cruelest of tyrants, most patient of haters, most insatiable of avengers, most gluttonous of ravishers, most infernal of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... should be filed at the stamp office, to be produced as good and sufficient evidence of publication. A vehement debate followed, in the course of which Lord William Russell declared the bill to be an insidious blow at the liberty of the press; and Sir W. Pulteney said that 'the liberty of the press was of such a sacred nature that we ought to suffer many inconveniences rather than check its influence in such a manner as to endanger our liberties; for he had no hesitation in saying that ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... where the trouble lies, Nelson, with drinking intoxicating things. People should be able to drink or not, as they feel inclined. But alcohol is insidious. Why! you teach that in your ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... of our joys and sorrows!' cried I, 'why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid?' Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious. 'Then 'tis time ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... overexcited and careworn oxygen driven people. We are overworked, no doubt. We are an overcivilized set, particularly in the large cities, and every one must decide for himself or herself if "tea" is not an insidious enemy. That the introduction of an informal and healthful and inexpensive way of entertaining is a grand desideratum no one can fail to observe and allow. But with the growth of an idea the tea blossomed into a supper, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... clear the echo which her accent calls Back from the breast, on which the music falls? In the calm mind is doubt yet hush'd—and will That doubt tomorrow, as today, be still? Will all these fine sensations in their play, No censor need to regulate and sway? Fear'st thou not in the insidious Heart to find The source of Trouble to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... style is frequent in acts of this nature, and is that only which is suited to the occasion. An insidious use has been made of the words enact and declare, as if they were formal and operative words of force to distinguish different species of laws producing different effects. Nothing is more groundless; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... considerations already suggested, I am afraid thus much may be fairly inferred, that the earl of Shelburne is a man, dark, insidious and inexplicit in his designs; no decided friend of the privileges of the people; and in both respects a person very improper to conduct the affairs of this country. I would hope however, that the celebrated character ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... truth, the foes of the book-lover are not few. One of the most insidious, because he cometh at first in friendly, helpful guise, is the bookbinder. Not in that he bindeth books — for the fair binding is the final crown and flower of painful achievement — but because he bindeth not: because the weary weeks lapse by and turn to months, and the ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... that sincerity which affronted the fear of persecution; because, after all, the searching persecutions were rare and intermitting, and not, perhaps, in any case, so fiery as they have been represented. We think more of that gentle but insidious persecution which lay in the solicitations of besieging friends, and more still of the continual temptations which haunted the irresolute Christian in the fascinations of the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, and, far beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... was arrested for a moment. But the spearmen and multitude above, excited by the tidings of safety to life, and worn out by repeated defeat, and the dread fear of famine, too remote to hear the King, were listening eagerly to the insidious addresses of the two stealthy conspirators, creeping from rank to rank; and already they began to sway and move, and sweep slowly down towards ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sows these mischiefs Europe through By her insidious chink of luring ore— False-featured England, who, to aggrandize Her name, her influence, and her revenues, Schemes to impropriate the whole world's trade, And starves and bleeds the folk of other lands. Her rock-rimmed ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... dressed in jacket and trousers of blue cloth; he was helper to a gardener of the neighborhood, and had lately lost his mother and his wife, both of whom had been carried off by the same insidious fever. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... like horrid necklaces of cannibals. And from a squat den—where on a translucent placard in the dull window flickered the words "Foreign Earth," and the guttering door-lantern hinted "As You Like It"—there came a sweet, insidious, potent smell that seemed more poisonous than ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... confessed that our limited intelligence could discern nothing in it which could be construed as imposing any dire penalties on municipalities which emancipate their coloured women from the burden of the insidious pass law and tax. Hon. Mr. H. Burton, as already stated, was Minister for Native Affairs before the Union Government surrendered to the "Free" State reactionaries. A deputation consisting of Mrs. A. S. Gabashane, Mrs. Kotsi and Mrs. Louw, women from ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... dilution of labour. The great majority of them were not unpatriotic, their sons and brothers and friends had joined the Forces, and had already fought and died gallantly, but they were intensely suspicious. To them the "employer," the "capitalist," was a greater, because more enduring and insidious, enemy than the Germans. Dilution of labour had become in their eyes a device for destroying all their hardly won privileges and restrictions, and for delivering them bound and helpless to their "capitalist oppressers." To this sorry pass had the perpetual disputes ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... ministering fathers complain with more reason, than the little discernment with which people have been accustomed to judge and condemn them, representing as common to all the body the vices of a few of the members. Consequently, there is not one who does not read without shame and indignation the insidious motives and the defamatory expressions lavished against them in the ordinances of good government drawn up in Filipinas in 1768 [99]—which, although ordered to be modified by his Majesty, are now in force for lack of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... fish-filled waterways: anglerfish whose comical movements qualify them for the epithet "clowns," black Commerson anglers equipped with their antennas, undulating triggerfish encircled by little red bands, bloated puffers whose venom is extremely insidious, some olive-hued lampreys, snipefish covered with silver scales, cutlass fish whose electrocuting power equals that of the electric eel and the electric ray, scaly featherbacks with brown crosswise bands, greenish codfish, several varieties ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... in their blood, or, perhaps, perishing with wounds and hunger, under the cover of some friendly thicket to which they have in vain retreated for safety; they triumph over the unsuspecting fish whom they have decoyed by an insidious pretence of feeding, and drag him from his native element by a hook fixed to and tearing out his entrails; and, to add to all this, they spare neither labour nor expense to preserve and propagate these innocent animals, for no other end but ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... trickery. But it might be that his children, Alice's children, might tread in the steps of their forefather, Roland Sefton, and pursue the same devious course. Thieves breed thieves, it was said, in the lowest dregs of social life. Would there be some fatal weakness, some insidious improbity, in the nature of those descending ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... action of these high power rays, as well as of inorganic minerals, is very slow and insidious, manifesting only in the course of many years. This new field of therapeutics, therefore, has not yet passed ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... conversation, during which our young Damon acquitted himself with great skill in all the duties of gallantry: he laid hold of proper opportunities to express his admiration of her charms, had recourse to the silent rhetoric of tender looks, breathed divers insidious sighs, and attached himself wholly to her during the remaining ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... at the end of about fifteen years, he was called home to England. It had all served his purpose, this establishment of his, and thanks to it, he was still clean and straight, undemoralised by the insidious, undermining influences of the East. When he returned to his native land, he could find himself a home upon orthodox lines and live happily ever afterwards. Before he left Shanghai, he sent his little Chinese girl, a woman long ago, of course, back to her native ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... concerning the downfall of the Princess Joceliande has never as yet been honestly inscribed. Doubtless there be few alive except myself that know it; for from the beginning many strange and insidious rumours were set about to account for her mishap, whereby great damage was done to the memory of the Sieur Rudel le Malaise and Solita his wife; and afterwards these rumours were so embroidered and painted by rhymesters that the truth has become, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... very serious results have followed from the obscurity which has enveloped the early stages of the malady. For it may easily occur that in the absence of the treatment which an early correct diagnosis would have indicated, an insidious ailment may so take advantage of the lapse of time as to root itself too deeply into the economy to be subverted, and become transformed into a disabling chronic case, or possibly one that is incurable and fatal. Hence the impolicy of depreciating early symptoms because ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... from which the protection was suddenly removed; of such nature must be the justification, if any, for bounties given in times of flood, fire, or public disaster, which, however, are really sustained only in the absence of objection and on the principle lex non curat de minimis. The most insidious form of the bounty, however, is that of exemption from taxation, or, still worse, granting subsidies or subscribing to the stock and bonds of public-service, or even ordinary private, corporations. Undoubtedly the exception has ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... insidious; it is difficult to believe when one is bored that one would not be bored but for some such adventitious matter. The conscientious critic makes a great effort to be just under such circumstances, and there is great danger that he may out-Brutus ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Paul with a look of more favour than he had yet shown him. "Bultitude," he said, "I am obliged to you. A severe cold in the head has rendered me incapable of detecting this insidious act of insubordination and self-indulgence, on which I shall have more to say on another occasion. Your moral courage and promptness in denouncing the evil thing are ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... one of the first to congratulate his Majesty on the happy event, though the situation of the unfortunate nobleman was little bettered by the change; indeed it appeared but as the signal for new persecutions, as one of the earliest public acts of the ungrateful monarch may be characterized as an insidious attempt to set aside the claims of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to me with a sudden sharp look in the depths of the lack-lustre eyes. Already it began to strike me that, though the pea-green young man was inane, he had his due proportion of a certain insidious practical cunning. 'That's true,' he answered, measuring me. 'And according to her, almost everybody's a fool—especially her relations. There's a fine knack of sweeping generalisation about deah skinny old Georgey. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... attitude of holding aloof from English influences is the only remedy against that peril and for thwarting that insidious policy. ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... "you do not think it may be some insidious suggestion of an enemy who knew of this transient ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... her charms, and could Waller but have seen her we should have had such an account of the artillery of her eyes, the insidious attack of her smile, and the whole host of powerful adversaries brought to bear against the object of her assault in her gracefully moving form and heaving bosom, that Saccharissa would have melted away like a wet lump ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... miseries were not of my own planting in those days. While I believe that some men will be drunkards in spite of almost everything that can be done for their relief, others there are, no matter how surrounded, who never will be drunkards, but solely because they abstain from ever tasting the insidious poison. Temperament has much to do with the matter of drink, and could it be known and properly guarded against, I believe that a majority of those having the strongest predisposition to drink, if steps were taken in time, could be saved from its inevitable end, which is madness and death. ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... The chief strain of Collins's "Discourse" is an eulogium upon the necessity and advantage of Freethinking; in which it is more than insinuated that the advocates of revealed religion are enemies to the progress of enlightened inquiry. This insidious position is ridiculed in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... of their philosophical writings. This procedure is grounded in the common fallacy of supposing that infinity and quantity are compatible attributes, and susceptible of mathematical synthesis. This insidious and plausible error is ably refuted by a writer in the "North American Review."[219] We can not do better than transfer his argument to our pages in an ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... laconic comment of Egbert Crawford, when the crone, spite of his interruptions, had finished her long rigmarole. What followed may quite as well be imagined as described. Richard Crawford was doomed to be operated upon by one of those insidious and deadly vegetable poisons, outwardly applied, in which none have such horrible skill as the crones of the African race who have derived their knowledge from the West India Islands. Whether it should be brought near the head by concealment ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... itself, is calculated to expose our conduct to misconstruction in the eyes of the world. There are already those who, indifferent to principle themselves and prone to suspect the want of it in others, charge us with ambitious designs and insidious policy. You will perceive by the accompanying documents that the extraordinary mission from Mexico has been terminated on the sole ground that the obligations of this Government to itself and to Mexico, under treaty ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... the skill he possessed to make Gilbert speak; his insidious questions were inexhaustible: Gilbert was impenetrable. From time to time they looked steadily at each other, each seeking to embarrass his adversary, and to surprise his secret, but in vain; they fenced with glances, but they were both so sure in the parries, that ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... usually placid and subdued expression was exchanged for a look of pain. A harassing cough troubled her by day and prevented her resting at night; an accompanying weakness created some little anxiety as to what its issue might be; but, with the hoping spirit which is ever attendant on that insidious disease called consumption, she believed that the ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... unusual thing to see boys of twelve or fourteen take their glass of fiery finkel before dinner. The celebrated Swedish punch, made of arrack, wine, and sugar, is a universal evening drink, and one of the most insidious ever invented, despite its agreeable flavor. There is a movement in favor of total abstinence, but it seems to have made but little progress, except as it is connected with some of the new religious ideas, which are now preached throughout ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... devastating external events, is beginning to feel the insidious siege of years. She can no longer rally her spiritual forces with the "bright speed" that she had in the old days. The fountain of her faith, which has never yet failed of renewal, fills more slowly. For weeks she broods in silence, fearing to augment her ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Colonies are all embarkd in the same bottom. The Liberties of all are alike invaded by the same haughty Power: The Conspirators against their common Rights have indeed exerted their brutal Force, or applied their insidious Arts, differently in the several Colonies, as they thought would best serve their Purpose of Oppression and Tyranny. How necessary then is it; that ALL should be early acquainted with the particular Circumstances of EACH, in Order that the Wisdom & Strength of the whole may be employd upon every ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... Seven-League-Boots of the legend, and more than the genius of adventure of him that wore them. His castles may be of cardboard, his cataracts of tinfoil, the sun of his adjurations the veriest figment; but he never lets his readers see that he knows it. His irony, sudden and reckless and insidious though it be, yet never extends to his properties. There may be a sneer beneath that mask which, with an egotism baffling as imperturbable, he delights in intruding among his creations; but you cannot see it. You suspect its presence, because he is a born mocker. But you ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... had been permitted to Mr. Burke, he would have shown distinctly, and in detail, that what the Assembly calling itself National had held out as a large and liberal toleration is in reality a cruel and insidious religious persecution, infinitely more bitter than any which had been heard of within this century.—That it had a feature in it worse than the old persecutions.—That the old persecutors acted, or pretended to act, from zeal towards some system of piety and virtue: ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with people whose every word, as likely as not, may be an insidious falsehood. Thinking over what she had heard from Dymes, Alma was inclined to believe him; on the other hand, she knew it to be quite possible that he sought her with some interested motive. The wise thing, she ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... opal-tinted sky above, was so little like the hush of rest and peace, that he half-yearned for the outburst of musketry and tumult of attack that might dispel it. All that he had ever heard or dreamed of the insidious South, with its languid subtleties of climate and of race, seemed to ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... disease were inherited and only awaited a combination of circumstances to assert their fatal power. Absorbing enthusiasm for her profession, and the cares of a rapidly increasing practice, made her overlook the insidious danger lurking in a cold, and not until her alarmed physician ordered her to the soft climate of Southern California did she comprehend her danger. This peremptory order was a terrible shock, and the forced exile ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... basic weaknesses in the American system of government as we know it to-day. There are three insidious evils that are creeping like a blood-poison through the body politic, threatening the very life of the Republic. They are killing the soul of self-government, though perhaps not its form; destroying its essence, though perhaps not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... horribly insidious; and the demon, no doubt, marked my infatuated preparations. Dolt that I was, I fancied, with mind and body worn out for want of sleep, and an arrear of a full week's rest to my credit, that such measure as half-an-hour's sleep, in such a situation, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Smiles are a valuable aid in the education of boys. His style seems to have been constructed entirely for their tastes; his topics are admirably selected, and his mode of communicating excellent lessons of enterprise, truth, and self-reliance might be called insidious and ensnaring if these words did not convey an idea which is only applicable to lessons of an opposite character and tendency taught in the same attractive style. The popularity of this book, "Self-Help," abroad has made it a powerful instrument of good, and many ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... be at the Cabin at this early hour of the morning, nor would Beth be able to see him until late this afternoon—perhaps not until to-night. Meanwhile, the note upon the mantel was burning its way into her consciousness. It was endued with a personality feminine, insidious and persuasive. No ladies of London affecting heliotrope envelopes had any business writing scented notes to Peter now. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... silence he heard a gentle scratching sound—low, but very distinct in the quiet of the night. It came from the door of the house. Ferrier crept into the hall and listened intently. There was a pause for a few moments, and then the low insidious sound was repeated. Someone was evidently tapping very gently upon one of the panels of the door. Was it some midnight assassin who had come to carry out the murderous orders of the secret tribunal? Or was it some agent who was marking up that ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle |
