"Instability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when the supply for customs shall have been coined and the first effervescence has passed away, the emission of silver far below the standard of gold; and when the people become tired of it, disgusted or ruined by its instability, as they soon would be, a fresh clamor may be expected for the remonetization of gold, and another clipping or debasing of gold coins may follow to bring them again into circulation on the basis of silver equivalency. In this slippery descent ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... part of the subject, let it be remembered that there is one other characteristic of the French revolution, as striking as its dreadful and destructive principles; I mean the instability of its Government, which has been of itself sufficient to destroy all reliance, if any such reliance could, at any time, have been placed on the good faith of any of its rulers. Such has been the incredible rapidity with which the revolutions in France have succeeded ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... lay it continually and with uttermost humiliation to heart that we all have Captain Anything's opportunism, his self-interest, his insincerity, his instability, and his secret deceitfulness in ourselves. That man knows little of himself who does not despise and hate himself for his secret self-seeking even in the service of God. For, how the love of praise will seduce and corrupt this man, and the love of gain that man! How easy it is to flatter ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... interesting study to examine these two letters of the Apostle Peter, in order to construct from them a picture of what he became, and to contrast it with his own earlier self when full of self-confidence, rashness, and instability. It took a lifetime for Simon, the son of Jonas, to grow into Peter; but it was done. And the very faults of the character became strength. What he had proved possible in his own case he commands and commends to us, and from the height to which he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... frequent. The "Socialistic" ministers were exhorting the masses to be patient. All decisions and measures, including the calling of the Constituent Assembly, were being postponed. The insolvency and the instability of the coalition regime ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... phrase about the worst use a man can be put to. Ladies sent flowers to the condemned man's cell. After all, hanging him, poor fellow, would not bring Miss Johnson back to life. However, few spoke of Miss Johnson, she was forgotten by all but one man, who ground his teeth when he realised the instability of public opinion. ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... the corrective measure for temperamental instability and with the advent of many new players in French tennis I would not be surprised to see a marked decrease of unexpected ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... Miguel and Izalco. The latter is called the Lighthouse of Salvador, because it explodes regularly every twenty minutes. The lesser living vents are called infernillos—little hells. Altogether it looks like Central America, as a whole, with its revolutions and its physical and political instability, must be ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... inter-relations and of the relation between the state and industry are pressing for solution in every important centre of modern economic life. Each constitutes a disturbing element and contributes its mite to the aggregate of social instability and unrest that ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... were over. He, too, was being drawn into the whirlpool. No more dreaming among his books; no more waking to the ordinary duties and cares of a reasonable life. As a natural consequence of the feeling of unsettlement, of instability, he had recourse more often than he wished to the old convivial habits, gathering about him once again, at club or restaurant, the kind of society in which he always felt at ease—good, careless, jovial, and often impecunious ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... scarcely more delighted when I first entered this peaceful demesne, than I now was—such is the instability and inconsistency of human nature!—when I escaped from it to the open downs, which had formerly seemed so waste and dreary, The air I breathed felt purer and more bracing. The clouds, riding high upon a summer breeze, drove, in gay succession, over my head, now obscuring the sun, now letting ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... makes them faint at the sight of a naked sword, though in the hands of their best friend, makes them pity extremely those, whom they find in any grief or affliction. Those philosophers, who derive this passion from I know not what subtile reflections on the instability of fortune, and our being liable to the same miseries we behold, will find this observation contrary to them among a great many others, which ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... this stability is so weak that the matter disappears by a sort of explosion more or less rapid. The bodies of the radium group offer an image of this phenomenon — a rather faint image, however, because the atoms of this body have only reached a period of instability when the dissociation is rather slow. It probably precedes another and more rapid period of dissociation capable of producing their final explosion. Bodies such as radium, thorium, etc., represent, no doubt, a state of old age at which all bodies must some day arrive, ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... to suppose, even if it be a delusion, that an institute, which has thus enlisted the sympathies of so many of the greatest minds of all races and of all ages—which is alone stable and progressive amidst instability and fluctuation,—will soon come to an end. Still more absurdly premature is it to raise a paean over its fall, upon every new attack upon it, when it has already survived so many. This, in fact, is a tone which, though every age renews it, should ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... placid. The geologist had an irritable temper, and in certain states of the atmosphere his rheumatic twinges made it advisable to shun argument with him. Godwin, moreover, was distinguished by an instability of mood peculiarly trying to an old man's testy humour. Of a sudden, to Mr Gunnery's surprise and annoyance, he would lose all interest in this or that science. Thus, one day the lad declared himself unable to name two stones set before him, felspar and quartz, and when his instructor ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... combine with fluorine. No more than two atoms of oxygen can be made to unite with one carbon atom, nor more than one hydrogen with one chlorine atom. There is thus an apparent choice for the kind and number of associates in molecular structure, and the instability of a molecule depends altogether upon the presence in its neighbourhood of other atoms for which some of the elements in the molecule have a stronger attraction or affinity than they have for the atoms they are now combined with. Thus iron is not stable in the ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... death of a good man be esteemed a punishment by those who believe in the immortality of the soul? They betray the instability of their faith. Yet as a mere philosopher, I cannot agree with the Greeks, on oi Jeoi jilousin apoqnhskei neoV, (Brunck, Poetae Gnomici, p. 231.) See in Herodotus (l. i. c. 31) the moral and pleasing ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... and, after carrying it to an apex, normally goes back and adds to the foundation to carry up the apex still higher and, if prevented from so doing, expends her energy in building the apex up at a sharper angle till instability results. School and kindergarten often lay a disproportionate strain on the tiny accessory muscles, weighing altogether but a few ounces, that wag the tongue, move the pen, and do fine work requiring accuracy. But still at this stage prolonged work requiring great accuracy ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... six-and-twenty in Paris is not the happiness of six-and-twenty at—say Blois," continued Blondet, taking no notice of the interruption. "And those that proceed from this text to rail at the instability of opinion are either knaves or fools for their pains. Modern medicine, which passed (it is its fairest title to glory) from a hypothetical to a positive science, through the influence of the great analytical school of Paris, has proved beyond a doubt that ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... unreliable, even the best of them. They had not the continuity which belonged to men. Even elderly women—he was thinking of women of the world—even they were not to be trusted. Life was warfare even when war was over. One had to fight always against the instability of those around you. And yet there was planted in a man—at any rate there was planted in him—a deep longing for stability, a need to trust, a desire to attach himself to someone with whom he could be quite unreserved, to whom he could "open out" without ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... cloud fact—their dissipation as the sun rises high in the heavens—is noticed in one of the most tender and pathetic passages in all the prophetic Scriptures. The Lord, by the mouth of Hosea, is mourning over the instability of His people. "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? For your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... projects of the moment, give the people an opportunity to reflect, and allow the good sense of the nation time for exertion. This uncertainty with respect to measures of great importance to every member of the community, this instability in principles which ought, if possible, to be rendered immutable, produced a long train of ills; and is seriously believed to have been among the operating causes of those pecuniary embarrassments, which, at that time, were so general ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... a loyal friend of his true friends; impulsive, erratic, impressionable to an alarming degree." Furthermore, the boy is maturing, traversing the path from boyhood to manhood, is unstable, not only in his growth, but also in his thought, is restless because of his natural instability, and sometimes suffers from headiness and independence. Between boyhood and manhood he travels swiftly, the scenery changes quickly as he travels—but he is traveling to manhood. No railway train or vehicle can keep pace with his speed. Morning sees him a million miles farther ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... second Degree, the Initiate was taught the Unity of the Godhead, the happiness of the patriarchs, the destruction by the Deluge, the depravity of the heart, and the necessity of a mediator, the instability of life, the final destruction of all created things, and the restoration of the world in a more perfect form. They inculcated the Eternity of the Soul, explained the meaning of the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, and held the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... cruel to discredit assertions. The Dr. could not be influenced by views of interest to give this, or any other account of his lordship; and could certainly have no other incentive, but that of serving his country, by shewing the instability of vice, and, by drawing into light an illustrious penitent, adding one wreath more ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... all the mischiefs, doubts, and inconveniences (both to the governors and the governed) arising from the variety of tenures, rights, and claims in all cases of landed property and feudal jurisdiction in India, from the informality, invalidity, and instability of all engagements in so divided and unsettled a state of society, and from the unavoidable anarchy and confusion of different laws, religions, and prejudices, moral, civil, and political, all jumbled together in one unnatural and discordant mass. Every ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the struggle, with a final grimace and hysterical giggle led the retreat across the poop and down the poop-ladder. Never had I seen a finer exemplification of mob psychology. Shorty, the most unstable-minded of the individuals who composed this mob, by his own instability precipitated the retreat in which the mob joined. When he broke before the steady discharge of the automatic in the hand of the mate, on the instant the rest broke with him. Least-balanced, his balance was the balance ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... its own ideal; his philosophy was a disallowance of all other reality; and his negations only defined and brightened his faith. Doubt, question and speculation, mystery and anomaly, the illusions of sense, the instability of natures, all that was irrational in life, with its certainties of logic and hazards of chance, all that was unproven in religion, dubious in received opinion, obscure in the destiny of man, were but glimpses of a larger unity, vistas ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... changes suggest is that at the height of the American crisis in the 1760's, when the real seeds of the Revolution were being sown, the instability of the British parliamentary government precluded a consistent and rational approach to American problems. Lacking internal cohesion, the English government could not meet the threat of external division. It also means that the colonists, especially the Virginians, saw parliament as ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... entertain now no sort of apprehension of his legal difficulties, and spoke of them as topics already adjusted. Nay, for that matter, he seemed to have no serious sense of any subject, whatever might be its personal or general interest; but, passing from point to point, exhibited that instability of mental vision which may not inaptly be compared to that wandering glance which is usually supposed to distinguish and denote, in the physical eye, the presence of insanity. It was not often now that he indulged, while speaking to me, in that manner ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... foot of the stairs, talking with the clergyman, a stout and unctuous figure. Bobby noticed that the great stolid form of the doctor was ill at ease. From his thickly bearded face his reddish eyes gleamed forth with a fresh instability. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... all the levity and instability of the Negro character; light- minded as the Abyssinians,—described by Gobat as constant in nothing but inconstancy,—soft, merry, and affectionate souls, they pass without any apparent transition into a state of fury, when they are capable of ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... one is apt to lose it, is a stranger in the house; and it tells of other strangers, past and future, each with his name slipped in. Similarly the guest-book, imitated from nefarious foreign inns, so fearfully suggestive of human instability, with its close-packed signatures, and dates of arrival and departure. And then the cruelty of housekeepers, and the ruthlessness of housemaids! Take heed, O Thestylis, dear Latin guardian of my hearth, take heed and imprint my urgent wishes in thy faithful heart: never, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... town. And qualitatively as well as quantitatively the effect may be absolutely incommensurable with the cause. We find this condition of things in ail organic matter. Chemists are distracted by the difficulties which the instability of albuminoid compounds opposes to their study. Two specimens, treated in what outwardly seem scrupulously identical conditions, behave in quite different ways. You know about the invisible factors of fermentation, and how the fate of a jar of milk—whether ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... to the spring of 1849, passed in a many-sided development of my position and temper, as I have described them, that is to say, in a sort of dull agitation. My latest artistic occupation had been the five-act drama, Jesus of Nazareth, just mentioned. Henceforth I lingered on in a state of brooding instability, full of expectation, yet without any definite wish. I felt fully convinced that my activity in Dresden, as an artist, had come to an end, and I was only waiting for the pressure of circumstances to shake ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... soul, even while it took short flights to the troubled waters. Of her firm footing she was exultingly proud. She stood high, close to danger, without giddiness. If at intervals her soul flew out like lightning from the rift (a mere shot of involuntary fancy, it seemed to her), the suspicion of instability made her draw on her treasury of impressions of the mornings at Lugano—her loftiest, purest, dearest; and these reinforced her. She did not ask herself why she should have to seek them for aid. In other respects her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of intermixture. Even when flowing in a regular channel there is a continued interchange of position of the different parts of a stream; the retardation of the bed causes variations in the velocity, which produce whirls and eddies and a general instability in the movement of the water in different parts of the section—the result being that the water at the bottom soon finds its way to the surface, and the reverse. I found by experiments on straight canals in earth and masonry that colored ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Ashamed of her instability, and feeling herself unworthy and no longer pure as absolution had made her, she went that afternoon to St. Joseph's, and in confession laid the matter before Monsignor Mostyn. Regarding the money question, he approved of what she had written ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... adventurer who chases the chain of necessity to the sources of this grand instability, is merged at once in a haze of speculations, beautiful as sunlight through morning mists, but uncertain as the veriest chimeras. While beyond the idea of comprehensive motion the colossal symmetry of Truth expands in ultimate ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cried. 'You rave! I have no cause for anger. In every way I have been taught my weakness, my instability, and my unfitness for the world. I am a plexus of weaknesses, an impotent Prince, a doubtful gentleman; and you yourself, indulgent as you are, have twice reproved my levity. And shall I be angry? I may feel the unkindness, but I have ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with fame, and what the world calls success, his mind goaded by bitter and repentant recollection, his best hope was to find a retirement in which he might nurse the melancholy that was to accompany him to his grave. "Yet why should an individual mourn over the instability of his hopes, and the vanity of his prospects? The ancient chiefs, who erected these enormous and massive towers 'to be the fortress of their race and the seat of their power', could they have dreamed the day was to come, when the last of their descendants should be expelled, a ruined wanderer, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... which was only that of a great danger happily averted, broke in on the flush of all that was best worth having and doing in existence, and seemed to utter a warning against the instability of life at its brightest and fairest. There was stag-hunting on Ascot Heath, at which the Queen and the Prince were to be present. He was to join in the hunt and she was to follow with Prince Ernest in a pony phaeton. As she stood by a window in ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... 'doldrums,' where it is nearly always calm, and very hot. There is also a belt of air running from Southern Europe to the West Indies where the north-east trade winds blow all the year round. Between this perpetual calm of the doldrums and the perpetual wind of the trades is a region of atmospheric instability. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... attempt to conceal that I am gratified by your impatience for the hour of meeting, I yet feel myself under the necessity of delaying that hour beyond the time originally fixed. Do not think me unkind for such an exercise of my power, nor accuse me of instability without first hearing my reasons. In the course of my journey from Churchhill I had ample leisure for reflection on the present state of our affairs, and every review has served to convince me that they ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... on each side of her throne, became impatient: they talked about the fickleness of the sex, the impossibility of inducing them to make up their minds; they whispered wise saws and sayings from Ferdistan and others, about the caprice of women, and the instability of their natures, and the more their legs ached from such perpetual demand upon their support, the more bitter did they become in their remarks. Poor, prosing old fools! the beauteous princess had long made up her mind, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... never bear to remain in one place for any length of time together. He is now going to sell the property he only bought last year. There is an instability about him; ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... my own instability of character. I feel myself the victim of a thousand plans and purposes, which change as soon and as often as they are made. I am afraid, sir, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... that did no harm—is, in the first place, identical. Next, it does not lie in the fact that the ships were insufficiently armored to keep out big shell. Next, the fatal explosion was not caused by a mine or by a torpedo. Lastly, it is in no sense due to any instability or any other dangerous characteristic of the propellants or explosives carried on board. I am free to confess that when I first heard of these ships going down as rapidly as they did, one of two conclusions seemed to be irresistible—either a shell had penetrated the lightly armored ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... legal basis, and, second, the insecurity to which it condemns free citizens; the fact, that is, that the few possessors can grant or withhold livelihood from the many non-possessors. There are only three solutions of this instability. These are, the distributive solution, the collectivist solution, and the servile solution. Of these three stable social arrangements the reformer, owing to the Christian traditions of society, will not advocate the introduction of the servile state, which Mr. Belloc ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... answered. Yet on Sunday he must answer again. How he wished Mrs. Shiffney had not called upon him a second time! In her persistence he read her worldly cleverness. She divined the instability which he now felt within him. It must be so. It was so. The first time he had met her he had had a feeling as if to her almost impertinent eyes he were transparent. And she had evidently seen ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... precipitately to a heap of broken stone and sand. The cliff had been shattered in some convulsion of nature, or loosened and disintegrated by the elements, and enormous masses of it had fallen into the gulch. These masses appeared to be in a state of instability, and it was not clear to Haig, from where he lay, how a trail could ever have been picked out among those jutting rocks and slides of debris, or how, once found, it could have remained intact on that shifting foundation. Was it possible that any living thing had ever made its ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... the point of view of tariff history have already been noted.[3] The extremely high rates levied under that legislation caused a slight reduction in customs revenue in 1891 and a sharp decline in 1892. Moreover the coincidence of instability in the currency system, business depression and the relatively high Wilson-Gorman tariff schedules of 1894 continued the decline of income from customs during ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... foreign Powers. The notice would put an end to one kind of intrigue, one kind of rumor and suspicion, which is holding industry and education back and which is keeping China in a state of unrest and instability. It would establish a period of comparative quiet in which whatever constructive forces exist may come to the front. The second measure would be more extreme. The diplomacy of the United States should take the lead in making it clear that unless the promises about the disbanding of the army, ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... The instability of the Indian.—It used to be a proverb among the Indians that "The white man is very uncertain." The following brief extract from the letter of a missionary among the Indians not only shows that the Indian is unstable, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... better part, will seem for a while as it were annihilated by the quiet in which their virtue and moderation incline them to enjoy the blessings of government. Besides that the opinion of the mere vulgar is a miserable rule even with regard to themselves, on account of their violence and instability. So that if you were to gratify them in their humor to-day, that very gratification would be a ground of their dissatisfaction on the next. Now as all these rules of public opinion are to be collected with great difficulty, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in 2006. The government has embraced an expansionary fiscal policy to reduce poverty by improving education, infrastructure, and foreign and domestic investment and pursuing market-oriented reforms, although energy shortages, instability in neighboring states, and lack of adequate transportation linkages to other countries continue to ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Good lack, good lack, to think of the instability of human affairs! Nothing certain in this world—most deceived when most confident—fools of ...
— St. Patrick's Day • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... the instability of my mind, that my "Beloved is unto me as a fountain sealed." But, he adds, I feel a little tendered this evening, on reading over a few comfortable expressions in a letter ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... an organism and a fully developed brain; in the psychologic order, the antagonism between the pure subjectivity of the imagination and the objectivity of ratiocinative processes; in other words, between mental instability and stability. As for the results, they appear only in the third period, the resultant ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... unfortunate to the nation than the preceding designs upon Rochefort; less disgraceful to the commanders, but equally the occasion of ridicule and triumph to our enemies. Indeed, the unhappy consequences of the political disputes at home, the instability of the administration, and the frequent revolutions in our councils, were strongly manifested by that langour infused into all our military operations, and general unsteadiness in our pursuits. Faction, in the mother-country, produced divisions and misconduct in the colonies. No ambition to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... against the kind Pope, who loved men of letters—that the destruction of St. Peter's, afterward ruthlessly carried out by succeeding popes, was in his plan, on the pretext, so constantly employed, and possibly believed in, of the instability of the ancient building. But there is no absolute certainty of evidence, and at all events he might have repented, for he certainly did not do that deed. He began the tribune, however, in the ancient church, which may have been a preparation for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... had one excuse for his instability, which Richard had not; for Clarence, having married the Earl of Warwick's daughter, was, of course, brought into very close connection with the earl, and was subjected greatly to his influence. Accordingly, whatever course Warwick decided to take, it ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... so far violates the conventions as to start with a mother whose moral instability is a worry to her children, and a hero who longs to be a practical builder despite a parental command to follow art—such a tale can at least claim the merit of originality. Mr. J. D. BERESFORD would be fully justified in claiming this and much more for An Imperfect Mother (COLLINS). Here is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... controversies and bitternesses were still swinging and swaying and developing when King George was being crowned. Close upon that event came a wave of social discontent, the great railway strike, a curious sense of social and political instability, and the first beginnings of the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... book. The question of charm may be taken into consideration, for any Chinaman will bear witness to the seductive effect of a gaily-dressed girl picking her way on tiny feet some three inches in length, her swaying movements and delightful appearance of instability conveying a general sense of delicate grace quite ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the character of Ophelia has a relative beauty and delicacy when considered in relation to that of Hamlet, which is the delineation of a man of genius in contest with the powers of this world. The weakness of volition, the instability of purpose, the contemplative sensibility, the subtlety of thought, always shrinking from action, and always occupied in "thinking too precisely on the event," united to immense intellectual power, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... may partly correct the Tendencies of the Democracy Influence which the American Democracy has exercised on the Laws relating to Elections Public Officers under the control of the Democracy in America Arbitrary Power of Magistrates under the Rule of the American Democracy Instability of the Administration in the United States Charges levied by the State under the rule of the American Democracy Tendencies of the American Democracy as regards the Salaries of public Officers Difficulties of distinguishing ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... expeditionary force to the 38th moon that the Nirvans themselves refused to visit. They tried to dissuade us but, being of a much younger species, we were less plagued by caution and went anyway. The mountains of this little moon are up to fifteen miles high, causing a state of instability that is chronic. Walking down those alabaster valleys was a more awesome experience than any galactic vista I have ever encountered. Our aesthetic sense proved stronger than common sense alertness and seven of us were ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... in his forcible chin, energy in the large lines of his mouth, decision in his clear-cut features. Yet there was something contradictory in his face. And the flitting melancholy, already remarked, surely hinted at some secret instability, perhaps known only to Harding himself, perhaps known ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... general reader, than that which comprised the fortunes of Wolsey. The eventful life of the Cardinal, checkered as it was by the vicissitudes of fortune, his sudden elevation, and finally his more sudden fall and death, display an appalling picture of "the instability of human affairs." This prelate and statesman, who even aspired to the Papal throne itself, "was an honest poore man's sonne in the towne of Ipswiche,"[1] who having received a good education, and being endowed with great capacity, soon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... of thrilling and dreadful interest that occurred in that small South American town on the occasion of the earthquake. Yet, awful though these were, they were as nothing compared with the more stupendous calamities that have been caused by earthquakes in that land of instability, not only in times long past, but in times so very recent that the moss cannot yet have begun to cover, nor the weather to stain, the tombstones and monuments of those ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... amazing," Omar observed. "Even her personal attendants whom I have questioned are ignorant of the direction she hath taken. They declare that she escaped within ten minutes of the blowing up of the palace-gate. The catastrophe alarmed her, and she saw in the fall of these defences the instability of her throne." ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... better; but he was never a mere slavish translator. So in the "Knight's Tale" he may be held in some points to have deviated disadvantageously from his original; but, on the other hand, in the "Clerk's Tale," he inserts a passage on the fidelity of women, and another on the instability of the multitude, besides adding a touch of nature irresistibly pathetic in the exclamation of the faithful wife, tried beyond her power of concealing the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Forte to the Piano. A beautiful Messa di Voce,[14] from a Singer that uses it sparingly, and only on the open Vowels, can never fail of having an exquisite Effect. Very few of the present Singers find it to their Taste, either from the Instability of their Voice, or in order to avoid all Manner of Resemblance of the odious Ancients. It is, however, a manifest Injury they do to the Nightingale, who was the Origin of it, and the only thing which the Voice can well ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... touched with compassion towards the unfortunate queen; and all her fears and jealousies being now laid asleep, by the consideration of that ruin and infamy in which Mary's conduct had involved her, she began to reflect on the instability of human affairs, the precarious state of royal grandeur, the danger of encouraging rebellious subjects; and she resolved to employ her authority for alleviating the calamities of her unhappy kinswoman. She sent Sir Nicholas Throgmorton ambassador to Scotland, in order to remonstrate both with Mary ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... somewhat slender fallen tree. It was then that Aladdin saw him show fear. Bullets tore up the bark of the tree, and pine needles, clipped from the trees overhead, fell in showers. But he did not mind that. It was the slenderness and instability of the fallen tree that froze the marrow in his bones: would it bear his one hundred and twenty-four pounds, or would it precipitate him, an awful drop of ten feet, into the softest of muds at the bottom of the gully, where a sickeningly striped but in reality harmless ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... in a great political structure were of the noblest, rarest, most enduring and beneficent; the faults that marred the beauty and consistency of their own character, were the exaggerations of their virtues, and arose from the frailty and instability of the human heart, even when most governed and inspired by the highest motives. The principles remain steadfast, immovable, immortal; the defects we can but grieve over and forgive for the sake of the grandeur they only marred but could ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... desire on the part of either government to retreat from its main position, though it does not follow that either sought to bring about a renewal of the war. Whitworth constantly reported that no formidable armaments were being prepared, and clung for months to a belief that Napoleon, knowing the instability of his own power and the ruinous state of his finances, would ultimately give way. On the other hand, Talleyrand and Joseph Bonaparte never ceased to hope that Great Britain would make ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... those residing at high altitudes, best explained by nerve influence. The frequency of glaucoma among Jews may be due to a small cornea, as suggested by Priestley Smith; but it is quite as reasonable to connect it with a racial excitability or nervous instability. More definite knowledge of the nervous mechanism concerned in the regulation of intra-ocular pressure and the production of ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... what is to be the subject of examination, and where it is that we are to observe those operations which must determine either the stability or the instability of this land on which ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... after decades of war remains a daunting challenge. The population lacks education and productive skills, particularly in the poverty-ridden countryside, which suffers from an almost total lack of basic infrastructure. Fear of renewed political instability and corruption within the government discourage foreign investment and delay foreign aid. On the brighter side, the government is addressing these issues with assistance from ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... hope—the triumph of youthful love, there is yet something irresistibly affecting in the earnestness with which he expresses that passion; something which adds most deeply to the interest which its expression is calculated to excite, by reminding one of the instability of human enjoyment, and of the many misfortunes which the course of life may bring with it to destroy the visions of inexperienced affection. We have already mentioned, that in the expression of profound emotion and deep suffering, the countenance of Talma is altogether ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... he does we can descry the school-master who arrived at the front rather late in life. One needs only to go over the record and mark how often he has reversed himself to detect a certain mental and temperamental instability clearly indicating a lack of fixed or resolute intellectual purpose. This is characteristic of an excess in education; of the half baked mind overtrained. The overeducated mind fancies himself a doctrinaire when he is in point ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... wearily into the little grave. What was the use of asking Death where her sting was, before that small, dark hole in the ground? And then my thoughts escaped me altogether—away into matters of life—and no very high matters at that—ships, freights, business. In the instability of his emotions man resembles deplorably a monkey. I was disgusted with my thoughts—and I thought: Shall I be able to get a charter soon? Time's money. . . . Will that Jacobus really put good business in my way? I must go and see him in a day ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... which requires a succession of rebellions to secure reforms afterwards admitted to be reasonable cannot be a good form of government. These agitations have inflicted grave material and moral injury on Ireland. The instability of the political system has prejudiced natural economic development. Capital will not be invested in industries where no one is certain about the future. And because the will of the people was so passionately set on political freedom ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... first day of the month Ivan received a letter from Kashkine, explaining these things, giving a minute plan of the arrangements, and eagerly congratulating Ivan on his assured triumph. For, well as he knew his friend's instability, Constantine never for an instant doubted that Ivan would consent to appear at a reunion for which, as Kashkine knew, he had been longing, bitterly, ever since the sudden accession to his father's wealth and title had barred him from the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the carriage jars the windows. Rattling refers directly to the sound produced by shaking. To joggle is to shake slightly; as, a passing touch joggles the desk on which one is writing. A thing trembles that shakes perceptibly and with an appearance of uncertainty and instability, as a person under the influence of fear; a thing shivers when all its particles are stirred with a slight but pervading tremulous motion, as a human body under the influence of cold; shuddering is a more pronounced movement of a similar kind, in human beings often the effect of emotional ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... it is urged (but most erroneously, in my opinion) that instability is just as apt to be produced by retaining the public lands as a source of revenue as from any other cause, and this is ascribed to a constant fluctuation, as it is said, in the amount of sales. If there were anything in this objection, it equally applies ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... and soke of Horncastre, with all rights, appurtenances, &c., to hold to himself, his heirs and assigns for ever," and that he, the said Edward, "can give and grant to the said Robert, bishop, an annual rent of 28 pounds 6s. 8d." We have, however, in this case an illustration of the instability even of royal decrees, in that on the demise of that worthy prince, to whom the realm and Church of England owe so much, his successor, Queen Mary, in the very next year, A.D. 1553, cancelled this sale, and a document ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... true which he afterwards imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and then another and another, he has no longer any faith left, and great disputers, as you know, come to think at last that they have grown to be the wisest of mankind; for they alone perceive the utter unsoundness and instability of all arguments, or indeed, of all things, which, like the currents in the Euripus, are going up and down in never-ceasing ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... Parthenia Instability of Human Greatness Happiness of the Shepherd's Life Marriage of Christ and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the King of Bavaria to speak to von Doenniges? Would not the Catholic Bishop Ketteler help him?—he would become a Catholic. And ever present an insane belief in the reality of her faithlessness, mockingly accompanied by a terribly lucid recognition of the instability of character that made it certain. The "No"—her first word to him at their first meeting—resounded in his ears, prophetically ominous. The sunrise, hidden by rain and mist, added its symbolic ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in the relatively small portion of linguistic history that lies open to inspection; or that there are certain favorable conditions that make for profound morphological disturbances from without, say a peculiar instability of linguistic type or an unusual degree of cultural contact, conditions that do not happen to be realized in our documentary material; or, finally, that we have not the right to assume that a language may easily exert a remolding morphological ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... it should be patronized, or waiting to discover whether it is likely to become permanently established. Mr. Kelly's wanderings in early life seem to have tinctured his later career with the hue of instability. Ever, it would seem, ready to enlist in any new enterprise, he was led to abandon those occupations, which, if persevered in, would probably have been triumphant. His life was a constant series of changes, in which ill-luck seems to have continually triumphed, because ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... untitled gentleman from a new, almost unknown, country, was easily and quickly one of the most brilliant members. Utterly unawed by the splendid company in which he found himself, he valued it at its true worth and was keenly and amusingly observant of its pretensions, its shams, its flippancy, its instability, its charm. Soon he had become as great a favorite as Mr. Jefferson himself, though winning his enviable position by qualities the very opposite of that gentleman's. Mr. Morris rivalled the Parisians themselves in caustic wit, perfect manners, and the thousand and one social ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... fire-making. It seemed to him afterwards that his judgment was strangely at fault; he perceived naught of import in the shallow brightness of the young man's eyes, like the polished surface of jet; in the instability of his jealousy, his anger; in his hap-hazard, mercurial temperament. Once he might have noted how flat were the spaces beneath the eyes, how few were the lines that defined the lid, the socket, the curve of ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... H{2}O{2}. Water, as is well known, is a very stable body, and although it can be decomposed, yet it requires some considerable power to effect it. Now the extra quantity of oxygen which may be considered to have been introduced into water to convert it into peroxide has also introduced an element of instability, the extra quantity of oxygen being ever ready to combine with some other body for which it has a greater affinity than for the water. This property can be utilised in the bleaching industry with great advantage, true bleaching ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... attempts on the part of rivals in France to shake his hold, but also the active enmity of the Bourbon king of Spain, Philip V.,—an enmity which seems to have dated from an intrigue of Orleans, during the late war, to supplant Philip on the Spanish throne. There was therefore a feeling of instability, of apprehension, in the governments of England and France, which influenced the policy of both. As regards the relations of France and Spain, the mutual hatred of the actual rulers stood for a while in the way of the friendly accord Louis XIV. had hoped ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... to instability In a moment falls to the ground, And as it has the brilliancy of glass It also ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... thriving one!" Then, turning to his wife, he should say, "To me Brihaspati has given thee; obtaining offspring through me, thy husband, live with me a hundred autumns." The intention of the ceremony is plainly to guard against the fickleness of fortune and the instability of earthly bliss by the steadfast influence of the constant star. It is the wish expressed in Keats's ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... their true relation to the terrestrial phenomena accurately established; so that his very proofs were monumental, and became themselves the advertisements of his profound misjudgment. But meanwhile he is the Admiral of the Ocean Seas, and can "make it so"; and accordingly, in a state of mental instability, he makes the Gulf of Paria to be a slope of earth immediately below the Garden of Eden, although fortunately he does not this time provide a sworn affidavit of trembling ships' boys to confirm ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... them from external injury. There was some reason, however, to doubt the efficacy of this protection; for, as the spring-tides approached, the numerous grounded masses around the shores of the bay began to evince symptoms of instability, one or two having fallen over, and others turned round; so that these masses might be looked upon rather as dangerous neighbours, likely to create a premature disruption of the ice, than as the means of security, which, in seas not subject to any considerable rise of tide, they had so often ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... remarkable that with such instability his moral nature should continue uncorrupted; but this I believe he owed chiefly to his love and admiration of his brother. For my part, I could not help liking him much. There was a half-plaintive playfulness about him, alternated with gloom, and occasionally with wild merriment, which ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... children from gastro-intestinal troubles is greatly lessened by the exclusion of meat from their dietary. Dr. Clouston, of Edinburgh, an eminent medical authority, states that in his experience, those children who show the greatest tendencies to instability of the brain, insanity, and immoral habits are, as a rule, those who use animal food in excess; and that he has seen a change of diet to milk and farinaceous food produce a marked change ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... "inspiration," the late Mr. Stevenson "Brownies," and the scientist "unconscious cerebration." A man of talent has a good Working Consciousness, a man of genius a good Working Sub-Consciousness. Hence the frequent mental instability of genius. The Infant Prodigy's feats are done by his Sub-Consciousness. Instinct is Racial Genius, Genius is Individual Instinct. The highest Genius is sane. A Shakespeare or a Goethe has both a good ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the highest merit; his scanty other works are forgotten. The Coplas por la muerte de su padre, beautifully translated by Longfellow, contain some laments for the writer's personal loss, but more general reflections upon the instability of worldly glory. It is not to be thought that this famous poem is in any way original in idea; the theme had already been exploited to satiety, but Manrique gave it a superlative perfection of form and a contemporary application which left ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... first school, and only 9.6 per cent had taught as many as four schools. Few teachers, the report showed, have taught more than one or two years in a school, while the average teaching life of a rural teacher is three and three quarters school years. The instability of the profession is so great that it is necessary for the state of South Dakota to recruit annually about one third of its ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... see the truth, once again, in the acknowledged instability of the passional element in human nature—particularly in man. It is nothing short of amazing to see this very instability urged as a reason why the marriage tie should be still further weakened, as though man should deliberately ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... of the severity of fate. Would any modern audience be found, which would be prepared to sit for a whole summer day listening eagerly to the grand expression by such poets as Aeschylus and Sophocles of the power of Nemesis, the instability of all prosperity, the misfortunes which hunt those who have the ill luck to displease the gods? Surely not. And not in Greek tragedy only, but in elegiac poetry and in epigram, we find perfect reflections of our most gloomy moods. But for such expressions of sorrow and ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... are assured that he "would go nowhere unless the Evangelical Christians of the place united in an invitation and the ministers were ready to cooperate." But the whole affair was of course intensely distasteful to unemotional people; the very fact that a man could be converted argued his instability; and it is unquestionably true that Boston's attitude toward Mr. Durant was reflected for many years in her attitude toward the college ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... especially girls, were killed by their parents either before or after birth. The result was a decay of the maternal instinct and the custom of farming out children to strangers. This contributed to the excess of infant mortality, the degeneration of morals and the instability of the family.[1011] So in Japan the pressure of population led to infanticide and the sale of daughters to a life of ignominy, which took them out of the child-bearing class.[1012] Nor was ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... no new attack of my disease, or fresh doubt that I have as to my recovery, has led me to take this step of communicating to you my intentions, for, thank God, I feel very well and hopeful; but taught by observation and experience the instability of all human things, and even of the life to which we are so much attached, and which is, nevertheless, a mere bubble; and knowing, moreover, that my state of health brings me more within the danger of death, I have thought ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... doctor, if you happen to have a little money lying idle, I can put you on to a good thing—a very good thing indeed. I don't know, I'm sure, whether you keep an eye on the fluctuations of the share-market. If so, you'll no doubt have noticed the ... let me say the extreme instability of 'Porepunkahs.' After making an excellent start, they have dropped till they are now to be had at one-twentieth ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... stay the New England persecutors was effectual in preventing further martyrdoms, but the colonial authorities, trusting in the remoteness of their situation, and perhaps in the supposed instability of the royal government, shortly renewed their severities in all other respects. Catharine's fanaticism had become wilder by the sundering of all human ties; and wherever a scourge was lifted, there was she to receive the blow; and whenever a dungeon was unbarred, thither she came ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the organization of the diamond trust Rhodes gave another evidence of his business acumen. He saw that the disorganized marketing of the output would lead to instability of price. He therefore formed the Diamond Syndicate in London, composed of a small group of middlemen who distribute the whole Kimberley output. In this way the available supply is ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... thorough-going conservative we are likely to picture him as a stay-at-home person, a barnacle fastened to one spot. We take for granted that aversion to locomotion and aversion to change are the same thing. But in thinking thus we leave out of account the inherent instability of human nature. Everybody likes a little change now and then. If a person cannot get it in one way, he gets it in another. The stay-at-home gratifies his wandering fancy by making little alterations in his too-familiar surroundings. ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers |
