DICTIONARY ONE.COM • More 'Insecurely' Quotes from Famous Books

... sad declension from the ancient proud spirit of the Square—this was painfully depressing. Several establishments lacked tenants, had obviously lacked tenants for a long time; 'To let' notices hung in their stained and dirty upper windows, and clung insecurely to their closed shutters. And on the sign-boards of these establishments were names that Sophia did not know. The character of most of the shops seemed to have worsened; they had become pettifogging little holes, unkempt, shabby, ...

— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... pushed a bit awry, and her face was so wan and thoughtful that even her dress of crimson wool did not lessen its pallor. The voices of the three children on the floor grated on the old man's mood as they were busied in defending a settler's fort, insecurely constructed of stones and sticks, and altogether roofless, garrisoned by a number of pebbles, while a poke full of wily Indian kernels of ...

— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... one warm evening when my friend and I arrived in Kraighten. We had reached Ardrahan the previous night, sleeping there in rooms hired at the village post office, and leaving in good time on the following morning, clinging insecurely to one of the typical ...

— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... wolf was at the door. The "Saints" held daily meetings, and the people had time enough to attend them. Winter proved how insecurely the town was established, how feeble were its roots; it was not here as it was up in the country, where a man could enjoy himself in the knowledge that the earth was working for him. Here people made themselves as small and ate as ...

— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... contending with him,) shew themselves not unwilling to argue from the text so mutilated. Origen and the author of the Dialogus once, Eusebius twice, Cyril not fewer than nineteen times, also leave off at the words 'even the Son of Man': from which it is insecurely gathered that those Fathers disallowed the clause which follows. On the other hand, thirty-eight Fathers and ten Versions maintain the genuineness of the words [Greek: ho on en to ourano][561]. But the decisive ...

— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... the mechanical conception of a limit to the possible vibrations of a vortex ring, not to mention other more or less fascinating speculations based on the vortex hypothesis, must be regarded, whatever their intrinsic interest, as insecurely grounded, until such time as new experimental methods shall give them another footing. Lord Kelvin himself holds all such speculations utterly in abeyance. "The vortex theory," he says, "is only a dream. Itself unproven, it can prove nothing, and ...

— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... dislike of the remark, with its implied criticism of her own judgment. And she was uneasy over the turn that the whole matter had taken. Farvel married, no matter to whom, was one thing: Farvel very insecurely tied, and possessed of a small daughter whose mother repudiated her, that was quite another. She watched Sue narrowly, for Sue was ...

— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates

... she would lay the book that she was reading on a small, round stand; but as she did so, she turned towards M. de Nueil, and the volume, insecurely laid upon the edge, fell to the ground between the stand and the sofa. This did not seem to disconcert her. She looked up, bowing almost imperceptibly in response to his greeting, without rising from the depths of the low chair in which she lay. Bending forwards, she stirred the fire briskly, and ...

— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... lay, expecting no attack, at Neustadt, Entrenched but insecurely in our camp, 15 When towards evening rose a cloud of dust From the wood thitherward; our vanguard fled Into the camp, and sounded the alarm. Scarce had we mounted, ere the Pappenheimers, Their horses at full speed, broke through the lines, 20 And leapt the trenches; but their heedless ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... he is a citizen of every country, and can fearlessly look down upon the troublesome accidents of fortune. But he who thinks himself entrenched in defences not of learning but of luck, moves in slippery paths, struggling through life unsteadily and insecurely." ...

— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... and ornately tasseled on its left. It has armlets and a ruff-like ornament round its neck. The interesting part of the statuette is most decidedly its head, which had been knocked off and only insecurely replaced, when I first set eyes on it. The thick-lipped, broad-nosed face is negroid in type.... The treatment of the hair in this granite head is especially of the very greatest interest. The hair is represented by ...

— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... whitewashed, suddenly emigrated into the street; when the respectable old Dutch striking-clock that never went correctly and always caused confusion, all at once found itself hanging on a branch of the pear tree, brightly illuminated by the beams of the May sun, while under it stood insecurely the round worm-eaten dining-table which, when there happened to be very little on it, had so often elicited from us the wish that we could have everything that had ever been eaten off it. However, the whole affair was ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... moody silence. Down the stairs, and on the street he preceded her, contemptuously letting her trail behind. He carried her suitcase, however, and once, being insecurely fastened, it opened and bits of untidy apparel littered the pavement. He dropped the suitcase and stood by while she filled it again. The softness of that moment, when, lured by her bare arms he had kissed her, ...

— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... which opened into the main lobby he slowed his gait long enough to undo the overcoat and slip out of it. The top button caught fast in its buttonhole, the coat being new and its buttonholes being stiff. He gave a sharp tug at the rebellious cloth, and the button, which probably had been insecurely sewed on in the first place, came away from its thread fastenings and lodged in the fingers of his right hand. Mechanically he dropped it into a side pocket of the overcoat and a moment later, with the garment turned inside out so that only its silk lining showed, and held under ...

— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... than the birds, worse housed than the beaver, worse fed than the jackal. "Weak in himself," says Carlyle, "and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, Jest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools: ...

— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... of their hammocks, and followed the sailor, who led the way directly to the galley, which was, in fact, a small house, about ten feet square, built on the deck, to which it was insecurely fastened. Simpson found his handspike without any difficulty, and placing one end of it under the galley, easily raised it from the deck, while Archie threw himself on his hands and knees, and crawled in under it. It was as dark as pitch inside the galley, but ...

— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon

... poles could not be seen, fastened from floor to floor with transverse blocks inserted into holes in the walls on which the planks were laid,—a frail construction, shaken by the brick-layers, but held together by ropes, white with plaster, and insecurely protected from the wheels of carriages by the breastwork of planks which the law requires round all such buildings. There is something maritime in these masts, and ladders, and cordage, even in the shouts of the masons. About a dozen yards from the hotel Maulincour, one of these ephemeral ...

— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... very large feet encased in boots which had never been a pair. He sat upon a rickety, straw-bottomed chair under an improvised awning which was made up of four poles and a bit of sacking. He had a table in front of him—a table partially and very insecurely propped up by a bundle of old papers and books, since no two of its four legs were completely whole—and on the table there was a neckless bottle half-filled with ink, a few sheets of paper and a couple ...

— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... insecurely fastened or whether she broke the fastenings, was not disclosed at the moment, but the door gave way and the enraged beast sprang into the smaller compartment and toward the ...

— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum