"Unsettle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enemy wished to kill him, the course would be to make sure that tidings of some signal piece of prosperity should arrive by post on each of six or seven successive days. It would quite unhinge and unsettle him, he said. His heart would go: his nervous system would break down. People to whom pieces of good-luck come rare and small have a great curiosity to know how a man feels when he is suddenly told that he has drawn one of the greatest prizes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... With all the efforts which she had made she could not quite reconcile herself to the two letters which she had written in the book. This coming up to London, and riding in the Park, and going to the theatres, seemed to unsettle her. At home she had schooled herself down into quiescence, and made herself think that she believed that she was satisfied with the prospects of her life. But now she was all astray again, doubting about ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... perturbation, interruption; shuffling &c. v.; inversion &c. 218; corrugation &c. (fold) 258; involvement. interchange &c. 148. V. derange; disarrange, misarrange[obs3]; displace, misplace; mislay, discompose, disorder; deorganize[obs3], discombobulate, disorganize; embroil, unsettle, disturb, confuse, trouble, perturb, jumble, tumble; shuffle, randomize; huddle, muddle, toss, hustle, fumble, riot; bring into disorder, put into disorder, throw into disorder &c. 59; muss [U.S.]; break the ranks, disconcert, convulse; break in upon. unhinge, dislocate, put out of joint, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the large cities. Most of them lived on the plantations. The Negro living in the cities has undergone two marked changes: (1) the change from slavery to freedom; (2) the change from country life to city life. At first the tendency of both these changes was, naturally, to unsettle, to intoxicate and to lead the Negro to wrong ideas of life. The change from country life to city life, in the case of the white man, is about as marked as in the case of the Negro. The average Negro in the city, with all of its excitements and temptations, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... and Nebraska Bill upset the tottering Compromise of 1850. Why did he so upset it? Not certainly because he wished to reopen the Slavery Question; nothing is less likely, for it was a question in which he avowedly felt no interest and the raising of which was bound to unsettle his plans. Not from personal ambition; for those who accuse him of having acted as he did for private advantage have to admit that in fact he lost by it. Why then did he so act? I think we shall get to the root of the matter if we assume that his motive in introducing his celebrated Bill was ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... yet I had never witnessed a theatrical performance; but my mother's injunctions prevented me from entering it while at college. "When you are old enough, Corny," she used to say, "you shall have my permission to go as often as is proper; but you are now of an age, when Shakspeare and Rowe might unsettle your Latin and Greek." My task of obedience had not been very difficult, inasmuch as the building in Nassau Street, the second regular theatre ever erected in British America, was taken down, and a church erected in its place. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... answer for a time. "Not unless I send for you, Wulf. Our meeting has given me much pleasure, and I shall be the happier for it, but for a time our talk of the past and present will unsettle me and stir up afresh regrets and longings. Therefore, it were best that you come not again until ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... and settle camp, though, if the truth were told, perhaps they did more to unsettle it than otherwise. But Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey were used to this, and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... in the conspiracy? Since you have so much of his confidence, you might warn him to be careful. Doubts of our father's wisdom must unsettle him woefully. I do not ask to join the alliance, but it may please you to know that in my belief Hetty has been treated too fiercely for her deserts, and in my sermon I intend to hint ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... intended to co-operate with Stoneman's raid, which at these dates should have been well on Lee's rear, and to unsettle Lee's firm footing preparatory to the heavy blows Hooker was preparing to deliver; but, as Stoneman was delayed, these movements failed of much of their intended effect. Nevertheless, Jackson's corps was drawn down to the vicinity, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... "believe me, monarchy, even at the present day, is of the greatest social and political value. Unsettle it in the public mind, and you unsettle the basis of government and the sacredness of property; everything else goes with it. The hereditary principle has in its keeping all that makes for stability, continuity, and tradition; nothing can adequately ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... (which protocol, if not absolutely adopted, must be supposed to contain the spirit of that which was), to inquire whether the calculations of the revolutions of truth, do not lead to dangerous moral extravagances, ruinous speculations in ideas, and serve to unsettle society?" ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... so many students are able to do, by teaching in the public schools. So it seemed likely that this situation might be the very thing they could wish for him for the next few years. However, there were many things to be considered with regard to it. It might unsettle him from his eager pursuit of his studies, and from the cheerful doing of his other duties, were anything to be said about his leaving home just now. So they were silent, and the old year went out, and the new year came in, and everything went on as usual, till the time for the donation ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from the husband having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him." She broke off and scrutinized Sally closely. "Say, what do you ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... break-off, for Lord Evandale wadna look at, hear, or speak wi' him; and now he's anes wud and aye waur, and roars for revenge again Lord Evandale, and will hear nought of onything but burn and slay. And oh, thae starts o' passion! they unsettle his mind, and gie ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to anything; and yet that's my unhappy case. I was born into this unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began to unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at law and a suit of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever since; and here I am now, conscious sometimes that I am but a worthless fellow to love my confiding ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... would be willing to come to Djazerta? She must be educated and accomplished, but above all trustworthy; one who would not try to make Ourieda wish for a life that could never be hers: one who would not attempt to unsettle the child's religious beliefs. In writing this letter Ben Raana had shown a naif sort of conceit in his own broad-mindedness, which would have been rather comic if it had not been pathetic. But to DeLisle it was only pathetic, because, European though he was, he knew ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... you come into the hall where the wounded are as thick as flies. You go through the hall and turn to the left. There's a pantry place on your right all full of flies and when you open the door they unsettle with a great buzz and shift into all sorts of shapes and patterns. Next to them is our sitting-room, the horrid place always dirty and stifling. Then there's the operating-room, then another room for beds, then the kitchen. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... itself, and each himself deems the wisest, Deems the best, and so they continue abiding together, He of greatest intelligence ranking no higher than others; All that occurs, as if of itself, going quietly forward. But let disaster unsettle the usual course of existence, Tear down the buildings about us, lay waste the crops and the garden, Banish the husband and wife from their old, familiar-grown dwelling, Drive them to wander abroad through ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... about a particular topic, because a lot of other people had already voted on it. What is the matter with that attitude is the loss of the freedom of the mind. There can be no liberty of thought unless it is ready to unsettle what has recently been settled, as well as what has long been settled. We are perpetually being told in the papers that what is wanted is a strong man who will do things. What is wanted is a strong man who will undo things; and that will be a real ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... ranges round Mount Kosciusko, stated that, from indications he had observed, he was firmly persuaded of the existence of gold in these mountains; but the Governor asked him, as a favour, to make no mention of a theory which might, perhaps, unsettle the colony, and fill the easily excited convicts with hopes which, he feared, would prove delusive. Strzelecki agreed not to publish his belief; but there was another man of science who was not so easily to be silenced. The ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... returned with a most perplexed countenance. Now "the master's" correspondence had always been a great bother to Reuben. It took him a long time to spell out the letters and a longer time to indite the answers. So the arrival of a letter was always sure to unsettle him for a day or two. Still, that fact did not account for the great disturbance of mind in which he reached home and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of the comedy does not lag or limp from the opening scene to Valere's last words. The versification is easy and natural; the dialogue abounds in wit and comic humor; it is short and quick, with none of those tedious declamations which weary and unsettle the attention of an audience. Take it all in all, we may say, that, if Moliere had chosen the same subject, he could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... night! Be kind and gentle with the owld man, for he's enough on him jist now to unsettle his mind, av it were sthronger than it iver was; and don't tell him you see me here, for it would only be making ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... part with dear Margaret," she said to herself. "It will not do to have the two together. Alec may possibly attempt to impress his opinions on her mind, and may unsettle it should he fail to do more permanent injury; or, even should he keep them to himself, her sweet disposition, and other attractive qualities, may win his heart, while she may give her's in return, and I am sure that his father would never consent to his ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... I not written to you about, you cross thing? Oh! Kossuth. Well, then, here is an immensely interesting person, whom we invited over here to settle, and who is much more likely to unsettle us. How far would you have him unsettle us? To the extent of carrying us into a war with Russia, or of banding us, with all liberal governments, in a war with the despotic governments, so that Europe should be turned into a caldron of blood for ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... may observe that the people of Rome in that age were generally more corrupt by many degrees than has been usually supposed possible. The effect of revolutionary times, to relax all modes of moral obligation, and to unsettle the moral sense, has been well and philosophically stated by Mr. Coleridge; but that would hardly account for the utter licentiousness and depravity of Imperial Rome. Looking back to Republican Rome, and considering the state of public morals but fifty years before the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... part, feeling my own deficiency in scientific lore, I never ventured to unsettle his conviction that the sun made his daily circuit round the earth; and for aught I said to the contrary, he lived ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... who had gratefully accepted the dedication, would go down to posterity with the brand of Cain upon his brow. Several even of the higher critics took fright. Jeffrey, while protesting his appreciation of the literary merits of the work, lamented its tendency to unsettle faith. Mr. Campbell talked of its "frightful audacity." Bishop Heber wrote at great length to prove that its spirit was more dangerous than that of Paradise Lost—and succeeded. The Quarterly began to cool towards ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... on, copiously greasing the joint of his inconsistency with words; while the boy listened silently, his eyes fixed on the horse, his mind seething. It was all lost eloquence; no array of words could unsettle a belief of Jean-Marie's; and he drove into Fontainebleau filled with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of progress just as you do. We only hold together what you are unsettling, and what, but for us, would go to pieces in all directions. We are not your enemies, not a bit of it. We say to you, go forward, progress, you may even unsettle things, that is, things that are antiquated and in need of reform. But we will keep you, when need be, within necessary limits, and so save you from yourselves, for without us you would set Russia tottering, robbing ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... settlement of Abbotsford stood in the way. Legally, it is true or at least probable, this settlement might have been upset; but the trustees of Mrs. Walter Scott would probably also have felt bound to resist this, and leave to unsettle could only have been obtained on the humiliating and even slightly disgraceful plea that the granter, being practically insolvent at the time, was acting beyond his rights. It seems to have been proposed by the Bank of Scotland, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... pretty head mournfully. "No. He says it would unsettle me, and they would be always worrying round, and he wants peace and quietness—but, oh, Miss Patch, they loved me so, it must have nearly broken their hearts! And—and I love them so, I feel sometimes I can't bear it, I can't, I can't. I feel I must run away and find my way back ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... know. And that is why I have always wished you and the vicar could be brought together. I have—yes, I own to it—I have been afraid sometimes you were a little unsettled about religion, and that it might unsettle Georgie, too. But I knew if you once met the vicar that would all be set right. As I often say to George, let anybody just see Dr. Nevington and then they will begin to have an inkling of all they miss in not ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... there would be no end of such doubts, and if we indulged in them, all our work endeavour and practical activities would have to be dispensed with (vyaghata). Thus such doubts as lead us to the suspension of all work should not disturb or unsettle the notion of vyapti or concomitance at which we had arrived by careful observation and consideration [Footnote ref 2]. The Buddhists and the naiyayikas generally agreed as to the method of forming the notion of concomitance or vyapti (vyaptigraha), but the former ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... disappearing from an old road that led away to Tushielaw, the last of the king's troops; and she omened sadly that they had completed their work. She hesitated again, whether she should proceed to a place where she would inevitably behold a sight that might unsettle her reason. But whether could she fly? What could she do? Her little children were there; it was still her home, and the dead body of her beloved husband was also there. But judgment might vacillate according to its laws; her feet had an impulse forward, which philosophy ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... she said, tenderly, that evening, when they were all talking it over in the family council, "I hope you didn't drop anything, when that poor creature spoke to you about it this morning, that could unsettle her ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... a large measure, while in college, believes that it would be moral suicide to permit them to come under the influence of a professor whose religious indifference, or unfavorable remarks about Christianity, might infuse the poison of skepticism, doubt, or indifference, and perhaps unsettle their early religious convictions, and "send them forth confused and adrift on the endless sea ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... good it is to be given something with a meaning. Most people think that to be able to buy what they wish, within reason, is perfect happiness, but it isn't. Barbara, you and this man of yours quite unsettle me and shake my pet theories. You show sides of things in my own birthplace that I never dreamed of looking up, and you convince me, when I am on the wane, that married friendship is the only thing worth living ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... change of any sort is immoral, as tending to unsettle men's minds, and hence their custom and hence their morals, which are the net residuum of their "mores" or customs. Wherefrom it should follow that there is nothing so absolutely moral as stagnation, except for this that, if perfect, it would destroy all mores whatever. So there must ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... first goose-shooting. The size and number of the birds, the wary and cautious manner of their approach, the nice modulations necessary to "call" them successfully, and the reckless sweep with which they seem to throw aside all fear, and rush into the very jaws of death,—all these combine to unsettle the nerves and aim of ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... 'shall be prolonged so long as I have health and strength, and that portion of talent with which I am gifted. From that contest, Sir, although it may unsettle men's minds and excite their feelings, and render them incapable for the discharge of the everyday duties of ordinary life; from that contest, sir, I will never shrink, till I have set my heel upon the Eatanswill INDEPENDENT. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... by God to adhere to the laws of nature. Those who regulate their conduct according to this religion of nature and of reason are called virtuous men of other nations, and are the children of eternal salvation." Such a religion does not unsettle man's mind. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... English law—oh frightful reader, don't even think of such a question as its relation in space and time to the Roman law. That it would stretch to the fixed stars is plain, but to which of them,—don't now, dear persecuting reader, unsettle our brains by asking. Enough it is that both in Roman and English law the rights of neighborhood are past measuring. Has a man a right to play the German flute, where the partitions are slender, all day long in the house adjoining to yours? Or, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... history for many centuries, that would signify or prove nothing. Would water, air, earth, fire, be less useful to man whether they were or were not elements? Such errors are of no consequence; they lead to no revolutions, do not unsettle the mind; above all, they injure no interests, so they might, without inconvenience, endure for millions of years. The physical world would progress just as if they did not exist. Would it be thus with errors which attack the moral ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... sense, be proved impossible, may it not be thought with good grounds absolutely impossible? Else how could anything be proved impossible? Or, indeed, how could there be any proof at all one way or other, to a man who takes the liberty to unsettle and change the common ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... seventh cousin, I believe, who has died lately. Several other persons, however, having laid claim to the title and estates, McMahon was somehow or other induced to look into the case, and became convinced that Gerald was the rightful heir. I thought that it was better while he was at sea not to unsettle his mind by holding out any ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... fitful breeze, pitch and sway in a manner which may induce all the unpleasant feelings attending a rough passage at sea. It may do worse, and even be borne to earth with a puff of wind which may come unexpectedly, and considerably unsettle the nerves of any holiday passenger. I could tell of a "captive" that had been behaving itself creditably on a not very settled day suddenly swooping over a roadway and down into public gardens, where it lay incontinently ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... unsettle any claim that this Creole climate might make to character, the hurricane leaves its awful trace upon the island. This rotating storm of wind has its origin to the east of the Caribbee Islands; its long parabolic curve sweeps over them, and bends to the northeast below ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the point of imparting my last news, but I checked myself. Lady Henriette had seen her last, and must be well aware of the direction she was taking to Lyons and Marseilles. It would only unsettle her to know that her sister was at Marseilles to-day, and would be at Genoa to-morrow. She would be mad to join her, and it was my most earnest wish that, for the present at least, Lady Henriette should keep quiet in ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... about my state of mind, on the publication of Tract 90 in February, 1841. The immense commotion consequent upon the publication of the Tract did not unsettle me again; for I had weathered the storm: the Tract had not been condemned: that was the great point; I made much ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... just fallen upon us, we find it impossible to feel that all things about us are not changed. We cannot imagine ourselves falling into the old daily routine again. The death of one dear to us gives us a shock which seems to unsettle the very foundation of things. A sense of insecurity and unreality pervades all that concerns us. We shrink from the thought that the old pleasures will charm us again, that daily cares will occupy our minds to the exclusion of to-day's sadness, that time will heal the ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... succeed in bringing the work to perfection, Brewster begs him to remember his wife and children. "I mean if this my work should miscarry by wars of the Indians, for I may not remove it till it be perfected, otherwise I should so unsettle the body by removing sun & moon out of their settled places, that there would then be no other afterworking." Once more he inculcates secrecy, and for a most comical reason: "For it is such a secret as is not fit for every one either for secrecy or for parts to use it, as God's ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Lombard, Bishop of Paris, collected in four books the various sayings of the Fathers concerning theological dogmas. He was also influenced to make this exposition by the "Sic et Non" of Abelard, which tended to unsettle belief. This famous manual, called the "Book of Sentences," appeared about the middle of the twelfth century, and had an immense influence. It was the great text-book of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... others of humbler estate?" he queried, sending his words straight out of his lips like pellets from a pop-gun, being in fear lest he should unsettle the hand of the small tyrant ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... they surmise Brown is in league with us to show us a short cut to what we're after. If that's how they work it out, then they wouldn't need think much to conclude that putting Brown on the blink would hoodoo us. Maybe they allow that that much bad luck to begin with would unsettle Brown's friendly feelings for us. Anyway—somebody bought the mules—somebody stole the cattle—cattle are somewhere ahead. Let's hurry ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts to me are sacred; none are profane. I simply experiment—an endless seeker, with no Past at ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... belong to the former would be improperly committed to juries. The great and primary use of a court of equity is to give relief in extraordinary cases, which are exceptions(2) to general rules. To unite the jurisdiction of such cases with the ordinary jurisdiction, must have a tendency to unsettle the general rules, and to subject every case that arises to a special determination; while a separation of the one from the other has the contrary effect of rendering one a sentinel over the other, and of keeping each within the expedient limits. Besides ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... wretch, by implication, endeavor to unsettle the opinions of the audience, none too definite, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... want your patronage. I don't want your tea. I was quite happy. What do you want to unsettle me for?" He turned to Mr. Wilcox. "I put it to this gentleman. I ask you, sir, am to have ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... navigation should be begun in this manner, probably we should soon have the railroad companies running their trains on water by means of sails, and stage lines traveling in the air with balloons. Such things would unsettle the foundations of society and induce anarchy and chaos. A canal that has no water is a licentious and incendiary canal; and it is equally improper and equally repugnant to all conservative persons when, as Mr. Robbins suggests, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the roar of the sea: on my battle-field, where drink has been the only slayer, there are many dead; and I can imagine that I hear the full volume of cries from those who are stricken but still living. The vision would unsettle my reason if I had not a trifle of Hope remaining. The philosophic individual who talks in correctly frigid phrases about the evils of the Liquor Trade may keep his reason balanced daintily and his nerve unhurt. But ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Philip Sidney saw the enthusiasm which agitated every man, woman, and child in the Netherlands against Philip and D'Alva, he told Queen Elizabeth that it was the spirit of God, and that it was invincible. What is the spirit which seems to move and unsettle every other man in England and on the Continent at this time? Upon my conscience, and judging by St. John's rule, I think it is a special spirit of the devil—and a ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... was very pious, and knowed lots o' things. Least, I don't know if he was pious, fur he didn't go to church, but he'd his own thoughts o' things, an' he was steady, an' kep' himself to himself. He niver telled me his thoughts o' things—he said it 'ud unsettle me like—but he taught me reading; an' mother, she liked his coming constant to see us. As fur as I knows, he was a good man; but I tell ye, Johnnie, that man had a will—whatsoever thing Dan'el McGair wanted, that thing he mun have, if he died i' the getting. He was about ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... somehow or other Augusta contrived to change Scarborough into Paris, and they are to spend the winter and spring there, and perhaps go on to Germany in the summer. At first papa was very anxious to take me with them; but Augusta dropped some little hints—it would interrupt my studies, and unsettle me, and so on. You know I am rather proud, Mary, so you can imagine I was not slow to understand her. I said I would much prefer to stay at Thornleigh, and proposed immediately that you should come to me and be my companion, and help me on ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... reference to the Judaising teachers would be difficult for their sympathisers to swallow, but charity is not broken by plain repudiation of error and its teachers. 'Subverting your souls' is a heavy charge. The word is only here found in the New Testament, and means to unsettle, the image in it being that of packing up baggage for removal. The disavowal of these men is more complete if we follow the Revised Version in reading (ver. 24) 'no commandment' instead of 'no ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... That means a taxi both ways. Can't arrive at a house like that in a mackintosh, with your shoes in a bag. Much wiser to refuse. It will only unsettle you, and make you unfit for work. She's done the polite thing for once, because she was asked, but she'll never do it again. I've been through it myself, and I know the ropes. A woman like that has hundreds of friends; ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to teach them how to do this? Would it not be more profitable and humane, than to disturb them with formalities that have no virtue in themselves—to distress them with useless controversies, that settle no one point, teach no one doctrine, but unsettle and unfix all the good that our simple creed had previously ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... thou ball, roll on! Through seas of inky air Roll on! It's true I've got no shirts to wear; It's true my butcher's bill is due; It's true my prospects all look blue— But don't let that unsettle you! Never you mind! ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... from his country, as it then existed morally, alone prevented Ghita from casting aside all other ties, and following his fortunes in weal and in woe. Still he was too frank and generous to deceive, while he had ever been too considerate to strive to unsettle her confiding and consoling faith. Her infirmity even, for so he deemed her notions to be, had a charm in his eyes; few men, however loose or sceptical in their own opinions on such matters, finding ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... To unsettle the idea of God, is to dry up its source the stream of the veritable progress of modern society; it is to attack the foundations of liberty, justice, and love. The material conquests of civilization would serve thenceforward only to hasten the decomposition ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... President-Dictator quailed before the obvious charge of political ingratitude. Great regenerating transactions were being initiated—the fresh loan, a new railway line, a vast colonization scheme. Anything that could unsettle the public opinion in the capital was to be avoided. Don Jose bowed to these arguments and tried to dismiss from his mind the gold-laced portent in boots, and with a sabre, made meaningless now at last, he hoped, in the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... usually said to have more "penetration," divested his large heavy face of all expression, and looked at his wine-glass while Lydgate was speaking. Whatever was not problematical and suspected about this young man—for example, a certain showiness as to foreign ideas, and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and forgotten by his elders—was positively unwelcome to a physician whose standing had been fixed thirty years before by a treatise on Meningitis, of which at least one copy marked "own" was bound in calf. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... exclaimed the captain, his military pride reviving a little, to unsettle his last convictions of duty. "Did you open your columns, and charge ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... morals, are so well understood, that it is not probable that the efforts even of Jefferson Davis, or the whole 'Southern confederacy,' with the aid of such transatlantic allies as the London Times, will be able, in respect to such matters as these, to change or even to unsettle the judgment ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... tell them," said the doctor to Miss Smithers, on the morning of the day. "It will only more completely unsettle Miss Ruth, while the other poor child need have no more laid upon her. If the worst comes, there will be strength given, and anticipated trouble is always the hardest to bear. If you have any influence over Miss Ruth, keep her very ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... fellow's villainy. But his day of reckoning will come; I am sure of it, and the world will be none the worse for the loss of so vile a creature. If you take my advice you'll say nothing to Mr. Merriman of this discovery. 'Twould only unsettle the poor man. He had better know nothing until we can either restore the ladies to him or tell him that there is ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... about the young lady," said the bookseller. "I don't want all you young blades dropping in here to unsettle her mind. If she falls in love with anybody in this shop, it'll have to be Joseph ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... circulation, [such, I suppose, as Rights of Man,] pamphlets which I have not read, and whose purport I know only by report, [he means, perhaps, by the noise they make.] This, however, I am sure, that pamphlets tending to unsettle the public reverence for the constitution, will have very little influence. They can do very little harm—for [by the bye, he is no dealer in political cant] the English are a sober-thinking people, and are more intelligent, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... first, has been a mistake. As such, strictly speaking, there is no room for it, for all the natives are nominal Christians, and are connected more or less with the Congregational denomination. To attempt to proselytize them to the English Church, or to unsettle their religious relations in any way, would, on the whole, be a hopeless, as well as an invidious task, and would not improbably result in driving some among them into the greater apparent unity of the Church of Rome. Those who believe in the oneness of the invisible ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... which they have never doubted the validity of. That this is so we may have occasion to observe among ourselves. Christian teachers question the wisdom of bringing young people under free-thinking influence, because, although they do not deny the morals of free-thinkers, they believe that to unsettle the young may have a disastrous effect, not only on belief, but also on conduct. Yet this dangerously unsettling process has been applied by missionaries on a wholesale scale to races which in some respect are often ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... friend's attitude was a little too much like that of the Muggletonians. I also remarked a singular timidity on his part lest somebody should "unsettle" somebody's faith,—as if faith did not require exercise as much as any other living thing, and were not all the better for a shaking up now and then. I don't mean that it would be fair to bother Bridget, the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... by law, not by accident," he answered curtly. He was growing angry. "Why do you come here and unsettle me?" he demanded. "I wasn't thinking of it. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... He's in town, fatter than ever. He ought to be up here this evening. I see the comparison perfectly. You should have kept clear of all that man-millinery. Serves you right; and I hope it will unsettle ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... reduced now almost to wondering when de Spain would leave, and, disinclined though she felt to further parley, she believed he would go the sooner if she were to consent to see him again. Everything he had said to her seemed to unsettle her mind and to imperil impressions concerning him that she felt it dangerous, or at least treasonable, to part with. To believe anything but the worst of a man whom she heard cursed and abused continually by her uncles, cousins, and their associates and retainers, seemed a monstrous ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... and causes of the existing distress. The amendment was opposed by Lord Goderich, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the Duke of Wellington. Lord Goderich said that the true object of its noble mover was to get rid of the alterations lately introduced into our commercial system, and to unsettle the basis on which the currency now stood. For his own part he had never been able to learn, from the opponents of what was called "Free Trade," what that was which they denounced under that name. The noble mover seemed to menace by it the refusal to foster domestic agriculture by prohibiting the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... am drawing near to the close of my career; I am fast shuffling off the stage. I have been perhaps the most voluminous author of the day; and it is a comfort to me to think I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principle, and that I have written nothing which on my deathbed ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... manner, why should you dread secular education, except that it is against you? Why impede the circulation of books which take religious views opposite to your own? Why forbid your children and scholars the free perusal of poems or tales or essays or other light literature which you fear would unsettle their minds? Why oblige them to know these persons and to shun those, if you think that your friends have reason on their side as fully as your opponents? Truth is bold and unsuspicious; want of self-reliance is ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... and as lucrative to them as his was to the first projectors. Scarcely was Mir Jaffier, Lord Olive's nabob, seated on his musnud, than they immediately, or in a short time, projected another revolution, a revolution which was to unsettle all the former had settled, a revolution to make way for new disturbances and new wars, and which led to that long chain of peculation which ever since has afflicted and ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... don't! I asked you not to unsettle me—you're not kind to do it! You're not kind! I must think it's important and, and—the necessary thing to do. I must!" She put her hands over her eyes as she spoke. She was trying to shut out ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... her head on my shoulder, holds my hands and half shuts her beautiful eyes while we settle what our future life shall be, when I cover her with kisses and inhale the odor of all those little hairs that are as fine as silk and are like a halo round her imperial brow, excite me, unsettle me, kill me, and yet I feel inclined to shed tears, when the time comes for us to part, and I really only exist when I am ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... efforts by law to put a stop to over-capitalization and stock-watering. The apologists of successful dishonesty always declaim against any effort to punish or prevent it on the ground that such effort will "unsettle business." It is they who by their acts have unsettled business; and the very men raising this cry spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in securing, by speech, editorial, book or pamphlet, the defense by misstatement of what they have done; and yet when we correct ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... you do, don't unsettle her temper, for she will have to prepare for eight to-day. I will send Mr. Macdonald and Miss Macrae to the bakery for gingerbread, to gain time, and possibly I can think of a way to rescue you. If I can't, are you tolerably comfortable? Perhaps Miss Grieve won't mind Penelope, and she can come ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... asked why, on Lamarck's theory, if serpents wanted more legs they could not have made them, the answer is that the attempt to do this would be to unsettle a question which had been already so long settled, that it would be impossible to reopen it. The animal must adapt itself to four legs, or must get rid of all or some of them if it does not like them; but it has stood so long committed to the theory that if there are to be legs ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... divine Plato among the sages at a humble distance, comes the prosaic and unfashionable Paley, and says in his precise way: that 'this vice has a tendency, which other species of vice have not so directly, to unsettle and weaken the powers of the understanding; as well as, I think, in a greater degree than other vices, to render the heart thoroughly corrupt.' True; and, once admitted and fostered, it eats like a canker, and with difficulty can ever be brought ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... a curious consequence. He, the very one who had never seen the haunting, was also the very one to unsettle what little common sense yet remained to Hardenberg and Strokher. He never allowed the subject to be ignored—never lost an opportunity of referring to the doom that o'erhung the vessel. By the hour he poured into the ears of his friends lugubrious tales of ships, warned ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... is altogether ignorant of traffic, and it might unsettle her opinions of her uncle's stability. If a man does not maintain credit within his own doors, how can he expect it in ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... German, Alicia, if you love me. The picture is—the picture: and my lady is—my lady. That's my way of taking things, and I'm not metaphysical; don't unsettle me." ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... roll on! Through seas of inky air Roll on! It's true I've got no shirts to wear; It's true my butcher's bill is due; It's true my prospects all look blue— But don't let that unsettle you! Never YOU mind! ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... am as little disposed to unsettle the reader's faith in the Virgilian tradition, as to part with my own; and I therefore uncandidly hold back the names of the authorities cited. This tradition was in fact the only thing concerning Mantuan ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... of Cape Delgado, and, in addition to my other work, shall strive, by passing along the Northern end of Lake Nyassa and round the Southern end of Lake Tanganyika, to ascertain the watershed of that part of Africa. In so doing, I have no wish to unsettle what with so much toil and danger was accomplished by Speke and Grant, but rather to confirm their ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Sweden, Germany; ... but having served this function, it seems to me that Royalty (unless it could again become elective) has done its work, and ought not to be regretted.... On doctrinaire grounds, either to unsettle it where it works well, or to desire to enforce it where it has violated its pledges and forfeited all claims to love and devotion, seems to me a mistake ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... of such an education as could only be secured by remaining behind, and he knew in his heart that there was reason in what his father had said to him of the danger there was that the voyage and the new scenes in a strange land might unsettle his mind from his books. It cost him something to seem content, even while his father was speaking to him, and he knew well it would grieve the rest to know he was to be left behind, so he would say nothing about it, on this first ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... dear boy," rejoined Christina, "is a question which I am not fitted to enter upon either by nature or education. I might easily unsettle your mind without being able to settle it again. Oh, no! Such questions are far better avoided by women, and, I should have thought, by men, but papa wished me to speak to you upon the subject, so that there might be no mistake ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... about the subject. It seems to me that real love must unsettle the mind, upset the nerves and distract the head; that it must—how shall I express it?—be dangerous, even terrible, almost criminal and sacrilegious; that it must be a kind of treason; I mean to say that it is bound to break laws, fraternal bonds, sacred obligations; when love is tranquil, easy, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... reader myself," remarked Miss Mitty, a trifle primly. "My father used to say that when a lady had read a chapter of her Bible in the morning, and consulted her cook-book, she had done as much literary work as was good for her. Too intimate an acquaintance with books, he always said, was apt to unsettle the views, and the best judgment a woman can have, I am sure, is the opinion of ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... life, Spike. It would unsettle the rustic mind. They're fearfully particular about that sort of thing ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Agatha slowly, 'that you are quite as likely to unsettle Walter as to settle him. He is not doing very grandly, but he keeps out of debt; and it seems to me that it is only by steady perseverance that fortunes are made nowadays. Then you may seriously inconvenience him by giving him such short notice ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... to meddle with the question of wages? Why have they always refused to interfere between the master and the workman? Because they knew the touchy and jealous nature of property, and, regarding it as the principle of all civilization, felt that to meddle with it would be to unsettle the very foundations of society. Sad condition of the proprietary regime,—one of inability to exercise charity without ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... no answer to this criticism of his attitude. He would say, "Produce your socialistic scheme, and I will examine it, and if it will work and if it is just I will support it; but until you have found this scheme, what moral right do you possess which entitles you to unsettle men's minds, to fill their hearts with the bitterness of discontent, and to turn the attention of their souls away from the things that are ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... him and defend ourselves, that we may stand before him and conquer. He is a terrible, mighty foe, says Peter, and is the god of this world. He has more wisdom and more deceptive snares than all men, and can so blind and unsettle reason that it will cheerfully believe and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... Browne. "She'll learn. So are you—you'll learn. And remember this, my boy, always respect old legends. A disregard for them will so unsettle you that finally you will find yourself—at the foot of the gallows in all human probability. I suppose," sadly, "that you are even so far gone in scepticism as to doubt the glorious truth of the moon's being made of ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... alleviation in a warm climate; but she positively declines seeking it, and says her only wish is to die quietly, at home. She fully estimates the strength of your affection, and entreats of you to spare her all superfluous agitation. 'Tell him,' said she, 'there is but one thing that can unsettle the calmness of my mind; it is to see him wanting in ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... impulse was to say nothing of this to his wife in the meantime. Why unsettle her? But he had reckoned without the sudden upward leap his spirits made, once his decision was taken: the winter sky was blue as violets again above him; he turned out light-heartedly of a morning. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... conduct, and assuring her that she was acting a very foolish part. But her constancy remained unshaken, as conscience told her her resolution was made for the glory of God. This trial was followed by two others, which were calculated either to unsettle or confirm her vocation, as, under the guise of prudence, a seemingly greater good was proposed. In fact, a person less enlightened in the ways of God would have wavered at this period of her life. During her sojourn ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... being," she soliloquised; "has awakened to a sense of perception; and all through my fault, for it's that ballad of mine yesterday which has incited this! But the subtle devices in all these rationalistic books have a most easy tendency to unsettle the natural disposition, and if to-morrow he does actually get up, and talk a lot of insane trash, won't his having fostered this idea owe its origin to that ballad of mine; and shan't I have become the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin |
