"Insular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appearance of six young Englishmen in knickerbockers, footing it with knapsack on shoulder. But lady- tourists from the other side of La Manche? Never! Be this as it may, it is as well for my country-women, if any follow me hither, to avoid insular eccentricities of dress. The best plan, before exploring wholly remote regions of France, is to buy the neatest possible head-gear and travelling-costume in Paris. Without meaning to be impertinent, bystanders will stand agape at the sight of any strangers, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... An insular and naval power acting on the continent would pursue a diametrically opposite course, but resulting from the same principle, viz.: to establish the base upon those points where it can be sustained by all the resources ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... he said, "that if he's ever our guest again, I shall be a bit more insular. I can't ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... pressed upon one by smiling Ganymedes. If schools cannot alter character, they certainly can communicate to our cheerful English boys the most delightful manners in the world, so unembarrassed, courteous, easy, graceful, without the least touch of exaggeration or self-consciousness. I suppose one has insular prejudices, for we are certainly not looked upon as models of courtesy or consideration by our Continental neighbours. I suppose we reserve our best for ourselves. I expressed a wish to look at some of the new buildings, and a young gentleman of prepossessing exterior ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which brings about the celebrated—and probably overrated—struggle between Gottsched and the Swiss School. We should also notice precisely how the tendency of British literature toward originality—in which the insular peculiarities were strongly emphasized—served to increase the self-reliance of German literature; how a new movement in the style of the antique was cultivated by the classical writers; and how the Romantic School favored medieval-Christian tendencies—much ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the half-exposed fashion of the native chiefs; and, adopting their pursuits and pleasures, became hunters, and bold fishers in the light canoe. Finally, they learnt to speak the language, as if they had been born in the island; and, at length, sealed their insular destiny by marrying native women. Laonce was hardly eighteen when he was first cast ashore amongst them; but having a handsome person, and those engaging manners, from a naturally amiable disposition added to a gentleman's breeding, which never fail agreeably impressing even the rudest minds, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... symmetrical. His features twitched when he was disturbed, but were beautiful when he smiled. To a profound observer he looked dangerous. He had the faculty of making his face signify nothing at all. He had been begotten an insular Italian, but was born a Frenchman. His wife, a Creole, more than six years older than he, was in the box with him. She sat at the front, and was seen by thousands. She wished to be seen; and when the pit shouted in the direction of the box she smiled ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... friendship, John Leech was the keenest of observers, noting and satirizing as no one before his time had attempted, or indeed had been able to do, the cant and hypocrisy, the pride and selfishness, the upstart and arrogant exclusiveness, the insular prejudices and weaknesses, which form a part of our national character; but doing this, he loved his countrymen and countrywomen for their finer qualities, and hated the bungling foreigners who presume to caricature them without the barest knowledge of their subject. This is ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... no great poem, no great religion, no great creation of any kind, was ever written or conceived by people who lived in the valleys, cramped by the hills. The hills narrow one's horizon, make one insular, provincial, limited. And what is true of literature and art is true also of life. The man of low ideals never vaticinates; the man who is living down in the lower ranges of existence never prophesies. The man ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... body still lies. In any case, these English monks were undoubtedly true children of St. Benedict, and followed his rule, and were animated by his spirit, and rejoiced to acknowledge him as their founder and spiritual father. There was nothing of the modern Anglican, and nothing insular about them! ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... most instructed man, Lord Shelburne, to find that we can boast no remarkable superiority either in political justice or in political economy. One must attribute this degeneracy, therefore, to the long war and our insular position, acting upon men naturally of inferior abilities, and unfortunately, in addition, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... part is exclusively Ionian and insular both in style and sympathy; Delos and no other is Apollo's chosen seat: but the second part is as definitely continental; Delos is ignored and Delphi alone is the important centre of Apollo's worship. From this it is clear that the two parts need ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... the inhabitants in the different continents Relation of range in genera and species Distribution of the inhabitants in the same continent Insular Faunas Alpine Floras Cause of the similarity in the floras of some distant mountains Whether the same species has been created more than once On the number of species, and of the classes to which they belong ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... the French at Rupert's River. Now he knew what had allured the Indians from the bay, but he hardly relished finding foreigners in possession of his own fort. The situation required delicate tact. Governor Bayly was a bluff tradesman with an insular dislike of Frenchmen and Catholics common in England at a time when bigoted fanaticism ran riot. King Charles was on friendly terms with France. Therefore, the Jesuit's passport must be respected; so Albanel was received with at least a show of courtesy. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... the most popular health resort in Southern Europe. The peace of 1763 opened the way. And this brings us to another feature of distinction in regard to Smollett's Travels. Typical Briton, perfervid Protestant of Britain's most Protestant period, and insular enrage though he doubtless was, Smollett had knocked about the world a good deal and had also seen something of the continent of Europe. He was not prepared to see everything couleur de rose now. His was quite ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... I have slightly exaggerated my rusticity and remoteness. And yet it is true as I came to that corner of the Park that, for some unreasonable reason of mood, I saw all London as a strange city and the civilization itself as one enormous whim. The Marble Arch itself, in its new insular position, with traffic turning dizzily all about it, struck me as a placid monstrosity. What could be wilder than to have a huge arched gateway, with people going everywhere except under it? If I took down my front door and stood it up all by itself in the middle of my back garden, my ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... Philippines and Porto Rico are regarded as insular or territorial possessions of the United States, and are entitled to ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... bravado. Men judged of the events of the day according to their partialities, and while the English charged the Austrian with having afforded the first ground of quarrel, those of other nations concurred in casting the greater blame upon the insular haughtiness and assuming character ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... visits to such museums as Horniman's at Forest Hill. The early social history may well take the form best suited to the child, and not appeal merely to surface interest. And the spirit in which the lives of other people are presented to children must not be the narrow, prejudiced, insular one, so long associated with the people of Great Britain, which calls other customs, dress, modes of: living, "funny" or "absurd" or "extraordinary," but rather the scientific spirit that interprets life according to its conditions ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... DEPARTMENT OF WAR.—National defense is the chief concern of the Secretary of War. Coast fortifications, the supervision of navigation, and river and harbor improvements fall within the scope of the department. Our insular possessions are administered by the Secretary of War. It is also the duty of this officer to prepare estimates of the expenses of his department, to supervise all expenditures for the support and ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... friend.—Heaven knows how warmly I have felt the obligation, and how gratefully I have thanked you. Fortune, sir, has made you powerful, and me impotent—has given you patronage, and me dependence. I would not, for my single self, call on your humanity; were such my insular, unconnected situation, I would despise the tear that now swells in my eye. I would brave misfortune—I could face ruin, for at the worst Death's thousand doors stand open; but the tender concerns that I have mentioned, the claims and ties that I see ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Despite such greatness, however, their most fervent desire was to return to the beloved isle, and after a few years they did so with the intention of ending their days on their own lands; but the demon of modern life had bitten deep into their hearts; they wearied of the monotonous insular existence, with its narrow limitations; they could not forget the new cities on the other continent, and finally they sold their property, or gave it to their family, and sailed away to return ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... III B. 49, British Museum.... The document is in a French record hand, and the writer was evidently little versed in the insular script. He uses both and th, ...
— Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various
... her disposal an army which could be sent to the Continent, composed of six divisions of infantry and eight brigades of cavalry—together 160,000 troops. She has also everything which is necessary for her to defend her insular territory. Everything ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... Wharton's "Valley of Decision"—proved him to be a fine artist. He perhaps knew his period better psychologically than Mrs. Wharton, but here there's room for argument. Mrs. Wharton, although she is an admirable artist, grows indifferent and insular at long intervals. ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... counties. Here, too, the English settlers probably clustered thickest along the coast, like the Danes in later days; and the great swampy expanse of the Fens, then a mere waste of marshland tenanted by beavers and wild fowl, formed the inland boundary or mark of their almost insular kingdom. ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... I cannot help remarking that this circuit of the wind from SW. by W. to NW. or N., from our insular position, imparts to our climate its fickleness and inconstancy. How often will our brightest sky become suffused by the blackest vapours on the slightest breach of SW. wind, and the clouds will then disappear as speedily as they formed, when the NW. upper current forces their ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... turned its eye more to political mechanisms. For this very reason it kept up more of fellowship with the broad world, and had the benefit of this in a larger measure of social fructification. Whatever is separated dies. Quakerism uttered a word so profound that the utterance made it insular; and, left to itself, it began to be lost in itself. Nevertheless, Quakerism and Puritanism are the two richest historic soils of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... about Englishmen marrying for money. He had resented that on general principles when he heard it, but now it had a personal application that seemed to confront him whichever way he turned. Besides, wasn't it all rather sudden, from an insular point of view? Of course they did things with great rapidity in America, so perhaps she would not object to the suddenness. He had no one to consult, and he felt the lack of advice. He did not want to make a mistake, neither did he wish to be laughed at. Still, the ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... Opera-house in Paris. Very Parisian indeed. And yet he struck me as not so perfectly French as he ought to have been, as if one's nationality were an accomplishment with varying degrees of excellence. As to Mills, he was perfectly insular. There could be no doubt about him. They were both smiling faintly at me. The burly Mills attended to ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... without further prelude, we fell to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it was; she had entered by a little door behind me, and being shod with the shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor approach)—Madame Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech when she said "You ayre Engliss," and she now proceeded to work away volubly in her own tongue. I answered in mine. She partly understood me, but as I did not at all understand her—though we made ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... regular, that the rains set in within a few days of the same period each successive year, and that during the winter the ground gets abundantly saturated. This regularity of season may be attributed to the almost insular position of the promontory of Cape Jarvis, and may be said to be almost local, in elucidation of which, I may refer to what I have stated in the former part of my work, of the state of the weather in ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... similarity, as in the case of the Napoleonic epoch, when the causes which drew together the western half of the continent operated powerfully to exclude our own country from the current influences of the time, and made the England of 1815, in opinion, in religion, and in taste much more insular than the England of 1780. The revolution which overthrew Charles X. did no doubt encourage and stimulate the party of Reform in Great Britain; but, unlike the Belgian, the German, and the Italian movements, the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of our insular type of mind. An empty dhow is passed which E14 was going to leave alone, but it occurs to her that the boat looks "rather deserted," and she fancies she sees two heads in the water. So she goes back half a mile, picks up a couple of ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mould of countless generations ([Greek: oiae per phullon geneae]), and not from any top-dressing capriciously scattered over the surface at some master's bidding.[277] England had long been growing more truly insular in language and political ideas when the Reformation came to precipitate her national consciousness by secluding her more completely from the rest of Europe. Hitherto there had been Englishmen of a distinct type enough, honestly hating foreigners, and reigned over by kings of whom ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... of his most devoted admirers. I did my best to conform to all the British institutions, as well as I could, though in the beginning I must no doubt have made fearful blunders, and possibly given offence to the truly insular Briton. Bunsen seemed to delight in asking me whenever he had Princes or other grandees to lunch or ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... governing the externals of women in various particulars. And the principal result was to make the English code seem insular and antique. She had an extremely large white hat, with a very feathery feather in it, and some large white roses between the brim and her black hair. Her black hair was positively sable, and one single immense lock of it was drawn level across her forehead. With the ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... rare intervals, Britain's insular position has given her people so soothing a sense of security that they have allowed the conception of the commonwealth to droop, and have tended to regard the State as, under normal conditions, a nuisance which should as far as possible be abated, as an intruder into the sphere of private enterprise ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... expression in the text, of having nearly reached the firm land, is rather obscure, and may possibly mean that they had nearly forced their way along one of the causeways leading from the insular city to the continental ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... The peculiarities of English manners and habits are drawn vividly and distinctly, and without exaggeration. We acquire a lively idea of that wonderful combination, that luxuriant growth—of that insular life which is based in boundless wealth and civil freedom, in universal monotony and manifold diversity; formal and capricious, active and torpid, energetic and dull, comfortable and tedious, the envy and derision of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... judging shrewdly that perhaps it would relieve the stranger from embarrassment to engage him in conversation, with beautiful tact brought him to tell the company of his own country, remarking that "We insular people have but a vague idea at ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... who raises colonial troops, equips a colonial squadron, claims a Federal Parliament sending its measures to the Throne instead of to the Colonial Office, and, being finally brought by this means into insoluble conflict with the insular British Imperialist, "cuts the painter" and ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw
... became distinct species. Two of the oldest were flowers of the dandelion and daisy group, provided with feathery seeds which enable them to fly far before the carrying breeze; and these two underwent such profound modifications in their insular home that the systematic botanists who at last examined them insisted upon putting each into a new genus, all by itself, invented for the special purpose of their reception. One almost equally ancient inhabitant, a sort of harebell, also became in process of time extremely unlike ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... in restoring it to her, said in Italian, that an humble mortal like himself might venture to place at the feet of a goddess that crown which he dared not presume to place on her head[6]. Corinne thanked Lord Nelville in English, with that pure national accent—that pure insular accent, which has scarcely ever been successfully imitated on the continent. What was the astonishment of Oswald in hearing her! He remained at first immovably fixed to the spot where he was, and feeling confused he ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... Opposition applied itself to the task of abortion, fearing the worst if it should be presented to the country fully formed and featured, the smiling offspring of progress and imagination. Travellers to Greater Britain returned waving joyous torches in the insular fog; they shed a brilliance and infectious enthusiasm, but there were not enough to do more than make the fog visible. Many persons found such torches irritating. They pointed out that as England had groped to her present greatness she might ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... during my sojourn in America, I had pored over maps and vainly endeavoured to form some conception of so gigantic a territory. I had failed. I had come to the conclusion that minds nurtured in the insular atmosphere were forever incapable of visualizing a continent. In my fugitive letters to friends at home I had been reduced to the astronomer's facile illustrations. "Just as," I had written in despair—"just as a railway train, travelling at a mile a minute, takes nearly 180 years to reach ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... was that Saghalien formed part of the Asiatic mainland. But, in 1806, Mamiya Rinzo, a Japanese traveller, voyaged up and down the Amur, and, crossing to Saghalien, discovered that a narrow strait separated it from the continent. There still exists in Europe a theory that Saghalien's insular character was discovered first by a Russian, Captain Nevelskoy, in 1849, but in Japan the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... declared against France. Jefferson was at the head of the Government; he thought the belligerents might be reduced to forbearance by depriving them of our commercial contributions of supplies, and recommended, first an embargo, and then non-intercourse. Britain was an insular and France a continental power. The effects of these measures would therefore be more severe on the former than on the latter, and, unhappily, they were more severe on our own country than on either of ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... those centuries of momentous change, when the wreck of the Roman Empire threatened civilization and Christianity with ruin like its own, the civilization and Christianity of the great district between the Loire, the Alps, and the Pyrenees rested mainly on the Abbey of Lerins. Sheltered by its insular position from the ravages of the barbaric invaders who poured down on the Rhone and the Garonne, it exercised over Provence and Aquitaine a supremacy such as Iona till the Synod of Whitby exercised over Northumbria. All the more illustrious sees of Southern ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... hypotheses regarding Arthurian origins have been dubbed the 'Continental' and the 'Insular' theories. The first has as its leading protagonist Professor Wendelin Foerster of Bonn, who believes that the immigrant Britons brought the Arthur legend with them to Brittany and that the Normans of Normandy received it from their descendants and gave it wider territorial scope. The ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... is artificial, the most artificial society in the world is unquestionably the English nation. Our insular situation and our foreign empire, our immense accumulated wealth and our industrious character, our peculiar religious state, which secures alike orthodoxy and toleration, our church and our sects, our agriculture ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... classics. They devoured books in Italian and French. Never has England been so cosmopolitan, at least so European, in its absorption of ideas and knowledge. It is only since the icebound Puritan days that England has become insular, self-contained, in part hugely conceited, and in part absurdly diffident, concerning itself. The best work of Byron and Shelley aimed at breaking down this attitude, and if we are again growing out of our insularity—which is open to much doubt—it is in no small measure ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... Great Britain falls within the first description. An insular situation, and a powerful marine, guarding it in a great measure against the possibility of foreign invasion, supersede the necessity of a numerous army within the kingdom. A sufficient force to make head against a sudden descent, till the militia ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... While Sir Henry Clinton was absent, Knyphausen was at first occupied in making preparations for the defence of that city? for, by the extreme severity of the winter, New York was deprived of that natural defence which arises from its insular situation. The Hudson, called the North River, was so completely covered with thick ice that a large army, with heavy artillery and baggage, might have crossed it with ease, and by that means have approached the very ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... an excellent port whose English qualities were vaunted by the host. Aristide, full of food and drink and the mellow glories of the castle in Languedoc, and smoking an enormous cigar, felt at ease with all the world. He knew he should like the kind Mr. Smith, hospitable though somewhat insular man. He could stay with him for a week—or a ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... no uncommon thing to hear an American speak of British insularity—the Englishman's "insular prejudices" or his "insular conceit." On one occasion I took the opportunity of interrupting a man who, I was sure, did not know what "insular" might mean, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... likewise; as they failed to conserve this safeguard of representation with taxation, the consequence was that everywhere excepting in England parliamentary institutions ceased to exist. England owed this singular felicity to her insular situation. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... the Britisher he is forgiven for those luxuries of insular stupidity which punctuate his history. I know what a fine fellow he is, and I pass them by. Mr. Churchill speaks of the German fleet as a "luxury"; but this is only one of those cold-storage impromptus that a reputation for cleverness must keep on hand, and when Lord ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... all intents an insular power, like Great Britain. We have but two land frontiers, Canada and Mexico. The latter is hopelessly inferior to us in all the elements of military strength. As regards Canada, Great Britain maintains a standing army; but, like our own, its numbers indicate clearly that aggression will never be ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... estimation will be formed of them if we judge of them by their value to the present generation. Let us consider the importance of his admirable survey of the whole eastern coast of New Holland, showing its vast size and insular character. Not less important was his survey of the islands of New Zealand, which, with New Holland, or Australia, are now among the most valuable possessions of the British crown. He discovered New Caledonia, ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... compasses (V, Figs. 13-15); also, by degrees, birds (V, Fig. 16), animals, and simple plant designs (rosettes, lotus, palmette), and occasionally human figures. But as a rule, the mainland pottery is very simply decorated, and insular imports are rare, except within the ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... thundered an English magistrate to a young culprit. "You have sent your father in sorrow to the grave. Why—I ask you—do you not go to Canada?" That such material did not offer the best fiber for the making of a nation in Canada did not dawn on this insular magisterial dignitary; and the sentiments uttered were reflected in the activities of countless philanthropies that seemed to think the porcine could be transmogrified into the human by a simple transfer from the pig-sty of their own vices and failure to the free ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... laudable, but the methods she adopted to set the stranger at her ease were not those most likely to endear the insular English to their cousins across the Atlantic. Ida, to begin with, had not only a spice of temper but also no great reverence for forms and formulas, and the people that she was accustomed to meeting were those ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... project is a chimera—but, according to the projector, the political and religious freedom of England formed its greatest obstacle. Part of his plan, therefore, includes the means of weakening the Insular heretics by intestine divisions—a mode not seldom practised by the continental powers of France ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of them served as a basis for the Freethinker artist to work on. A few were copied pretty closely; some were elaborated and adapted to our national taste; while others furnished a central suggestion, which was treated in an independent manner. By-and-bye, as the insular diffidence wore off, and the minds of the Freethinker staff played freely on the subject, a new departure was taken; novel ideas were worked out, and Holy Writ was ransacked for fresh comicalities. Dullards prophesied a speedy exhaustion of Bible topics, ...
— Comic Bible Sketches - Reprinted from "The Freethinker" • George W. Foote
... the records of the Bollandists would probably throw some light, discussing as they do, at great length, the lives of such English Saints as Edward the Confessor and Wilfrid of York; and yet they are not too favourably disposed towards our insular Saints, since they plainly express their opinion that our pious simplicity has filled their Acts with incredible legends and miracles, more suited to excite laughter ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... drop-scene to some drama which might suddenly be raised and disappear from my sight. The house, in short, together with its furniture, was, I believe, intended to be a reproduction of an ancient Roman villa, and had something about it repellent to my rustic and insular ideas. In the contemplation of its perfection I experienced a curious mental sensation, which I can only compare to the physical oppression produced on some persons by the heavy and cloying perfume of a bouquet of gardenias or ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... other by the proximity of such oceanic surface to large masses of land, and these masses presenting two essentially different features, the one consisting of land particularly characterized as continental, the other as insular, regard has been accordingly had to such distribution of land ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... are still more clearly marked in English history. That national self-consciousness which to-day gives itself the mission of defending the liberties of mankind, and which stands in the breach undaunted and indomitable, began with that mere insular patriotism which finds such moving expression in the ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... his signature as secretary of state, Mr. Blaine contended that the operation of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty practically conceded to Great Britain the control of any canal which might be constructed in the isthmus, as that power was required, by its insular position and colonial possessions, to maintain a naval establishment with which the United States could not compete. As the American government had bound itself by its engagements in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty not ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... brown-haired girls at home, and our hearts were less vagrant than our fancies. This was in the old time, and when English girls were content to be what God and nature had made them. Of late years we have changed the pattern, and have given to the world a race of women as utterly unlike the old insular ideal as if we had created another nation altogether. The girl of the period, and the fair young English girl of the past, have nothing in common save ancestry and their mother-tongue: and even of this last the modern version makes almost a new language through the copious additions ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... in order to visit France and acquire the French language. His impressions of that country, as far as he went,—from Calais to St. Omer,—are given in lively enough style in a few letters; but they differ little from what might be expected from any very young man deeply tinged with insular prejudice. "I hate their country and their manners," he wrote, soon after his return; and his biographers were quite right in saying that he had been brought up in the old anti-Gallican school, with prejudices ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... that had hitherto attended his arms, contributed to the stupid lethargy of the people. That he who had just subdued the terrible Norsemen, with the mighty Hardrada at their head, should succumb to those dainty "Frenchmen," as they chose to call the Normans; of whom, in their insular ignorance of the continent, they knew but little, and whom they had seen flying in all directions at the return of Godwin; was a preposterous demand ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... It was some fifty years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution before it began in great bulk, but to-day we find in the States alone forty-six legislative bodies, and two of Territories, besides the Federal Congress and the limited legislatures of our insular possessions. Nearly all of these turn out laws every year; even when the legislatures meet biennially, they frequently have an annual session. Only in one or two Southern States have recent constitutions restricted them to once in four years. It would be a fair estimate ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... idea of a Supreme Being as are attested by ancient native hymns, or are inculcated in the most sacred and secret savage institutions, the religious Mysteries (manifestly the last things to be touched by missionary influence), or are found among low insular races defended from European contact by the jealous ferocity and poisonous jungles of people and soil. We also note cases in which missionaries found such native names as 'Father,' 'Ancient of Heaven,' 'Maker of All,' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... at Arthur's Chocolate House had black hair, a little cocked nose, and was by no means so fortunate in his personal appearance as Mr. Warrington," said the Baron, with much presence of mind. "Warrington, Dorrington, Harrington? We of the continent cannot retain your insular names. I certify that this gentleman is not the individual of whom I spoke at dinner." And, glancing kindly upon him, the old beau sidled away to a farther end of the room, where Mr. Wolfe and Miss Lowther were engaged in deep ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she had a thirst—the sign of deep, of tormenting emotion. Yes it was emotion, not the brilliant sunshine— more brilliant than warm as is the way of our discreet self-repressed, distinguished, insular sun, which would not turn a real lady scarlet— not on any account. Mrs Fyne looked even cool. She wore a white skirt and coat; a white hat with a large brim reposed on her smoothly arranged hair. The coat was cut ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the sign to-day offered to the skeptic: Once, nearly twenty centuries ago, a young preacher travelled and taught through the villages and by the wayside in an obscure oriental country. He addressed a subject race, insular in their prejudices, lacking in political genius and in artistic culture. He lived in days calculated to chill the most fervid religious enthusiasm. He was at first ignored and then hated by His own people; the religious leaders became His implacable ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... who can look back forty years must well remember the fancy that society took, on a sudden, to interrogate children. It is an odd thing to recall now one of the strangest fashions of a period full of wild fashions. After a long term of insular seclusion, through the war, we welcomed all sorts of foreigners to our soil, and all manner of foreign notions to our minds. The grand discovery of the benefit of questioning children made great way in the country, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... spread of education, cheap literature, and the like, there came, of course, increased knowledge, a wider outlook. No discipline came with it, and one of its earliest products was a nervous dread of being thought behind the time, of being called ignorant, narrow-minded, insular. People would do anything to avoid this. They went to the length of interlarding their speech and writings with foreign words often in ignorance of the meaning of those words. Broad-minded, catholic, tolerant, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... surrender as would involve the ultimate Anglicisation of the South African colonies. He still dreams of a British Empire whose egoism shall be as complete as that of Bismarck's Prussia, and warns us in 1907, in the style of 1887, against those 'ideas of our youth' which were 'at once too insular and too cosmopolitan.'[112] ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... of England, like the land and its people, has been specially insular, and yet no land has undergone deeper influences from without. No land has owed more than England to the personal action of men not of native birth. Britain was truly called another world, in opposition to the world of the European mainland, the world ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... fleetest-fleet of crafts, Nor could by swiftness of aught plank that swims, Be she outstripped, whether paddle plied, Or fared she scudding under canvas-sail. 5 Eke she defieth threat'ning Adrian shore, Dare not denay her, insular Cyclades, And noble Rhodos and ferocious Thrace, Propontis too and blustering Pontic bight. Where she (my Pinnace now) in times before, 10 Was leafy woodling on Cytorean Chine For ever loquent lisping with her leaves. Pontic Amastris! ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... also boldly attempted to place her heroine in American surroundings. Philadelphia was the scene chosen for her tale; but, having flattered her readers by this concession to their sympathies and interest, the author was still sufficiently insular to doubt the existence of a competent local physician in this the earliest medical centre in the United States. An English family had come to make their home in the city, where the mother's illness necessitated ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... are so terribly insular. You must really get rid of all that. I used to think like you, but here we have got to the place where we can laugh at all that ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... was familiarly called continental money. This term "continental" was applied to the army, the congress, the ships of war, and in short, to almost everything of interest which belonged to the new government. It would seem to have been invented as the opposite of the insular position of the mother country.] "Fairly and softly, aye, and prudently, Mrs. Flanagan; it's not rashness that makes the good officer. If we have to encounter a spirit, it's more than likely he'll make his attack by surprise; ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... conversion of the English to Christianity," says Freeman, "at once altered their whole position in the world. Hitherto our history had been almost wholly insular; our heathen forefathers had had but little to do, either in war or peace, with any nations beyond their own four seas. We hear little of any connection being kept up between the Angles and Saxons who settled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... reading extant up to 1832 I know nothing better. Eckermann is inferior as a biographer to Boswell, and his book is neither so interesting nor amusing; but Goethe was far greater than Johnson, and his talk is cosmopolitan and broad, while Johnson's is apt to be insular and narrow. "One should not study contemporaries and competitors," Goethe said, "but the great men of antiquity, whose works have for centuries received equal homage and consideration.... Let us study Moliere, let us study ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... suggested by topics of the day and place. His Lordship was affable, and Redclyffe could not, it must be confessed, see anything to justify the prejudices of the neighbors against him. Indeed, he was inclined to attribute them, in great measure, to the narrowness of the English view,—to those insular prejudices which have always prevented them from fully appreciating what differs from their own habits. At lunch, which was soon announced, the party of three became very pleasant and sociable, his Lordship drinking a light Italian red wine, and recommending it to Redclyffe; ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... words might well serve as a mild tonic for "current pessimism"; not even the paper famine has brought them to fulfilment. Elsewhere in the volume is an instructive paper on "The Neutrality of Sweden" (valuable but vexatious, as are all the indictments of our insular apathy in the matter of influencing foreign opinion), and two or three interesting studies of French life and letters under the conditions of war. In fine, a book full of scholarly grace, such as may well achieve the writer's hope, expressed in his preface, of renewing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... the ease with which an island like Corsica might be absolutely isolated from the silkworm epidemic. And with regard to other epidemics, Mr. Simon describes an extraordinary case of insular exemption, for the ten years extending from 1851 to 1860. Of the 627 registration districts of England, one only had an entire escape from diseases which, in whole or in part, were prevalent in all ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... to anger under the infliction it was because, in the first place, the gang had its advocates who, though they could not extol its virtues, since it had none, were yet able, and that with no small measure of success, to demonstrate to a people as insular in their prejudices as in their habitat that, but for the invincible Navy which the gang maintained for their protection, the hereditary enemy, the detested French, would most surely come and compel them one and all to ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... as yet in the oblivion to which he had consigned it. But in recompense for this, there was a very black cloud darkening the horizon of 1554. The Queen had announced to her Parliament her intended marriage with Prince Philip of Spain. All the old insular prejudices against foreigners rose up to strengthen the Protestant horror of a Spanish and Popish King. The very children in the streets were heard to cry, "Down with the Pope and the Spaniards!" Elizabeth would have known how to deal with such an emergency. But Mary was blind and ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... bull-neck and massive chin, and blinded by his insular, inherited upbringing, the European will exclaim "Pah!" at sight of the thin cheek and delicate oval face, failing utterly to notice the set of the ears on the head; just as, muscle bound through worship at the shrine of Sport, he will mistake the eastern ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... there was a touch of the true insular pride in her voice, but they spoke in French, and not very good French at that, and scarce a word of English had one ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... fatal enlightenment of the last generation, the Spaniards it would appear have come off with the chicken-pox, while in the features of other nations the disfiguring variolous scars are but too visible. Living nearly in an insular situation, Spaniards have slept through the eighteenth century, and how in the main could they have applied their time better? Should the Spanish poetry ever again awake in old Europe, or in the New World, it would certainly have a step to make, from instinct to consciousness. What the Spaniards ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... amusements entered into by the nobility and gentry of our island there is not one so manly, so exciting, so patriotic, or so national as yacht-sailing. It is peculiar to England, not only from our insular position and our fine harbours, but because it requires a certain degree of energy and a certain amount of income rarely to be found elsewhere. It has been wisely fostered by our sovereigns, who have felt that the security of the kingdom is increased by every man being more or less a sailor, ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... earnestly hoping the downfall, and the other as confidently predicting and as sincerely desiring, the durability of Republican Institutions. If there had been no such common Humanity, then we should not have seen this tide of emigration from insular and continental Europe flowing into our country through the channels of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the Mississippi,—ebbing, however, always with the occasional rise of the hopes of freedom abroad, and always swelling again into greater volume when those premature hopes ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... made war upon all foreigners. At length the excitement subsided, but too much damage to foreign lives and property had been done to be ignored, and the matter had an ugly look, especially as no Spaniard had suffered by this outbreak. The Insular government roused itself to punish some of the minor misdoers and made many explanations and apologies, but the aggrieved nations insisted, and obtained as compensation a greater security for foreigners and the removal of ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... large on the various incomers to Fernando Po we may next turn to the natives, properly so-called, the Bubis. These people, although presenting a series of interesting problems to the ethnologist, both from their insular position, and their differentiation from any of the mainland peoples, are still but little known. To a great extent this has arisen from their exclusiveness, and their total lack of enthusiasm in trade matters, a thing that differentiates them more than ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... of Evesham consists, by reason of its insular position, of only one thoroughfare. The river winds round enclosing it on three sides, so that, there being but one bridge, there is no other outlet except towards the north. There are four principal streets: High Street, ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... opinion had been that Mr. Vanderpoel's knowledge of his son-in-law must have been limited, or that he had curiously lax American views of paternal duty. The firm was highly reputable, long established strictly conservative, and somewhat insular in its point of view. It did not understand, or seek to understand, America. It had excellent reasons for thoroughly understanding Sir Nigel Anstruthers. Its opinions of him it reserved to itself. If Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard had been asked ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the masthead. In a short time we came off Cape Frio, a high, barren, almost insular, promontory, which runs into the Atlantic to the eastward of Rio de Janeiro. We stood on, the land appearing to be of a great height behind the beach, till we came in sight of the Sugar-loaf Mountain; the light land wind preventing ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... In our great insular empire, almost all individuals, from the most exalted and powerful in the land to the lowly and obscure, are at some period of their lives induced, by their various avocations and pursuits, to leave their own coasts. The brave seamen, the gallant soldiers, and the various subjects of ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... England, from her insular position and the extent of her commerce, must maintain a large navy; a large army is also necessary for the defence of her own coasts and the protection of her colonial possessions. Her men-of-war secure ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... domestic type of excellence, in which goodness merged itself in the interests and business of the common world, and, working in them, took no care to disengage itself or mark itself off, as something distinct from them and above them. Above all, Anglicanism was too limited; it was local, insular, national; its theory was made for its special circumstances; and he describes in a remarkable passage how, in contrast with this, there rung in his ears continually the proud self-assertion of the other side, Securus judicat orbis terrarum. What he wanted, what it was the aim of his ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... readily gather that I am severely taciturn at a table d'hote. I refrain from joining in the "delightful conversation" which flies across the table, and know that my reticence is attributed to "insular pride." It is really and truly nothing but impatience of commonplace. I thoroughly enjoy good talk; but, ask yourself, what are the probabilities of hearing that rare thing in the casual assemblage of forty or fifty people, not brought together ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... instance as traders, and not as conquerors. For trade meant co-operation. There could be no successful trading for British traders unless they found Indian traders ready to co-operate with them in trade. That we ever went to India at all was due to the national instincts of an insular people accustomed to go down to the sea in ships and to trade with distant lands. When the rise of great Mahomedan states on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and finally the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, blocked ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... group, grew momentarily louder—and died away. It was only when it had completely ceased that one realized how pronounced it had been—how altogether peculiar, secret; like that incomprehensible murmuring in a bazaar when, unknown to the insular visitor, ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... about as unsuited, in her own way, as he. Caro Craven was a bachelor lady of fifty—spinster was a term wholly inapplicable to the strong-minded little woman who had been an art student in Paris in the days when insular hands were lifted in horror at the mere idea, and was a designation, moreover, deprecated strongly by herself as an insult to one who stood—at least in her own sphere—on an equality with the lords of creation. She was a sculptor, whose work was known on both sides of the channel. When at home ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... take Courtenay for a husband, the change might, after all, be to their advantage. The emperor, on the other hand, began to think again of his original scheme. Knowing that the English were sincere in their detestation of the Papacy, and imperfectly comprehending the insular distinction between general attachment to Catholic tradition and indifference to Catholic unity, he supposed that the country really was, on the whole, determined in its adherence to the reformed opinions. But the political alliance was still of infinite importance to him; ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... harbours, in which those who are overtaken by tempests may find refuge—in like manner has God placed in a world tossed by the billows and storms of sin, congregations or holy churches, in which, as in insular harbours, the doctrines of truth are sheltered, and to which those who desire to be saved, who love the truth, and who wish to escape the judgment of God, may repair." [282:2] These statements indicate that the gospel must soon have been very widely disseminated. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... every reason," approved the captain heartily. "I have seen a good many splendid lads in the last four years and these two measure up in a way which is an eye opener to me. In my stupid insular prejudice maybe I had fallen to thinking that the particular quality that marks them both was a distinctly British affair. Apparently you can breed it in America too. I'm glad to see it and to own it. And may I say ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... organized, unincorporated territory of the US with policy relations between Guam and the US under the jurisdiction of the Office of Insular Affairs, US Department ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... which I shall not be the one to limit it. They have not substantially so much as phenomenally changed towards us. They are, like ourselves, always taking stock, examining themselves to see what they have on hand. From time to time they will, say, accuse themselves of being insular, and then, suddenly, they invite themselves to be continental, to be French, to be German, to be Italian, to be Bulgarian, or whatever; and for a while they believe that they have become so. All this time they remain immutably English. It is not that ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... to fish, it is allowed that we are not an insular people for nothing. There are other forms of good living that Paris knows not of, so to speak, at first hand, native to England. Turtle soup, turbot and lobster sauce, a haunch of venison, and a grouse, are, we may say without chauvinism, a "truly royal repast." But we incur the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... hostilities would be suspended. The three principal points on which these negotiations were to be based were compensation for losses and expenses, a friendly and becoming intercourse on terms of equality between officers of the two countries, and the cession of insular territory for commerce and for the residence of merchants, and as a security and guarantee against the future renewal of offensive acts. The first step toward the acceptance of these terms was taken when an imperial commission ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Katie with a cold and insular emphasis, "lives here." And "You," she tried to convey with her eyes, "you, for all your smart black silk, are a hireling. I am Miss Batch. I happen to have a hobby for housework. I have not ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... "He might have admitted that much, with a supercilious smile and a little shrug of the shoulders. Rochester is a clever man, I believe, but he is absolutely insular. There is a belt of prejudice around him, to the hardening of which centuries have come and gone. You are not, you cannot be like that," he continued with conviction. "There is truth in these things. I am not an ignorant mountebank, ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not unknown to the delicate hand Of the fairest and first in this insular land, But in Patronage Royal delighting; And which now your own feminine fantasy wins, Tho' it scarce seems a lady-like work, that begins In a scratching and ends ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood |
