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Insecurity   Listen
noun
Insecurity  n.  (pl. insecurities)  
1.
The condition or quality of being insecure; lack of safety; danger; hazard; as, the insecurity of a building liable to fire; insecurity of a debt.
2.
The state of feeling insecure; uncertainty; lack of confidence. "With what insecurity of truth we ascribe effects... unto arbitrary calculations." "A time of insecurity, when interests of all sorts become objects of speculation."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Insecurity" Quotes from Famous Books



... find the sweet, sad ghost of Maisie haunting her, coming between her and the memory of her dark ecstasy. Maisie, utterly innocent, utterly good, trusting her, sending Jerrold back to her because she trusted her. Only to think of Maisie gave her a fearful sense of insecurity. She thought: If I'd loved her I could never have done it. If I were to love her even now that would end it. We couldn't go on. She prayed God that she might ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... the dwelling-place sought; with the uncertainty of a present permanent dwelling-place there is linked the uncertainty of a goal to strive for when the present uncertain dwelling-place must be abandoned. Thus, the punishment contains two features, the insecurity of the present dwelling-place and a lack of knowledge whither to turn when thrust forth from the insecure abode of the present. In this sense the term is used in Psalm 109, 10: "Let his children be continually vagabonds." That means, Nowhere shall they find a certain abode; if they ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... expected—yet one can never become quite used to such pictures as that! Below was the first-line trench, deserted since the third division had been sent forward, and its emptiness gave her a feeling of insecurity. She would have preferred a visual line of stalwart fellows between her and the maddened enemy, instead of one that had gone into the smoke. She looked back to see if another division were coming up, but the intervening world seemed ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... the tensions producing mental disturbances? Physical and financial insecurity, the threat of war, the aggressive patterns of a competitive society, the unresolved Oedipus-situation rooted in the old-style family relationship. These were the swamps where the mosquitoes buzzed and bit. Most of the swamps have been dredged, most of ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... out the inherent weaknesses of the South, the insecurity of investment, violation of the right of property and of contract, the jeopardy of life, and over-assessment of taxes on property held by Northern Whites—as constituting the causes underlying the failure of investors to direct their monies ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... social fabric of Ireland." He further expressed his opinion, that he did not think that small holdings were the great evil of Ireland, he rather thought that the particular way in which land was held has often been the source of insecurity and want of cultivation. From the state of the County Armagh he came to the conclusion, he said, that small holdings were not the great evil of Ireland. In that county the greatest subdivisions had taken place, and yet it was one of the most flourishing, and best cultivated counties in Ireland. ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... just telling your uncle, it is a mere matter of form to ask if I have slept. I seldom sleep, especially if I am up-stairs. The servants over my head, it may be,—or if not that, I have the feeling of insecurity,—stairs, you understand, in case of fire. Dear William had my rooms fitted up on the ground floor. 'Sophronia,' he said, 'you must sleep!' I suppose it is necessary, but I am so used to lying awake. Such frightful noises ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards

... afraid. The element of truth in the nineteenth-century exaggeration of man's individuality lies in the fact that social activity is partly brought about in the satisfaction of the more egoistic impulses of the individual. "The fear motive drives men together in times of insecurity; the pugnacity motive bands them together for group combat; the economic motive brings industrial cooeperation and organization; the self-assertive and submissive tendencies bring emulation as well as obedience; the expansion of the self to cover one's family, one's clique, one's class, one's country ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... documentary "I told you so," and a proof that, whoever else was blinded, he foresaw. It contains, however, the following remarkable passage:—"Even were it not impossible, for many other reasons, to contemplate a withdrawal of our authority from the Transvaal, the position of insecurity in which we should leave this loyal and important section of the community (the English inhabitants), by exposing them to the certain retaliation of the Boers, would constitute, in my opinion, an insuperable obstacle to retrocession. Subjected to the ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... extremely poor, landlocked, and highly dependent on foreign aid, agriculture, and trade with neighboring countries. Much of the population continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs. Criminality, insecurity, and the Afghan Government's inability to extend rule of law to all parts of the country pose challenges to future economic growth. It will probably take the remainder of the decade and continuing donor aid and attention to significantly raise Afghanistan's living ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... sort of wilfulness as Bull's, the salve abject submission to it which we behold in his tidal bodies of supporters. Neptune has done something. One thinks he has done much, at a rumour of his inefficiency to do the utmost. Spy you insecurity?—a possibility of invasion? Then indeed the colossal creature, inaccessible to every argument, is open to any suggestion: the oak-like is a reed, the bull a deer. But as there is no attack on his shores, there is no proof that they are invulnerable. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the rolling lava for the slightest marks of abrasion, which might show that shod animals had passed that way, got up into an ohia to look out for the smoke of Kilauea, and after three hours came out upon what I here learn is the old track, disused because of the insecurity ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... islands, in secluded mountains, in deserts. We understand their backward condition in parts of the earth which offer so few facilities for agriculture and cattle-breeding as Australia, the Arctic regions, or the extreme north and south of America. In the insecurity of incompletely developed resources we can see the chain which hangs heavily on their feet and confines their movements within a narrow space. As a consequence their numbers are small, and from this again results the small total amount of intellectual and physical accomplishment, the rarity of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... same sense of insecurity was felt, the india-rubber-like film giving way easily and springing up again, while the old muttering and murmuring noises ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... of the cerebellum usually produces blindness, giddiness, a tendency to move backwards, a staggering, irregular gait, and a feeling of insecurity in maintaining various positions. There is no loss of consciousness, or other disturbance of the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... theoretical assertion of British sovereignty by which the prohibition was qualified was not likely to be specially impressive. The islanders acquiesced in the decision with stolid patience, but, undeterred by the consequent insecurity of tenure, settled as squatters in the unappropriated lands. As recently as forty years ago their title was still unrecognized, and the presence of thousands of settlers with indeterminate claims had become a dangerous grievance. In 1881 Sir William Whiteway, then Premier ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... this youth mount Calvete's mule, and went on without more delay to Igualada. There they were informed that the galleys had arrived the day before at Barcelona, whence they would sail in two days, unless the insecurity of the roadstead compelled them to make an earlier departure. On account of this news, they rose next morning before the sun, although they had not slept all night in consequence of a circumstance which had ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... and the bull-roarers used on these occasions are kept in them. Husband and wife live together, often two couples in one hut; but each family has its own side of the house and its own fireplace. In times of insecurity the Kai used to build their huts for safety among the spreading boughs of great trees. A whole village, consisting of three or four huts, might thus be quartered on a single tree. Of late years, with the peace and protection ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... yesterday. She has sanctioned the going of four Regiments to the East Indies. With regard to the reduction of the garrison of Malta to four Regiments, she hopes the Government will well consider whether this will not reduce this valuable and exposed spot to a state of insecurity. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... propensity to boast of his achievements, to say nothing of the pedestal upon which the boys insisted upon placing him. Was this Wells Fargo's most famous agent? Was this the man whose warnings were given such credence that they stirred even the largest of the gold camps into a sense of insecurity? And at this Rance indulged again in a fit of mental ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... man who never tolerated an enemy in his presence. Burleson and Travis were talking under the shade of a China tree, and there were little groups of American soldiers on every street; this was what he saw, and yet a terrible sense of insecurity oppressed him. ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... by four horses, at the rate of six miles in six hours, he thought this speed remarkable enough to merit comparison with the racing in the Olympian games. People of any pretensions shunned the discomforts of travelling on foot—the bad roads, the insecurity, the dirty inns, and the rough treatment in them; to walk abroad in good clothes and admire the scenery was an ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... marauders, whether Arabs, Berber Tuaregs, or Negroid Tibbus. The desert has made them so. The Tuaregs are chronic freebooters; they keep the Sahara and especially the caravan routes in constant insecurity. They stretch a cordon across these routes from Ghadames and Ghat in the east to the great oases of Insalah and Twat in the west; and from the oases and hills forming their headquarters they spread for pasturage and blackmail over the desert.[1078] They exact toll ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... of late an epidemic of crime in the city, which had seriously perturbed the good burgesses; various shops had been broken into, and cash and valuables had been 'lifted,' but as no arrests had been effected a general feeling of insecurity was rife in Auld Reekie; all which was a constant theme of merriment on ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... even Miss Quincey) could realize the insecurity of Miss Quincey's position better than Rhoda, who was fathoms deep in the confidence of the Head. She happened to know that Miss Cursiter was only waiting for an opportunity like this to rid herself for ever of the little obstructive. She knew too that once they had ceased to fill their particular ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... his party to remain seated while he went to attend to the women. The performance was mostly over, and the audience began to disperse, from a sense of insecurity. ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... do. I did it in The Right of Way. I did it in others of my books. What happens to one man and one woman does not necessarily happen to another. There are men who, for love of a woman, would not take advantage of her insecurity. There are others who would. In my books I have made both classes do their will, and both are true to life. It does not matter what one book is or is not, but it does matter that an author writes his book with a sense of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... any measure of relief being granted to Roman catholics, who were by law liable to cruel oppression. The judges, indeed, and specially the great chief-justice, Mansfield, did all they could to mitigate the rigour of the law, yet catholics lived in insecurity, and so late as 1767 a priest was condemned to imprisonment for life, and was actually imprisoned for four years, for exercising his office. Whig prejudices gave way, and in 1778 Sir George Savile brought in a bill enabling catholics who abjured the temporal jurisdiction ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... labor agitation works. Labor organizations multiply and become aggressive, and so capital organizes in self-defense. One day our professor told the class that he much preferred citizenship in a government controlled by intelligent capital, to the insecurity and uncertainty of ignorant labor in power. The professor inclined to think that the British form of government rested on a more lasting basis than that ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... In a little while the muddled angry mind of Man upon his Planet will grow clear and it will be this idea that will have made it clear. And then life will be very different for everyone. That tyranny of disorder which oppresses every life on earth now will be lifted. There will be less and less insecurity, less and less irrational injustice. It will be a better instructed and a better behaved world. We shall live at our ease, not perpetually anxious, not resentful and angry. And that will alter all the rules of love. Then we shall think more of the loveliness of ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... improvements around it, indicating his design of having a permanent and inviting home, it so happened that a company of settlers in passing by, paused to view with astonishment what was going on. From a feeling of insecurity they had just abandoned their new locations in this region, and had come thus far on their way, having resolved to return to the more safe and quiet homes they had left at the east. But beholding the enterprise ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... Albanian attacks and the growing insecurity in Northern Epirus the Greek Government today ordered Greek troops to occupy the districts of Argyrocastro and Premeti. The official communique just issued declares this to be an entirely provisional measure to restore order and security in a country already exhausted by prolonged ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... warships, and the Danes and Englishmen long remembered the dashing but dubious ways of this young sea-rover, who swept the English coast and claimed his dues from friend and foe alike. For those were days of insecurity for merchant and trader and farmer, and no man's wealth or life was safe except as he paid ready tribute to the fierce Norse allies of King Ethelred. But soon after this, King Ethelred died, and young Olaf, thirsting for new adventures, sailed ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... ever been, the present seemed a crisis in his life. He had accomplished the climax of villany, and as he had racked his powers of invention for the means of attaining his purpose, he now taxed them for the means of concealing it. The insecurity of his position was so tedious, that he sought, as the tempest-tost mariner seeks the quiet haven, to fortify it, so that he might be at rest from the tormenting doubts which assailed him. Vain hope! there is no rest ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... now that I am on the point of deciding to come in her, people daily dissuade me, saying that I have no conception of what a voyage of sixty or seventy days will be in point of fatigue and suffering; that the insecurity, compared with packet-ships or steamers, is great; that the cabin, being on deck, will be terribly exposed, in case of a gale, &c., &c. I am well aware of the proneness of volunteer counsellors to frighten and excite ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... order, a place for everything and everything in its place: the deficient appreciation of literature possessed by females: the incongruity of an apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella inclined in a closestool: the insecurity of hiding any secret document behind, beneath or between the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... had her occasional longings for independence, her moments of inward revolt against the smooth tyrant. The income was hers, she argued with herself sometimes, and she had a right to spend her own money as she pleased. But then she recalled her husband's grave warnings about the future and its insecurity. She had but a brief lease of her present wealth, and he was labouring to lay by a provision for ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... there is no police at all; and the criminal establishment is just what it was forty years ago. In the next place, a police force is the consequence of a previous vast accumulation or crime, and is never established till the risk to life and insecurity to property had rendered it unbearable. Being always established by the voluntary assessment of the inhabitants, nothing can be more certain than that it never can be called into existence but by such an increase of crime as has rendered it a matter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... seemed ever and anon to reverberate among the passes of the hills. Currents of colder air sighing up through narrow defiles and dark crevices touched my face as with airy fingers. A certain feeling of anxiety and insecurity began to take possession of me, though there was no definable cause for it, unless that I might be belated in getting home. With the perverse instinct of those who are lost I hastened my steps, but was impelled now and then to glance back over my shoulder, with a sensation of being ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... "They just like to name things—preferably with female names. It's a form of insecurity, the mother fixation. But that's not important. I'm afraid, gentlemen, that we shall have to make the award as we have planned. I can see no way out. After all, there's no reason why the machine cannot receive the prize. The ...
— A Prize for Edie • Jesse Franklin Bone

... make an angry reply when he looked at McCarty, who suddenly leaned back against the tree. At the same moment a feeling of insecurity overtook him. He started again to make an angry answer and then all pugnacious thoughts left him. He sat down suddenly, his head swam on his shoulders and about him the woods danced in drunken reelings, sweeping grotesque boughs ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... a sudden, her governess was more agitated. "Oh why, little unfortunate, should we discuss their dreadful names?"—and she threw herself for the millionth time on Maisie's neck. It took her pupil but a moment to feel that she quivered with insecurity, and, the contact of her terror aiding, the pair in another instant were sobbing in each other's arms. Then it was that, completely relaxed, demoralised as she had never been, Mrs. Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... Decidedly likely. Some, through lack of experience or understanding, or both, grow hard and bitter on the instant. They feel themselves astonishingly abased in the face of notable tenderness and sacrifice. Others collapse before the grave manifestation of the insecurity and uncertainty of life—the mystic chemistry of our being. Still others, taught roughly by life, or endowed with understanding or intuition, or both, see in this the latest manifestation of that incomprehensible chemistry which we call life and personality, and, knowing ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... manner in which she bore her inspection. Already rumors of the cause of Mr. Allen's departure were in active circulation, and I was astonished to learn that he had been seen that day seated upon Indian rock with Miss Thorn herself. This piece of news gave me a feeling of insecurity about people, and about women in particular, that I had never before experienced. After holding the Celebrity up to such unmeasured ridicule as she had done, ridicule not without a seasoning of contempt, it was difficult to believe Miss Thorn so inconsistent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Polynesian classes. They are split up into numerous dialects, so widely different that natives of different districts can hardly, if at all, understand each other. It is evident that owing to the seclusion of the villages caused by the general insecurity of former days, and the lack of any literature, the language developed differently in ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... events of every day you will find the flavor of past ages lingering in petty annoyances. The insecurity of the middle ages has left as a legacy to our times a complicated system of obstacles to a man getting into his own house at night. I lived in a pleasant house on the Prado, with a minute garden in front, and an iron gate and railing. This gate was shut and locked by the night watchman of the quarter ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... nothing to do with unemployment, which is, as a rule, due not to over-production but to ill-balanced production, as has been proved on page 70 of this book. In the case of a country such as Great Britain, unemployment is due principally to the insufficiency and insecurity of her markets for her manufactured goods and to the decay of ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... in italics are discordant. But again it is no question of language in itself; it is an internal discrepancy between the parts of a whole already debilitated by metrical insecurity. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... conscience. He shut himself up in his misery, not knowing how strong a tale his own unhappiness told against him. Why did he not rejoice in the glory of his position? Then I said to myself that he was conscious of insecurity." ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... him cautiously, and with an uneasy sense of insecurity, while by the time he was at the end his guide was undressed, with his clothes lying in a heap just beyond the wash of ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... between him and his father. John Caldigate had gone into partnership with Crinkett,—who had indeed tried to cheat him wretchedly but had failed,—and at that time was the manager of the Polyeuka mine. The claim at Ahalala had been sold, and he had deserted the flashy insecurity of alluvial searchings for the fundamental security of rock-gold. He was deep in the crushing of quartz, and understood well the meaning of two ounces to the ton,—that glittering boast by which Crinkett had at first thought to allure him. From time to time he sent money home, paying ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... colleagues had upon California. Of course these remarks reached the ears of his constituents anyhow, and though prefaced by a studied evasiveness on his part, they contributed much to the feeling of unrest and insecurity that then ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley

... supported Mr. Butcher's Compensation Bill, and in August Mr. Balfour gave a pledge in the House of Commons that the Government would introduce legislation "at the earliest possible moment in the following Session," which would put an end to the present "wide- spread feeling of insecurity on the part of ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... The uncertainty and insecurity of their power, has always led petty chiefs to seek the support of some powerful suzerain. In 1876 the Mehtar of Chitral, Aman-ul-Mulk, was encouraged to seek the protection, and become the vassal of our vassal, the ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... the living-room, Geraldine felt again, as she so often did, a slight sense of insecurity mingle with her liking for the man, or what might have been liking if she could ever feel absolute confidence in him. She had been, at times, very close to caring a great deal for him, when now and again it flashed over her that there must be in him something serious under ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... of a rarely generous-minded, tolerant and understanding man, who judged the offence at its true computation, such knowledge would only prove disturbing and a source of insecurity to conjugal happiness. No good purpose of any kind can be served, and the ease which confession is proverbially supposed to gain for the sinner would be bought at a ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... Old Regime, by which he had been fascinated, had they not fallen to pieces like a flower whose petals are scattered in the tempest? Even the burning hope of his heart, the dream of a life of earthly bliss with his love, was showing its insecurity and dropping asunder. His ship was sinking in the ocean of Eternity. How futile his intrigue, how mean his deceptions, how insufficient his excuses. The Everlasting Presence gazed through them, and in its all-illumining blaze they fell and sank away. He saw that that ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... been owing to the insecurity of the ice; but it might also have been owing to the severity of the weather. Black enough, at any rate, the scene appeared; and I looked forth upon it from my temporary shelter with the certainty that this river before me was a particularly hard ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... storm coming, and feeling the insecurity of his position, wished to save himself. He had too much sense and too much knowledge of the world not to feel that if he obstinately clung to the finances he should not only lose them but the seals also. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... talked to members as well of the landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with by a vigorous administration of the existing law. Unfortunately, the so-called "better classes," full of bitterness against the Liberal Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till it was ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... outline of black mysterious-looking rocks, dimly seen through clouds of driving mist, adds a wild sublimity to the scene. While the boat struggles over the curling billows, at times lifted up by the ground-swells from below, the feeling of danger and insecurity is lost in the whirl of waters that surround you. The mind expands with the scene, and you rejoice in the terrific power that threatens to annihilate you and your fairy bark. A visible presence of the majesty of God is before you, and, sheltered by His protecting ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... trilogy deals with Sigurd's sojourn at the Orkneys, where he interferes in the quarrel between the Earls Harold and Paul. The atmosphere of suspicion, insecurity, and gloom which hangs like a portentous cloud over these scenes is the very same which blows toward us from the pages of the sagas. Bjoernson has gazed deeply into the heart of Northern paganism, and has ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... and sand to the river for the purpose of washing it. Wooden beams are placed here and there to lessen the danger of caving in, but I must confess that in spite of this precaution I was at first haunted with a horrible feeling of insecurity. As I became reassured I repeated loudly those glorious lines of ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... way by aid of the colored map, Chart No. VIII, giving the different densities of foreign-born population in different parts of the Union. It seems almost certain that the general belief hitherto in the insecurity of life and property in the old slave States has worked against the material prosperity of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... grew so jealous of the Saxon youth, and so restive under his shafts of sarcastic ridicule, that they planned several times to kill him, and once or twice nearly succeeded. This insecurity, and a feeling that perhaps Earl Siward had some kinship with the Fairy Bear, and would wish to avenge his death, made Hereward decide to quit Gilbert's castle. The spirit of adventure was strong upon him, the sea seemed ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... all authority but their own. A good many men were banished and forced to leave the country, but they were of that class we could well spare. Yankee Sullivan, a prisoner in their custody, committed suicide, and a feeling of general insecurity pervaded the city. Business was deranged; and the Bulletin, then under control of Tom King, a brother of James, poured out its abuse on some of our best men, as well as the worst. Governor Johnson, being again appealed to, concluded to go to work ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... upon whom a cardinal rested, had moments of strange and horrible insecurity—inexplicable in a religion that explained even disbelief in terms of its own faith: if you doubted the devil it was the devil that made you doubt him. Amory had seen Monsignor go to the houses of stolid philistines, read popular novels furiously, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... said Mr. LLOYD GEORGE last week, "from a farming stock right down from the Flood. The first thing a farmer wants is to be secure." It was of course during the Flood that the insecurity of land tenure ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... eyes. She came into the bright room with a smiling shrinking from the light, which gave her the expression of an angel. Both men gazed at her with a sort of passion of tenderest admiration, and also a certain sadness of yearning—the Squire because of that instinct of insecurity and possibility of loss to which possession itself gives rise, the Colonel because of the awakening of old vain longings in his ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... had never really entertained the notion of the river ending, though of course he must often have heard of its mouth in the salt water. He was out of his country, his bearings all gone, a feeling of helpless insecurity taking the place of his usual confidence, and I think he said no more all ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... a touch of adventure in the expedition. This was not our own village, but a foreign one, distant at least a mile. One felt that sense of mingled distinction and insecurity which is familiar to the traveller: distinction, in that folk turned the head to note you curiously; insecurity, by reason of the ever-present possibility of missiles on the part of the more juvenile inhabitants, a class eternally conservative. Elated ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... Here lay the insecurity of the orthodox champions. They stumbled on, fully accepting, when they could not help themselves, the progressive developments of thought, yet loudly condemning any one who was a little further ahead upon the road, until they ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the colleges; his academical sinecures, and the relics of his private fortune, afforded him a decent support; he was surrounded by people of his own principles; and as all the strength of the King's cause was concentrated about the seat of the court, every apprehension of personal insecurity was at an end. He was now, therefore, in a state of comparative comfort; man is seldom placed in a better; and in times like those I describe, a good ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... confirms the utterances of Asha; it is in Ahura himself that he and the kine place their confidence; to his will they submit themselves; the doubts and questions arising from their outward insecurity, they refer ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... least of the Apitae, being admitted, or regarded as more probable than that they should have remained stationary, let us now consider the general, constant direction that this evolution takes. It seems to follow the same roads as with ourselves. It tends palpably to lessen the struggle, insecurity, and wretchedness of the race, to augment authority and comfort, and stimulate favourable chances. To this end it will unhesitatingly sacrifice the individual, bestowing general strength and happiness in exchange for the illusory and mournful independence of solitude. ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... provision shops speedily sold out the stores on their shelves. The Germans at first paid in cash for everything ordered, and preserved an attitude of nonaggression toward the citizens. But subconsciously there ran an undercurrent of dread insecurity. At the outset a German officer was said to have been struck by a sniper's bullet. Somewhat conspicuously the wounded officer was borne on a litter through the streets, followed by the dead body of his assailant. Very promptly a news curtain was drawn down ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... me to reflect upon death—not on the death of this woman, but on my own. You counsel me to reflect on the instability, on the insecurity of our existence, and on what there is beyond it. But these considerations, these reflections neither terrify nor daunt me. Why should I, who desire to die, fear death? Love and death are brothers. A sentiment of self-abnegation springs to life within me, and tells me that my whole being should be ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... governing the mode of worship in Virginia, with a good salary for clergymen and an injunction that all and sundry were to appear at church every Sunday, and bring their weapons with them—thus insuring Heaven a fair hearing, while at the same time making provision against the insecurity of carnal things. The wives of the planters as well as their husbands were capacitated to own land, because, in a new world, a woman might turn out to be as efficient as the man. This sounds almost prophetic; but it was probably intended to operate on the cultivation of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... days of Monte Carlo, the Villa Bella Vista was full of the Dauntreys' paying guests, a cold sense of insecurity and trouble to come, which would be worse by and by than the bitter disappointment of the present, lay heavy upon Eve's heart. Her menage was uncomfortable, and people were threatening to go. Every day nearly she ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... such assiduous toil that Charles VII., in concert with his advisers, was able to take in hand and accomplish, in the military, financial, and judicial system of the realm, those bold and at the same time prudent reforms which wrested the country from the state of disorder, pillage, and general insecurity to which it had been a prey, and commenced the era of that great monarchical administration, which, in spite of many troubles and vicissitudes, was destined to be, during more than three centuries, the government of France. The constable De Richemont and marshal De la Fayette were, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... been stolen," she observed, "but one hates the feeling of insecurity, all the same. Both my steward and stewardess are old friends. It must have been a very clever person who found his way ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... insecurity of present-day investments, and seized with the fear that the fortune entrusted to my keeping might be dissipated by one of those strange accidents of finance with which we are all acquainted, I have placed the whole of her fortune, to the value of eight hundred thousand pounds, in ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... unanimously passed by the French Senate a few years after the State had taken over certain lines, beginning: "The deplorable situation of the State system, the insecurity and irregularity of its workings." He gives figures demonstrating the invariably greater efficiency, economy and superiority of service of private management as compared to State management in countries where these two systems are in operation side ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn

... mouth of the Gates, Dawes being afraid to risk a passage until the slack of the tide, and about ten o'clock at night adventured to cross the Bar. The night was lovely, and the sea calm. It seemed as though Providence had taken pity on them; for, notwithstanding the insecurity of the craft and the violence of the breakers, the dreaded passage was made with safety. Once, indeed, when they had just entered the surf, a mighty wave, curling high above them, seemed about to overwhelm the frail structure of skins and wickerwork; but Rufus ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... hearing about some of your enterprises," he said, and there was that in his face that caused Mr. Slotman a feeling of insecurity and uneasiness. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... insecurity which obtains during the Sessions of the Raad is due scarcely less to the threats which are not fulfilled and attempts which do not succeed, than to what is actually compassed. A direct tax on gold has more than once been threatened; ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... so formidable of aspect, lacked that moral force without which physical power, even in its most terrible form, is but an idle show. Not only were the strength of the Confederate position, the want of energy in the preliminary movements, the insecurity of their own situation, but too apparent to the intelligence of the regimental officers and men, but they mistrusted their commander. Northern writers have recorded that the Army of the Potomac never went down to battle ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... in the eloquent invective which has come to us as his "First Oration against Catiline". His object was to drive his enemy from the city to the camp of his partisans, and thus to bring matters at once to a crisis for which he now felt himself prepared. This daily state of public insecurity and personal danger had lasted too ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins

... short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach and power of the slave-holders. I soon found that New York was not quite so free or so safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness and insecurity again oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the street, a few hours after my landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once known well in slavery. The information received from him alarmed me. The fugitive in question was known ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass

... him that he believed it to be just. He had a tenderness and compassion of nature which restrained him from ever doing a hard-hearted thing; and, therefore, he was so apt to grant pardon to malefactors, that the judges of the land represented to him the damage and insecurity to the public that flowed from such his indulgence. And then he restrained himself from pardoning either murders or highway robberies, and quickly discerned the fruits of his severity by a wonderful reformation of those enormities. He was very ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... citizens, from their city having been so often and for so long the theatre of uncertain fate and distracting political disturbances. It is the half-startled expression of people with the ever-present knowledge of insecurity. But they are a warm-hearted, impulsive set of fellows, and when, while looking through the museum, we happen across Her Britannic Majesty's representative at the Servian court, who is doing the same thing, one of them unhesitatingly approaches that gentleman, cap in hand, and, with considerable ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... wickedness,—then we accept the natural effects of that violence which consummated the ruin. The natural consequences of two hundred years of pillage and warfare and destruction of ancient institutions were, and could have been nothing other than, miseries, misrule, sufferings, poverty, insecurity, and despair. A universal conflagration must destroy everything that past ages had valued. As a relief from what was felt to be intolerable, and by men who were brutal, ignorant, superstitious, and degraded, all from the effect of the necessary evils which war creates, a sort of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... slaves were infinitely more numerous than their owners. Hence arose the constant dread of servile insurrections; the constant hatred of a slave population to which any conspirator revolutionist might successfully appeal; and the constant insecurity of life, which must have struck terror ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... the insecurity of his position, and endeavored to provide a temporary remedy. There was a height near the city, called by the Moors Santo Albohacen, which was in front of the bridge. He ordered several of his most valiant cavaliers to take possession of this height and to hold it as a ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... seldom went out now, but busied himself cultivating his land, so that he could be near the children and home. He had a feeling of insecurity; people had banded themselves together against him and his family, and meant them no good. He was uneasy when away from home, and constantly felt as if something had happened. The children were delighted ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... joined the others, taking with them the wounded. Two hours of quiet reigned. The night, which was now approaching, was the most dangerous period, and they appreciated the insecurity of the position to withstand ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... brother, on the mother's side, of Brian, King of Jalof. This king was inert and vicious. He had, however, the wisdom to make Bemoin prime minister, and to throw all the cares and troubles of governing upon him. Nothing was heard in the kingdom but of Bemoin. But he, seeing, perhaps, the insecurity of his position, diligently made friends with the Portuguese, keeping aloof, however, from becoming a convert, though he listened respectfully to those who expounded the Christian faith to him. Cibitab, a brother of the inert Brian, by the father's side, became jealous of Bemoin, revolted, ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... one career left to woman, but a general looseness of grammar, and a conscious insecurity in the matter of spelling, stand in the way of literary expression of the burning thoughts within her. All she can do is to moan over her lot and to take refuge in the works of Miss Hominy. There she ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... was, therefore, no cause for anxiety; but the common case was, that the numbers might not be such as to justify this caution, and yet quite enough for mischief. To my brother, however, stung and carried headlong into hostility by the martial instincts of his nature, the uneasiness of doubt or insecurity was swallowed up by his joy in the anticipation of victory, or even of contest; whilst to myself, whose exultation was purely official and ceremonial, as due by loyalty from a cadet to the head of his house, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... for the withdrawal of military stores and the non-combatant inhabitants of Dundee. This reply raised a new point. To send the whole of the rolling-stock—and nothing less would suffice—would be to expose it to the gravest danger, for the railway line was in hourly insecurity. Two hours after the despatch of his first telegram, therefore, Sir George White sent a second, which became the determining factor of ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... remote results and see only the immediate effect of action. The harm done by injustice consists not merely in the pain inflicted upon the victim. There is the sympathetic pain caused in all those who are at all tender hearted. There is the sense of insecurity caused in each by the realization that he too might some day be a victim; when justice is not enforced no man is safe. There is the stimulation given to human passions by one indulgence which will breed a whole crop of pain. There is the danger that if injustice is allowed in one case ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... our belief. I have already so many friends on the other side of the grave, that a large portion of my thoughts and affections are in another world, and it is only the certainty of another life, which could make the changes and insecurity of this life endurable. May God bless you, and restore you, my dear old friend, is ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... part. The terrifying images which deter him from crime and follow its commission, and which are really the protest of his deepest self, seem to his wife the creations of mere nervous fear, and are sometimes referred by himself to the dread of vengeance or the restlessness of insecurity.[216] His conscious or reflective mind, that is, moves chiefly among considerations of outward success and failure, while his inner being is convulsed by conscience. And his inability to understand himself is repeated ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... that night on the deck of a relief boat, which had been sent out in search of the missing barge, between Mrs. Smith and a grave and anxious passenger who had chartered it. When he had comforted her, and pointed out, as, indeed, he had many times before, the loneliness and insecurity of her unprotected life, she yielded to his arguments. But it was not until many months after their marriage that she confessed to him on that eventful night she thought she had seen in a moment of great peril the vision ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... interfere energetically on behalf of British subjects. There was a vague but widespread feeling that perhaps the capitalists were engineering the situation for their own ends. It is difficult to imagine how a state of unrest and insecurity, to say nothing of a state of war, can ever be to the advantage of capital, and surely it is obvious that if some arch-schemer were using the grievances of the Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him would ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... kingdom of Macedon: "You discover nothing while your eye is fixed on Archelaus himself.... But when you turn to the persons whom he has killed, banished, or ruined—to the mass of suffering that he has inflicted—and to the widespread insecurity which such acts of iniquity spread through all societies where they become known—there is no lack of argument which prompts a reflecting spectator to brand him as [a most dangerous and destructive animal, no] a disgraceful ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... am contemplating a long series of exhaustive arguments designed to prove it your duty to leave your jewels where they are, in all their noble insecurity. This in the firm belief that to plead with you long enough to adopt this course will result in your going and doing ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... disposition to stretch his lean limbs unduly, and a feeling of insecurity attending his first efforts to stand, he was not aware of any inconvenience from ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... The feeling of insecurity concerning one's possessions in the Neversink, which the things just narrated begat in the minds of honest men, was curiously exemplified in the case of my poor friend Lemsford, a gentlemanly young member of the After-Guard. I had very early made the acquaintance of Lemsford. It is ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... cheated of their triumph after all. That strange and beautiful psychology which he employs, with its evanescent delicacies, has not sufficient corporeity. Again, one feels that the discussion about Hartley, meeting us in the way, throws a tone of insecurity over the critical theory which it introduces. Its only effect is to win for the terms in which that criticism is expressed, the associations of one side in a ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... contempt for authority, who already boasted of no less than thirty murders, and who had voluntarily placed himself in the lowest ranks of society, would be a thing absolutely incredible; but the Ocampos probably felt the insecurity of their authority, and were sufficiently sagacious to attempt, at least, to render that man a useful adherent or ally, who might, if allured by their foes, prove a terrible weapon against them. But they found in Quiroga no submissive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... a single herdsman, armed with blunderbuss and stiletto, and prowling over the plain. Thus the country, the habits, the very looks of the people, have something of the Arabian character. The general insecurity of the country is evinced in the universal use of weapons. The herdsman in the field, the shepherd in the plain, has his musket and his knife. The wealthy villager rarely ventures to the market-town without his trabuco, and, perhaps, a servant on foot with a blunderbuss ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various

... his habitual reticence had concealed was manifested by his extraordinary ignorance of the weakness of the force which he had at his disposal, and the utter rottenness of its organization. Meanwhile Italian assassins warned Louis's advisers of the desperate insecurity of the tenure by which they held their own position, and of the necessity of distracting the attention of the restless spirits who made it their business to inquire into their master's title. Within a year, therefore, of the execution of Orsini and his friend, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... existed in all ages, it was left to the nineteenth century to develop it into a gigantic social institution. The development of industry with vast masses of people in the competitive market, the growth and congestion of large cities, the insecurity and uncertainty of employment, has given prostitution an impetus never dreamed of at any ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... D. found himself, last Saturday or Sunday, giddy, with a tendency to go backwards, and to turn round. Afterwards, desiring to put something on a small table, he pushed it and the table forwards, undesignedly. He had some odd feeling of insecurity about his left leg, as if there was something unnatural about his heel; but he could lift, and he did not drag, his leg. Also he spoke of some strangeness of his left hand and arm; missed the spot on which he wished to lay that hand, unless he carefully looked at it; felt an unreadiness ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the traders and farmers turned to account, by disastrous monopoly and jobbing. To increase the difficulty, the assignats were falling into discredit, and their value diminished daily. More than eight milliards worth of them had been issued. The insecurity of this paper money, by reason of the revolutionary confiscations, which had depreciated the national property, the want of confidence on the part of the merchants, tradesmen, etc., in the stability of the revolutionary government, which they considered merely provisional, all ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... remainder of their own lives and of those of their children, were expended in tombs, temples, sarais, tanks, groves, and other works—useful and ornamental, no doubt, but from which neither they nor their children could ever hope to derive income of any kind. The same feeling of insecurity gave birth, no doubt, to this preposterous usage, which tends so much to keep down the great mass of the people of India to that grade in which they were born, and in which they have nothing but their manual labour to depend upon for their subsistence. Every man feels himself ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... similar nature, should be caused to be carried on by many persons on the principle of division of labour.[255] If a person engaged in agriculture, cattle-rearing, or trade, becomes inspired with a sense of insecurity (in consequence of thieves and tyrannical officers), the king, as a consequence, incurs infamy. The king should always honour those subjects of his that are rich and should say unto them, 'Do ye, with me, advance the interest of the people.' In every kingdom, they that are wealthy constitute ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... artifices, and breach of faith. The English rail at the perfidious French, and the French at the encroaching English: they quote treaties on each side, charge each other with aspiring to universal monarchy, and complain, on either part, of the insecurity of possession near such ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... time seditious movements showed the insecurity of the situation. At the beginning of 1556 traces were detected of a plan for plundering the treasury in order to levy troops with the money.[176] The Western counties were discontented because Courtenay was removed from among them: he died subsequently in Italy. Sir Henry Dudley, the Duke of ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... have rendered the condition of the country utterly desperate—for very nearly desperate it assuredly was. Their vacillating, inconsistent, wild, and extravagant conduct during these ten years, had generated an universal sense of insecurity and want of confidence among all the great interests of the country, which locked up capital—palsied enterprise. Trade and commerce drooped daily, and the revenue melted away rapidly every year. Great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... full development of commercialism exists and is gaining ground, and that this sentiment is an independent growth of the ethics of the present epoch. As a matter of fact, admitting its existence, as I think we must do, it is the birth of the sense of insecurity which is the shadow cast before by the approaching dissolution of modern society founded ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... on!—on!—the traffic pounded, for the most part in the opposite direction; a vast, never-ending source of sound, it seemed to soothe momentarily his sense of insecurity. Time passed; he had, apparently, evaded his pursuers; he told himself he might, after all, meet the problem confronting him; meet and conquer. It would be a hard battle; but once in that part of the city he was striving ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... had not yet told her that I was a fugitive slave. She noticed that I was often sad, and kindly inquired the cause. I spoke of being separated from my children, and from relatives who were dear to me; but I did not mention the constant feeling of insecurity which oppressed my spirits. I longed for some one to confide it; but I had been so deceived by white people, that I had lost all confidence in them. If they spoke kind words to me, I thought it was for some selfish purpose. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... economic progress in Iraq, and Iraq has tremendous potential for growth. But economic development is hobbled by insecurity, corruption, lack of investment, dilapidated infrastructure, and uncertainty. As one U.S. official observed to us, Iraq's economy has been badly shocked and is dysfunctional after suffering decades of problems: Iraq had ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... has been more whole-heartedly with the Italians in their splendid efforts to recover the lands to which they are justly entitled; no one more thoroughly realizes the agonies of apprehension which Italy has suffered from the insecurity of her northern borders, or has been more keenly alive to the grim but silent struggle which has been waged between her statesmen and her soldiers as to whether the broad statesmanship which aims at ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... are so confoundedly ... ticklish. Heaven only knows sometimes which way the cat is going to jump! It certainly seems to me, though, that the peculiar conditions of this case supply an element of insecurity, of possible disintegration, that does not exist in ordinary everyday life. You must admit that the circumstances are ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Gladstone's over-ingenuity, in one among other passing divergences between him and his chief. Mr. Disraeli brought forward a motion (Feb. 19, 1850) of a very familiar kind, on the distress of the agricultural classes and the insecurity of relief of rural burdens. Bright bluntly denied that there was a case in which the fee of land had been depreciated or rent been permanently lowered. Graham said the mover's policy was simply a transfer of the entire poor rate to the consolidated fund, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... attention having been drawn to the great insecurity of letter envelopes, as they are now constructed, has submitted to the Post-master-General a specimen of a new safety envelope. He states that the invention is entirely his own, and that he has applied the principle with extraordinary success in the case of his own breeches-pocket, from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various

... vouchsafed to the present life of Mr. Waife's grandchild, in order to throw a few gleams of light on her past.—He leads her into the palace of our kings, and moralizes thereon; and, entering the Royal Gardens, shows the uncertainty of human events, and the insecurity of British laws, by the abrupt seizure and constrained deportation of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... more; a higher standard of comfort is being evolved, though relics of this former state of insecurity may still be found; such as the absence, even in houses of good families, of clocks and watches, and convenient storage for clothes and domestic utensils; their habits of living in penury and of buying their daily food by ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... ultima gregis," meaning myself, being left at home in times so perilous, and when all who could effect it were hurrying into garrisoned towns, and abandoning, for crowded lodgings, homes whose superior comforts were abated by their insecurity. The order for a general movement was consequently issued, and on the 22d of June we commenced our journey to ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... the Irish Land Act, 1870; while the sudden expulsion of the present population, and the substitution of sheep, would probably be destructive to the fishing industries as they now subsist. But the present insecurity of tenure is not consistent either with the permanent interests of the land (in which the country still more than the landlord is concerned), or with the formation or maintenance of a race of independent and intelligent ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... returned to the east of the lake, and endeavored to give support to the army at Fort Erie; but the violence of the weather and the insecurity of the anchorage on both shores, as the autumn drew on, not only prevented effectual co-operation, but seriously threatened the very existence of the fleet, upon which control of the water depended. In an attempt to go to Detroit for re-enforcements for Brown, a gale of wind was encountered ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... to influence their lives. There can be no question that wherever earthquakes occur in such a measure as to produce widespread terror, where, recurring from time to time, they develop in men a sense of abiding insecurity, they become potent agents of degradation. All the best which men do in creating a civilization rests upon a sense of confidence that their efforts may be accumulated from year to year, and that even after death the work of ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... behind mental doors. It was insidious, dangerous, and tantalizing. It made between them a bond of lowered voices, of being on the edge of things. Their danger was as spurious as their passion, but Natalie, without humor and without imagination, found the sense of insecurity vaguely attractive. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... hostility of many), I have never ceased to play my part in the Republic in the same lofty spirit, and to maintain the position I then inaugurated and took upon myself. But when, first, by the acquittal of Clodius I clearly perceived the insecurity and rotten state of the law courts; and, secondly, when I saw that it took so little to alienate my friends the publicani from the senate—though with me personally they had no quarrel; and, thirdly, that the rich (I mean your friends the fish-breeders) did not ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... brain and detect her prudent schemes for the future; but the girl was sick of her dependence on George's father, and, in the revolt of her pride, she would have accepted any honest work which would have enabled her to escape from the insecurity of her position. Of her competence to earn a living, of her ability to excel in any work that she undertook, of the sufficiency and soundness of her resources, she was as absolutely assured as she had been when she entered the millinery department of Brandywine & Plummer. If Madame, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... lagoon, we hired a cottage on the beach where we lived for several weeks. Fakarava is an atoll of the usual horseshoe shape, so narrow that one can walk across it in ten minutes, but of great circumference; it lay so little above the sea level that one had a sense of insecurity, justified by the terrible disasters following the last hurricane in the group. Not far from where we lived the waves had recently swept over the narrow strip of coral during a storm. Our life passed in a gentle monotony of peace. At ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez



Words linked to "Insecurity" :   anxiety, danger, insecure



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