INSULAR in sample sentences

Frank, Top Cat, Jasper, Ethel, Richard, Lincoln, Jimmy Sue, and all the rest of the insular, world-protected crowd that came across the river that day were having a ball.

Pat Conroy -- The Water is Wide

Their world was insular, away from the real world that I was running from.

James McBride -- The Color of Water

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf.

Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

He’d hated it: Ojai was too small, too insular and, in the summer months, simply too hot for him.

Micheal Scott -- The Alchemyst

One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular.

Henry David Thoreau -- Walden

During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation.

Jack London -- The Call of the Wild

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Both preferred a continental to an insular manner of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence.

James Joyce -- Ulysses

You chose me as a fairly well-known person, and a person who was sure to take the letters to the police-and also, in your rather insular mind, you enjoyed scoring off a foreigner.

Agatha Christie -- The ABC Murders

He knows that that sort of insular passion can’t be sustained.

Jhumpa Lahiri -- The Namesake

Portly in build, jovial in countenance and somewhat bald of pate, Mr. Jellyband was indeed a typical rural John Bull of those days—the days when our prejudiced insularity was at its height, when to an Englishman, be he lord, yeoman, or peasant, the whole of the continent of Europe was a den of immorality and the rest of the world an unexploited land of savages and cannibals.

Baroness Orczy -- The Scarlet Pimpernel

As I see it, the battle lines are between the idealized, superficial and insular-minded way of looking at the world (which many schools and mainstream culture impose on our children and the rest of us), and the actual conditions of our lives with all its multiplicity, struggle, shading and nuance.

Luis J. Rodriguez -- Always Running

Henry Thompson was the extreme of insularity, and Noel Ryland the extreme of frothiness, while between them, supporting the state, defending the evangelical churches and domestic brightness and sound business, were Babbitt and his friends.

Sinclair Lewis -- Babbitt

She was close in her husband’s arms; she clung to him; whatever of strangeness and slowness and insularity she might find in him, none of that mattered so long as she could slip her hands beneath his coat, run her fingers over the warm smoothness of the satin back of his waistcoat, seem almost to creep into his body, find in him strength, find in the courage and kindness of her man a shelter from the perplexing world.

Sinclair Lewis -- Main Street

To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they offer an equal opportunity.

E.M. Forster -- Howards End

His world is insular, Lieutenant, comprised for the most part of himself alone.

J.D. Robb -- Glory in Death

But how insular and pathetically solitary are all the people we know !

Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Society and Solitude

Max’s life at the farm was relatively quiet and insular.

Henry H. Neff -- The Fiend And The Forge

On our lips our continental English will differ more and more from the insular English, and we believe that this is not deplorable but desirable.

Henry L. Mencken -- The American Language

But I do think that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in shaping the language of the child.

Amy Tan -- Mother Tongue

An insular situation, and a powerful marine, guarding it in a great measure against the possibility of foreign invasion, supersede the necessity of a numerous army within the kingdom.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay -- The Federalist Papers

They soon spread beyond their insular boundaries to every corner of the habitable globe; some have formed colonies, others independent states; the mother-country has maintained its monarchical constitution; many of its offspring have founded powerful republics; but wherever the English have been they have boasted of the privilege of trial by jury.

Alexis de Toqueville -- Democracy In America, Volume 1

On their side they would say, "M. de Tapeworm continues his system of stupid insular arrogance and vulgar falsehood against the greatest nation in the world.

William Makepeace Thackeray -- Vanity Fair

"… the Insular Cases of nineteen aught one," Mr. Doans was saying.

Ouida Sebestyen -- Words by Heart

Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable.

Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they offer an equal opportunity.

E.M. Forster -- Howards End

Rufus Wilmot Griswold, the enemy of Poe, rose from his decorous Baptist pew to protest that so much patriotism amounted to insularity and absurdity, but there seems to have been no one to second the motion.

Henry L. Mencken -- The American Language

I saw that under the mask of these half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the Vineyard.

Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

In this respect our situation bears another likeness to the insular advantage of Great Britain.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay -- The Federalist Papers

For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

Being rendered by her insular situation and her maritime resources impregnable to the armies of her neighbors, the rulers of Great Britain have never been able, by real or artificial dangers, to cheat the public into an extensive peace establishment.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay -- The Federalist Papers

"He has said quite enough," said Poirot, and he added to Clarke: "You are very full of an insular superiority, but for myself I consider your crime not an English crime at all-not aboveboard-not sporting-" I am sorry to relate that as the door closed behind Franklin Clarke I laughed hysterically.

Agatha Christie -- The ABC Murders

On it I find /Bacharach/, /Dupré/, /Esch/, /Estopinal/, /Focht/, /Heintz/, /Kahn/, /Kiess/, /Kreider/, /La Guardia/, /Kraus/, /Lazaro/, /Lehbach/, /Romjue/, /Siegel/ and /Zihlman/, not to mention the insular delegates, /Kalanianole/, [Pg271] /de Veyra/, /Davila/ and /Yangko/, and enough Irishmen to organize a parliament at Dublin.

Henry L. Mencken -- The American Language

This view would remove many difficulties, but it would not, I think, explain all the facts in regard to insular productions.

Darwin, Charles -- The Origin of Species

insular territories

Hawaii’s insular culture

an exceedingly insular man; so deeply private as to seem inaccessible to the scrutiny of a novelist

insular attitudes toward foreigners

To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they offer an equal opportunity.

Forster, E. M. -- Howards End

The persecuted young woman had but to beckon a finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his insular haven.

Henry, O. -- The Four Million

As to Mills, he was perfectly insular.

Conrad, Joseph -- The Arrow of Gold

English insular narrowness certainly never had franker expression than in his exclamation: ’For anything I can see, all foreigners are fools.

Fletcher, Robert Huntington -- A History of English Literature

One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular.

Thoreau, Henry David -- Walden & on the Duty of Civil Disobedience

The soil is varied and productive; and its almost insular form gives it two grand lines of communication by the rivers Parana and Uruguay.

Darwin, Charles -- The Voyage of the Beagle

The insular nature of Great Britain obtruded itself upon his notice in an odious form.

Conrad, Joseph -- The Secret Agent