Literary notes about Distrust (AI summary)
The word “distrust” weaves through literature as a multifaceted device that captures both personal and societal caution. In some narratives, it illustrates the delicate interplay between love and suspicion or personal vulnerability—as when affection is tainted by an underlying wariness [1] or when a character’s glance betrays hidden doubts [2]. In other contexts, writers use distrust to interrogate authority and the reliability of established institutions, suggesting that a skeptical stance is often born of past betrayals or the inherent uncertainty of human affairs [3, 4]. Philosophical and historical texts, too, invoke distrust as a tool to challenge accepted truths or to emphasize the precarious balance between security and deception, urging readers to question appearances and reconsider deep-seated assumptions about truth [5, 6].
- Love has more of distrust than assurance.
— from Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Peter Abelard and Héloïse - He eyed me with distrust and astonishment, and I saw that the Banditti were frequently whispering among themselves.
— from The Monk: A Romance by M. G. Lewis - Well said, I think, and prudently, By one who knew distrust to be The parent of security.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine - It was dangerous to trust the sincerity of Augustus; to seem to distrust it was still more dangerous.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - If Livy say the Gods made once a Cow speak, and we believe it not; wee distrust not God therein, but Livy.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes - When he did, he stopped suddenly and gazed at them with an expression of lowering distrust.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte
