But when parents confess themselves nervous, it generally means a mental and emotional instability of some sort.

Footnotes: [Footnote 1: "A hysterical fit indicates a lamentable instability of the nervous system.

The wise knowing the instability of youth and beauty, of life and treasure-hoards, of prosperity and the company of the loved ones, never covet them.

The skin often presents an instability of the blood vessels, so that they now react to stroking with a blanched instead of a reddened effect.

SIR, The writers who have undertaken the unpromising task of moderating desire, exert all the power of their eloquence, to shew that happiness is not the lot of man, and have, by many arguments and examples, proved the instability of every condition by which envy or ambition are excited.

Young as Horatio was, and gay by nature, he sometimes loved to indulge the most serious meditations; and this place, as well as the condition of those he served, remonstrating to him the instability of all human greatness, he made this general reflection, that there was nothing truly valuable but virtue, because the owner could be deprived of that only by himself, and not by either the fraud or force of others.

The critical periods of life, when a profound revolution is overturning the endocrine equilibrium, puberty, pregnancy, and the menopause, are the periods of most frequent occurrence of insanity, when mental instability reveals endocrine instability (Dementia praecox, pregnancy psychosis, menopause neurosis).

This procedure perfectly symbolizes a distracted mind; it undoubtedly suggests a superior point of view, from which the tribulations of an insignificant individual are seen to be insignificant; but in a larger sense it symbolizes the very instability and waywardness of Heine himself.

His change of political opinion, from the time he entered life under the protection of a favourite of Cromwell, might have argued instability, if he had changed a second time, when the current of power and popular opinion set against the doctrines of the Reformation.

The Russian example has taught the world the instability of diplomatic bargains in a time of such fundamental issues as the present.