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More "Propensity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... between two things, where there is no personal advantage to bias the decision, they will always choose that which seems to them true, rather than the other which appears false. To this is opposed the notorious fact of the remarkable propensity which children have to lying. This is readily admitted; but it does not meet us, unless it can be shown that they have not in the act of lying an eye to its reward,—setting aside any outward advantage,—in the shape of self-complacent thought at their ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... certain vessels which are susceptible of an internal pruriency, and thence produce laughter, the blood is set in commotion, in consequence of an alteration in the vital spirits, whereby involuntary fits of intoxicating joy, and a propensity to dance, are occasioned. To this notion he was, no doubt, led from having observed a milder form of St. Vitus' dance, not uncommon in his time, which was accompanied by involuntary laughter, and which bore a resemblance to the hysterical laughter ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... was one other drawback to the otherwise picturesque and interesting group, and this was the spitting propensity of the Yankees. All over the floor—that floor, too, on which other men besides themselves were to repose—they discharged tobacco-juice and spittle. The nation cannot be too severely blamed and pitied for this disgusting practice, yet we feel a tendency, not to excuse, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... resumed their conversation. 'Did you know,' said the one who had first spoken of Miss W., 'that she sometimes had seasons of bitter repentance for indulging in this unhappy propensity of hers? She would, at such times, resolve to be more on her guard, but, after all her good resolutions, she would yield to the slightest temptations. When she was expressing, and apparently really feeling sorrow for having wounded ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... friends that stand in need of it; or, in short, will go to the world's end, or fifty miles farther, as he himself would say, to serve you, provided you can procure him a bit of decent fighting. Now, in truth and soberness, it is difficult to account for this propensity; especially when the task of ascertaining it is assigned to those of another country, or even to those Irishmen whose rank in life places them too far from the customs, prejudices, and domestic opinions ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantile airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. Do not foster these prejudices, and they will naturally fall into their ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the lapse of a century. The preponderance of centenarians of the supposed weaker sex has led to the revival of some amusing theories tending to explain this phenomenon. One cause of the longevity of women is stated to be, for instance, their propensity to talk much and to gossip, perpetual prattle being highly conducive, it is said, to the active circulation of the blood, while the body remains unfatigued and undamaged. More serious theorists or statisticians, while commenting on the subject of the relative longevity ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... he was evidently not at his ease. He was always uncomfortably conscious that Ethel had not the slightest possible scruple against laughing at him, and he was not a little afraid of her well-known propensity to tease. Ethel regarded him with secret amusement. A woman is seldom displeased at seeing a man disconcerted by her presence, even when she pities him and would fain put him at his ease. It is a tribute to her powers too genuine to be disputed, and ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... shindy: in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is FIGHT, there can be no mistake about it. From highest to lowest—in the peer and the bog-trotter, the inherent propensity breaks forth, more or less ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... sings under the wise and loving care of his "other mother," the teacher. He is living, not simply preparing to live. All life should be joyous, spontaneous, natural. The Rousseau Idea, which was modified and refined by Froebel, is the utilization of the propensity to play. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... long by the sound of loud growlings, which made Uncle Mark and several of the party start to their feet, with guns ready to receive the bear from whom they expected an attack. Recollecting Jacques' propensity to practical joking, I lay quiet; and I heard my uncle come back soon afterwards, growling almost as much as the supposed bear, and observing that the brute had got off, though it must have been close to the camp. I said nothing, ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... to make a point in favor of dogs, at least so far as their claim to being "so human" is concerned. There has been supposed to be nothing more distinctive of human nature than its propensity to suicide, arising from its capacity, as it rises in civilization and enlightenment, of finding out that life is not worth living. But a number of well-authenticated cases have come to my observation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Arabs, in particular, are commended by Sprengel above their brethren for their observations on the practice of medicine. [41] But whatever real knowledge they possessed was corrupted by their inveterate propensity for mystical and occult science. They too often exhausted both health and fortune in fruitless researches after the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated by the aspect of the stars. Their physics were debased ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... again, some profound sally, some sign of the lad's remarkable range of intellect, would reassure him. He would say, as the Marquis said at the rumor of some escapade, "Boys will be boys." Chesnel had spoken to the Chevalier, lamenting the young lord's propensity for getting into debt; but the Chevalier manipulated his pinch of snuff, and listened with ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... The woman's strength and determination contrasted with the man's weakness and vacillation; her reasoning imperturbation, prudent foresight, and love of order and activity, with his excessive irritability and sensitiveness, wanton carelessness, and unconquerable propensity to idleness and every kind of irregularity. While George Sand sat at her writing-table engaged on some work which was to bring her money and fame, Musset trifled away his time among the female singers and dancers of the noiseless ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... every thing conspired to rouse in all hearts; fatuity persuaded monarchs that ideal, metaphysical barriers, terrible fables, distant phantoms, would be competent to curb those inordinate desires, to rein in that impetuous propensity to crime, that rendered society incommodious to itself; credulity fancied that invisible powers would be more efficacious, than those visible motives that evidently invited mortals to the commission of mischief. Every thing was understood to be achieved, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... One strange propensity of his electrified the palace; but on account of his small size, and for variety's sake, and as a monster, he was indulged on it. In a word, he was let speak ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... regarded with indulgence; they were foils capable of being turned to good account as set-offs for her own endowments. To violence, injustice, tyranny, she succumbed—they were her natural masters; she had no propensity to hate, no impulse to resist them; the indignation their behests awake in some hearts was unknown in hers. From all this it resulted that the false and selfish called her wise, the vulgar and debased termed her ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... required a muster of new arms, as well as courtships and counsels, for the time then began to grow quick and active, fitter for stronger motions than them of the carpet and measure; and it will be a true note of her magnanimity that she loved a soldier, and had a propensity in her nature to regard and always to grace them, which the Court, taking it into their consideration, took it as an inviting to win honour, together with Her Majesty's favour, by exposing themselves to the wars, especially when the Queen and the affairs of the kingdom stood in ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... not by any change in our basic objective, which remains peace and freedom for all mankind. Rather, the need for change is driven by the inexorable buildup of Soviet military power and the increasing propensity of Soviet leaders to use this power in coercion and outright aggression to impose ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... meilleur voysin et amy, Cardinal de Lorraine." This was pretty fair dissembling even for the smooth tongue of the arch-persecutor of the Huguenots. It must be confessed, however, that the sheep's clothing never seemed to fit him well; the wolfish foot or the bloodthirsty jaws had an irresistible propensity to show themselves. The letter of the cantons, the king's reply, and Lorraine's letter, from the MSS. in the archives of Basle, are printed in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... easily irritated when inebriated, that Mary was continually in dread lest he should frighten her mother to death; her sickness called forth all Mary's tenderness, and exercised her compassion so continually, that it became more than a match for self-love, and was the governing propensity of her heart through life. She was violent in her temper; but she saw her father's faults, and would weep when obliged to compare his temper with her own.—She did more; artless prayers rose to Heaven for pardon, when she was conscious of having ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... motion, with lessened muscular power, in parts not in action and even when supported; with a propensity to bend the trunk forwards, and to pass from a walking to a running pace: the senses and ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... an attack on over- interference, vested interests, superstition, and tyranny of every form. It showed a marked propensity to ignore history, and to judge everything by its immediate reasonableness. It pictured a society free from all laws and coercion, freed from all clerical influence and ruled by benevolence, a society in which all men had equal rights and were able to attain the fullest self-realization. In ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... upon this subject to proving that "the purer the German race—that is to say, the stronger the Germanism (e.g., Teutonism) of a country—the more it reveals in its psychical character an extraordinary propensity to self-destruction." ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... have almost ruined one source, the principal one, indeed, of my former happiness; that eternal propensity I always had to fall in love. My heart no more glows with feverish rapture. I have no paradisaical evening interviews, stolen from the restless cares and prying inhabitants of this weary world. I have only * * * *. This last is one of your distant acquaintances, has a fine figure, and elegant ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... placed a lady who was much adored by that curious professor of philandering, political injustice, psychology, and the use of the spunge, but who wisely put him off. Mrs. Inchbald's (1753-1821) command of a certain kind of dramatic or at least theatrical situation, and her propensity to Richardsonian "human-heart"-mongering, have from time to time secured a certain number of admirers for A Simple Story (1791) and Nature and Art (1796). Some, availing themselves of the confusion between "style" and "handling" ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... said Garnesk as we passed Glasnabinnie, "don't tell Hilderman much about what has happened. We feel we can trust him, but you never know a man's propensity for talking until you know him ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... Blake, as when bathed in tears. Detractors of this estimable woman, indeed, were wont to complain that she was too easily content with these pearly but insufficient aids to lavatory process; and her propensity for adhering for weeks at a time to an ancient black silk, which had seen service all over the Western frontier, gave sombre color to the statement. The few ladies of the —th who had come to Russell for the summer were hardly settled in their new quarters when the regiment was ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... a combustible force, and, although there are certain rules by which you may obtain the greatest degree of improvement, you cannot rigidly adhere to them. There are numberless instances when the propensity or inclination of the child may appear to you to be aggravating and annoying; nevertheless, you must not let your irritability interfere with the development of that trait preeminent to the ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... the interest I took in her led me to question her about her husband and family. She answered me by repeating a name which I have now forgotten, and told me she had no children. I was seized with a strong propensity to learn whether the attractions of Gooreedeeana were sufficiently powerful to secure her from the brutal violence with which the women are treated, and as I found my question either ill understood or reluctantly answered, I proceeded to examine her head, the part on which the husband's vengeance ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... more frequent, that strange visitors asked for him, that he came home at midnight oftener than at dusk. Nor was it till her child was near a year old that Hitty discovered her husband's old and rewakened propensity,—that Abner Dimock came home drunk,—not drunk as many men are, foolish and helpless, mere beasts of the field, who know nothing and care for nothing but the filling of their insatiable appetite;—this man's nature was too hard, too iron in its moulding, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... giving her before she asks. 'In my epistle to Janet Wadham I spoke of moneys and estates being in thy hands. 'Tis a lie that will bring to thy mind more vividly than aught else my personality—suppressio veri; but if thou findest a like propensity in my babe, thou wilt deal gently but firmly with her for its correction. I give into thy keeping more than house, lands or titles. I would direct clemency toward my beloved servant; she has proven most faithful. My wife truly loved her and at her child's birth was constantly ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... was clapped into some rustic prison-house, the doors of which he burst in the night and was no more heard of in that quarter. When I knew him, his life had fallen in quieter places, and he had no cares beyond the dulness of his dogs and the inroads of pedestrians from town. But for a man of his propensity to wrath these were enough; he knew neither rest nor peace, except by snatches; in the grey of the summer morning, and already from far up the hill, he would wake the "toun" with the sound of his shoutings; and in the lambing-time, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opportunity that offered of plying the hammer, the file, and the chisel, in preference to the saw and the plane. Many a cuff did the foreman of carpenters give him for absenting himself from his proper shop and stealing off to the smithy. His propensity was indeed so strong that, at the end of a year, it was thought better, as he was a handy, clever boy, to yield to his earnest desire to be placed in the smithy, and he was removed thither accordingly in his ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... which created chivalry and the crusades. We should probably discover, in the wandering lives of the knights and crusaders, the reflected influence of the roving habits of the German hunters, of that propensity to remove, and that superabundance of population, which ever exist where social order is not sufficiently well regulated for man to feel satisfied with his condition and locality; and before laborious industry has taught him to compel the earth ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... who always, after listening to Cherubini's music, grew irritable to excess; and, if any body mounted him, would seek relief to his wounded feelings in kicking, more or less violently, for an hour. This habit endeared him to my brother, who acknowledged to a propensity of the same amiable kind; protesting that an abstract desire of kicking seized him always after hearing good performers on particular instruments, especially the bagpipes. Of kicking? But of kicking what or ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... she is scarcely grown up before she becomes the seducer of others. Laziness is so prevalent among them that were they to subsist by their own labour only, they would hardly have bread for two of the seven days in the week. This indolence increases their propensity to stealing and cheating. They seek to avail themselves of every opportunity to satisfy their lawless desires. Their universal bad character, therefore, for fickleness, infidelity, ingratitude, revenge, malice, rage, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... to make the attempt he spoke of to Daniel, although at the same time he could not forget two facts. In the first place, Daniel, having now been made aware of his propensity to walk in his sleep, would probably adopt every measure of precaution to avoid him; and on the other hand, confessions made whilst in this condition would not be exactly fitted to serve as a basis for further proceedings. In ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... will say, the King is not to be trusted: judg not of others by your selves; did ever any man observe the least inclination of revenge in his breast? has he not betides the innate propensity of his own nature to gentlenesse, the strict injunctions of a dying father and a Martyr, to forgive even greater offenders then you are? Yes, I dare pronounce it with confidence, and avouch it whith all assurance, ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and ...
— The Federalist Papers
... lead in the best society, I should greatly falsify facts. I do not remember the same thing happening to me again, and this is one instance among a thousand, of the impression every circumstance makes on entering a new country, and of the propensity, so irresistible, to class all things, however accidental, as national and peculiar. On the other hand, however, it is certain that if similar anomalies are unfrequent in America, they are ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... fictitious combat at the celebration of peace. On the tenth of July, Henry the Second died of the wound inflicted by Montgomery in the tournament held eleven days before. Of this weak and worthless prince, all that even his flatterers could favorably urge was his great fondness for war, as if a sanguinary propensity, even when unaccompanied by a spark of military talent, were of itself a virtue. Yet, with his death the kingdom fell even into more pernicious hands, and the fate of Christendom grew darker than ever. The dynasty of Diane de Poitiers ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their name, and which are marked by a tumbling over-and-over process, which suggests the idea of their having suddenly become giddy, been deprived of their self-control, or overtaken by some calamity. This acrobatic propensity in these pigeons has been ascribed by some to the absence of a proper power in the tail; but is nothing more than a natural habit, for which no adequate reason can be assigned. Of this variety, the Almond Tumbler is the most beautiful; and the greater the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... stipend—into the pockets of his gambling companions. Again he returned home as full of grief as before. The Indian soon heard of what had happened, for he loved the padre very much; so he brought him another bag of silver. The padre's propensity was incurable, and he lost that as he had done the first. The Indian's generosity was not yet worn out, and he brought him a third bag full of ore. When the padre saw it, he could ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... family the autumn of 1805, and the winter and spring of 1806. I soon tired of school, and began to play truant; generally wandering along the wharves, gazing at the ships. Dr. Heizer soon learned this; and, watching me, discovered the propensity I still retained for the sea. He and Mrs. Heizer now took me aside, and endeavoured to persuade me to return to Halifax; but I had become more and more averse to taking this backward step. To own the truth, I had fearful misgivings on the ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... with his incurable propensity for quoting. "What made you so shy at the station, Cecil? I was obliged to put you in a rage to get ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... overflowing, by laying her egg in a cell in which the real owner had already laid and lastly by hurriedly closing an orifice that called for serious repairs. What better proof could be wished of the irresistible propensity ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... has certainly hit upon the way (but I could not make out by what means) of speaking a much purer English language than that which is in general spoken on the parent soil. This astonished me much; but it is really the case. Amongst his many good qualities he has one unenviable and, I may add, a bad propensity: he is immoderately fond of smoking. He may say that he learned it from his nurse, with whom it was once much in vogue. In Dutch William's time (he was a man of bad taste) the English gentleman could not do without his pipe. During the short space of time ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... more clear, and is not so liable to be confused when intent upon any intricate subject; and, of course, "can continue a laborious investigation longer." There is at no time such a propensity to incogitancy. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... for himself, but is taught, and accepts as true that which is told, and a propensity to believe the affirmed is implanted in his mind. In every society some are wise and some are foolish, and the wise are revered, and their affirmations are accepted. Thus, the few lead the multitude in knowledge, and the propensity to believe the affirmed started ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... one be alarmed at the mention of the word Puritan. There are some people who have no other notion of a Puritan than that of a close-cropped, saturnine personage, having a nasal twang, who is forevermore indulging an insane propensity to sing psalms, quote Scripture, or burn witches. These are the people who can never see into the profound deep of a great truth, but are quite ready to laugh at its travesty or caricature. And what high or holy truth has not been caricatured? ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... weakness that often landed the sailor in the press-room was his propensity to indulge in "swank." Two jolly tars, who were fully protected and consequently believed themselves immune from the press, once bought a four-wheeled post-chaise and hired a painter in Long Acre to ornament it with anchors, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... impulse, lust, propensity, craving, inclination, passion, relish, desire, liking, proclivity, thirst, disposition, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... from possessing the slightest propensity either to extravagance in herself or to the encouragement of extravagance in others, the Princesse de Lamballe was a model of prudence, and upon those subjects, as indeed upon all others, the Queen could not have had a more discreet counsellor. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... obviously interested. They hope, by securing to Evelina the fortune of her father, to induce Madame Duval to settle her own upon themselves. In this, however, they would probably be mistaken; for little minds have ever a propensity to bestow their wealth upon those who are already in affluence; and, therefore, the less her grandchild requires her assistance, the more gladly she ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... native shrewdness that would have told much more in his favour had it not been accompanied by a certain evasive manner, that caused one constantly to suspect his sincerity, and which often induced those who were accustomed to him, to imagine he had a sneaking propensity that rendered him habitually hypocritical. Jason held New York in great contempt; a feeling he was not always disposed to conceal, and of necessity his comparisons were usually made with the state of things in Connecticut, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... mace of a bad billiard-player, which gives an impulse to the ball indeed, but sends it off at a tangent different from the course designed by the player. Now, if I expend such eccentric movements on this journal, it will be turning this wretched propensity to some tolerable account. If I had thus employed the hours and half-hours which I have whiled away in putting off something that must needs be done at last, "My Conscience!" I should have had a journal with a witness. Sophia and Lockhart came to Edinburgh ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... contrivances, while swayed by the influences of love or benevolence. Both, in this instance, may have aided invention. Plunkett had three strong claims in his favour: he was a handsome man—a soldier—and an Irishman. The general propensity of the Quakers, in favor of the Royal cause, exempted the sect in a great measure from suspicion, in so great a degree indeed, that the barriers of the city were generally entrusted to the care of ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... forgotten, when my soul seeks communion with our common Father; and when I strive most earnestly to overcome some evil propensity, or to make some generous sacrifice, the thought of you gives me ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... for a foreign port the state of health respecting this fever which prevails at the place from which she sails. Under every motive from character and duty to certify the truth, I have no doubt they have faithfully executed this injunction. Much real injury has, however, been sustained from a propensity to identify with this endemic and to call by the same name fevers of very different kinds, which have been known at all times and in all countries, and never have been ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... most ordinary resolution to correct it: and it cannot, one would think, cost a great deal to relinquish the pleasure and honor which it confers. A concern for duty is in fact never strong, when the exertion requisite to vanquish a habit founded in no antecedent propensity is thought too ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... might seem to be the exclusive heritage of particular nations. But Christianity leads us to distinguish between the nature of man as he came fresh from the hands of his Creator, and that natural propensity to sin which he has inherited in consequence of his fall from original innocence. It teaches that as God has "made of one blood all nations to dwell together on the face of the whole earth," and has given in virtue of this common origin one common nature destined to be pure ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) naive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or 'the system'; (b) a blind-faith propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the 'letter of the law' in exceptional situations; (d) a paralyzing fear of official reprimand or worse if Procedures are not followed ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... are married. Before that happy period, when there is no evening dance, they surround the card tables, and with eager eyes follow the game, and long for the time when they too may mingle in it. I scarcely wonder at this propensity. Without education, and consequently without the resources of mind, and in a climate where exercise out of doors is all but impossible, a stimulus must be had; and gambling, from the sage to the savage, has always been resorted to, to quicken the current of life. On the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... or hankering, a propensity in the mind to this or that: this naturally is evil, and to evil; he that follows his inclination goes wrong, the whole frame of a man's disposition being continually ill-disposed. It is called in scripture the speech or saying of the ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... the way physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem: but although we sneer In health—when ill, we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity to jeer; While that "hiatus maxime deflendus" To be filled up by spade or mattock's near, Instead of gliding graciously down Lethe, We tease mild Baillie,[545] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... all the varieties of dumb show, of gesticulation, shrugs, and wise shakes of the head, are called into requisition, to effectually and unmistakably express their ideas. The usages of good society are regarded by them as a great restraint upon their besetting propensity to expatiate in phrases of grandiloquence, and to magnify objects of trivial importance. They are always sure to initiate topics which will afford scope for admiration; they delight to enlarge upon the unprecedented growth of cities, villages, and towns; upon the comparative prices of 'corner ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... propensity to lay hold of to whomsoever he spake, Mr. Lester Goldmark placed his white-gloved hand upon the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had ever since his youth developed a peculiar kind of mean and silly propensity. Having moreover from tender infancy grown up side by side with Tai-Yue, their hearts and their feelings were in perfect harmony. More, he had recently come to know to a great extent what was what, and had ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a propensity the common sailors have to liquor. Forty odd years have I been in the service, and I've never found any difference. I only wish I had a guinea for every time that I have given a fellow seven-water grog ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... of retrieval? I had heard of such things. Cases there were in our own times (and not confined to one nation), when irregular impulses of this sort were known to have haunted and besieged natures not otherwise ignoble or base. I ran over some of the names amongst those which were taxed with this propensity. More than one were the names of people in a technical sense held noble. That, nor any other consideration, abated my horror. Better, I said, better (because more compatible with elevation of mind) better to have committed some bloody act—some murderous act. Dreadful was the panic I underwent. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... may be, and he certainly looks and acts the part," she murmured to herself as the wagon rattled away from the sidewalk, "but his propensity for turning up at the right time and the right place is rapidly becoming a matter of habit." A door beside the desk stood ajar, and above it, Patty read the words "WASH ROOM." Pushing it open she glanced into the interior which was dimly lighted by a murky oil lamp that occupied a sagging ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... female thieves a la detourne, I here only speak of robbers by profession; but there are also amateurs, who, beneath the cover of a well-established reputation, make small acquisitions slyly and unsuspectedly. They are very honest people they say, who with little scruple indulge their propensity for a rare book, a miniature, a cameo, a mosaic, a manuscript, a print, a medal, or a jewel that pleases them; they are called Chipeurs. If the Chipeur be rich, no heed is paid to him, he is too much above such a larceny ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... strange, half Oriental beauty, where Jesuitism now reigns supreme, and St. John Nepemuch is the popular divinity, Protestantism and Jesuitism then lay in jealous neighbourhood, Protestantism supported by the native nobility, from anarchical propensity as well as from religious conviction; Jesuitism patronized and furtively aided by the intrusive Austrian power. From the Emperor Rudolph II., the Protestants had obtained a charter of religious liberties. But Rudolph's successor, Ferdinand II., was the Philip II. of Germany in bigotry, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... have any special mission for saving young men. I sometimes think that I shall have quite enough to do to save myself. It is strange what a propensity I feel for the wrong side of ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... If a man's ox be a gorer, and has revealed its evil propensity as a gorer, and he has not blunted its horn, or shut up the ox, and then that ox has gored a free man, and caused his death, the owner shall pay ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... luck pursuing him, he had secured but ten cents by nightfall, and this he had spent for food. At evening he found himself at the Boulevard and Sixty-seventh Street, where he finally turned his face Bowery-ward. Especially fatigued because of the wandering propensity which had seized him in the morning, he now half dragged his wet feet, shuffling the soles upon the sidewalk. An old, thin coat was turned up about his red ears—his cracked derby hat was pulled down until it turned them outward. His hands were ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... essential principles of Christianity by politic concessions to heathenism, so that the successes of the Jesuit missions are magnified by reports of alleged conversions that are conversions only in name and outward form; second, a constantly besetting propensity to political intrigue.[27:1] It is hardly to be doubted that both had their part in the prodigious failure of the French Catholic missions and settlements within the present boundaries ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... ordered the extirpation of a clan, and rewarded the murderers as he had rewarded those of De Witt; that Lewis XIV. sent a man to kill him, and James II. was privy to the Assassination Plot. When he met men less mercifully given than himself, he said that they were hanging judges with a Malthusian propensity to repress the growth of population. This indefinite generosity did not disappear when he had long outgrown its early cause. It was revived, and his view of history was deeply modified, in the course of the great change in his attitude in the Church which took place between ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... in their infancy have been left to the care of menials, or who have been suffered, by the blind indulgence of parents, to gratify their forward inclinations; and it as rarely occurs that those who have had the benefit of good example and parental admonition in the "bud of life," display much propensity to vice as they grow up, unless their morals become contaminated by afterwards forming improper companions. With reference to the effects of early education, it has been most truly ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... although there was no want of those of a different stamp; and as we had yet some venereal complaints on board, I took all possible care to prevent the disorder being communicated to them. On most occasions they shewed a strong propensity to pilfering; in which they were full as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... that the energizing of such a propensity under ordinary circumstances is quite another thing from the origination of a positive variety by the evolution of the same character. In the variety the activity has become independent of outer influences or dependent upon them in a far lesser degree. The power ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... at James Macauley once more. "You old pirate!" he growled. "How dared you take such a chance on me? And when you know I'm death on that gambling propensity of yours?" ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... of their gloved gatherings. He had now an opportunity of observing that as to the phrenological formation of the backs of their heads, the Professing Philanthropists were uncommonly like the Pugilists. In the development of all those organs which constitute, or attend, a propensity to 'pitch into' your fellow- creatures, the Philanthropists were remarkably favoured. There were several Professors passing in and out, with exactly the aggressive air upon them of being ready for a turn-up with any Novice who might happen to be on hand, that Mr. Crisparkle well remembered in ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... other animals and feeding upon their flesh, is not a natural instinct of the brown bear; it is a habit that has its origin, first in the scarcity of other food, but which, once entered upon, soon develops itself into a strong propensity—almost ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man completely happy; I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling which I gave an account of in my first setting out in the world to have been so predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, and I might, at sixty one years of age, have been a little inclined to stay at home, and ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... assembly to reject any and all such statements as the emanations of an embittered, oft-rejected, and "subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man;" and poor Blake, who really wanted to wind up with an apostrophe to the crowning excellences of the bride, is driven to cover, a victim of his vicious propensity for burlesque. He has created illimitable merriment, however, and is to be infinitely congratulated on getting off so easily. And then the bride-cake is cut, and eager is the excitement over the search for the prophetic ring, and the blushing bridesmaid who gets it has plainly ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... him to make use of them. Among the various appetites, which made him at different times experience different modes of existence, there was one that excited him to perpetuate his species; and this blind propensity, quite void of anything like pure love or affection, produced nothing but an act that was merely animal. The present heat once allayed, the sexes took no further notice of each other, and even the child ceased to have any tie in his mother, the ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... course, was cooked long before the former, so, taking it off the fire, he set it on the ground hard by. Mr. M—— coming up a moment after, and yielding to the universal desire to "poke the fire," stepped into the pan of pork. While we were laughing over his propensity for tumbling into things, Carriere, who, poor fellow, was still suffering terribly from rheumatism, limped up with a log on his shoulder, and also fell foul of the pork. At the same moment a lantern appeared in the distance, carried by Mr. F——, on his return from the canoe. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... 'Are you afraid of old Tom Hardesty? If you are, you needn't be; nobody need be afraid of such an old coward as I am—darned if they need!' And feeling that he was growing melancholy, he determined to subdue the propensity, and to that end commenced cutting the complicated figure entitled a pigeon-wing. This exhilarating sport soon restored the grocer's good humor, and he laughed heartily and made such a racket altogether, that the boy gradually approached him to inquire what it all meant, how he ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... or no education from his guardians, but was allowed to indulge in every vice, surrounded by minions and young profligates of the court. These not only assisted him in the pursuit of low vices, but encouraged his natural propensity to cruel diversions. He had no sooner secured his rights to the throne, and assumed the power of the state, than he showed the restless ambition of his family by an attack on the Yumila Raja, whom all the mountain chiefs acknowledged as their ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... rich cloth, and bound with silken cords. Some bore theirs concealed under long mantles; but Christopher thought it was mostly weights of iron or lead they carried. Further particulars astonished the brothers still more. The greater part appeared to have a strange propensity for increasing the difficulties of their way, by walking in whatever manner was least practicable. Many augmented the burdens, under which they already staggered, with dust and rubbish, which they collected from all sides; and far more were endeavouring to pile up the scattered stones and thorns ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... about the shores of the island at the marsh line to find strange evidence of this gift-bearing propensity of the shy tides. Trinkets of all sorts that they gather in travels in distant seas the tides bring and lay lovingly at the roots of black oak and sweet gum, hickory and stag-horn sumac. Here is bamboo ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... accuracy of their statement. Then Squercum saw his client again, and returned to the charge at Bideawhile's office, with the positive assurance that the signature was a forgery. Dolly, when questioned by Squercum, quite admitted his propensity to be 'tight'. He had no reticence, no feeling of disgrace on such matters. But he had signed no letter when he was tight. 'Never did such a thing in my life, and nothing could make me,' said Dolly. 'I'm never tight except ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... answered my morning salutation civilly enough, but continued intent upon his work. He was a man of about fifty years of age, spare, but strong, with gray hair, and sunken cheeks, and certain lines about the mouth which augured a propensity to indulge in dry jest, though the sternness of his gray eye seemed to contradict the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... him, in Tragedy, at most, a caricature of Euripides. Quinctilian, however, asserts that he proved here, for once, what he might have done, had he chosen to restrain himself instead of yielding to his natural propensity ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... satisfaction of such desire. Which forces being powerless to withstand, I did but act as was natural in a young woman, when I gave way to them, and yielded myself to love. Nor in sooth did I fail to the utmost of my power so to order the indulgence of my natural propensity that my sin should bring shame neither upon thee nor upon me. To which end Love in his pity, and Fortune in a friendly mood, found and discovered to me a secret way, whereby, none witting, I attained my desire: this, from whomsoever thou hast learned it, howsoever thou comest ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... may be chiefly owing to this effeminate propensity, that all manly exercises, all useful knowledge, and that noble emulation which inspires virtue, and keeps alive respect for the public good, are here unknown. Those amusements which serve in other countries to relax ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... stone, but when the season came, he developed a genius for peddling fruit; he was always hungry for any sort of chance to bargain, and was forever coming upon things which Thyrsis ought to buy. Very quickly the neighborhood discovered this propensity of his, and there was a constant stream of farmers who came to offer second-hand buggies, and wind-broken horses, and dried-up cows, and patent hay-rakes and churns and corn-shellers at reduced values; all of which rather tended to reveal ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... toes; but I hauled it up to its normal place with picturing to myself how Alfred would look when he saw me in that old blue muslin done over into a Rene wonder. However, old heart would show a strange propensity for sinking down into my slippers without any reason at all. Tears were even coming into my eyes when Tom suddenly came over the fence and picked me and the heart up together and put us into an adventure of the ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... furnished by the veins and by the mirror, may be added also the following marks: a uniform, very large, and yielding udder, shrinking much in milking, and covered with soft skin and fine hair; good constitution, full chest, regular appetite, and great propensity to drink. Such cows rather incline to be poor than to be fat. The skin is soft and yielding; short, fine hair; small head; fine horns; bright, sparkling eye; mild expression; feminine ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... carry enlightenment into the lean lone land, gradually dissolved. The women with whom Chloe came in contact ceased to be Indians en masse; they became people—personalities—each with her own capability and propensity for the working of good or harm. With this realization vanished the last vestige of aloofness and reserve. And, thereafter, many of the women broke bread by invitation at Chloe's ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... merely an idealist: he is a practical idealist. This is shown by his self-restraint and practical wisdom in guiding events. One of the symptoms of "catching Esperanto" is a desire to introduce improvements. This morbid propensity to jejune amateur tinkering, a kind of measles of the mind (morbus linguificus[1]) attacks the immature in years or judgment. A riper acquaintance with the history and practical aims of international language purges it from the system. We have all been through it. For the inventor of Esperanto, ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... N. tendency; aptness, aptitude; proneness, proclivity, bent, turn, tone, bias, set, leaning to, predisposition, inclination, propensity, susceptibility; conatus [Lat.], nisus [Lat.]; liability &c 177; quality, nature, temperament; idiocrasy^, idiosyncrasy; cast, vein, grain; humor, mood; drift &c (direction) 278; conduciveness, conducement^; applicability &c (utility) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sauntering in any quiet place about the town, you will hear this game in progress in a score of wine- shops at once; and looking over any vineyard walk, or turning almost any corner, will come upon a knot of players in full cry. It is observable that most men have a propensity to throw out some particular number oftener than another; and the vigilance with which two sharp-eyed players will mutually endeavour to detect this weakness, and adapt their game to it, is very curious and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... that may properly be called activity which is merely giving loose to the imagination and the emotions as they follow out the wild train of incoherent thought, or are agitated by impulses of spontaneous and ungoverned feeling. Ascetic Christianity ministered new aliment to this common propensity. It gave an object, both vague and determinate enough to stimulate, yet never to satisfy or exhaust. The regularity of stated hours of prayer, and of a kind of idle industry, weaving mats or plaiting baskets, alternated ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... may take shelter under a shield of indifference; but it is equally true that any reasonably acute mind, if only charitably disposed, can readily distinguish between an inactivity which springs from craven or sluggish propensity, and that other which belongs to constitutional temperament, and which, while passing calm and dispassionate judgment upon excesses of opinion of either party, contributes insensibly to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... and often make predatory excursions to the Mandan villages on the banks of the Missouri, to steal them. They sometimes visit the Red River for this purpose, and have swept off, at times, nearly the whole of our horses from the settlement. Such indeed is their propensity for this species of theft, that they have fired upon, and killed the Company's servants, close to the forts for these useful animals. They run the buffaloe with them in the summer, and fasten them to sledges which they drag over the snow when they travel in the winter; ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... observed it. You had set your affections on Arthur; and thinking he had thrown himself away, you do not resist the common propensity to ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dropping in at Harmony at all hours of the day, ostensibly to see if Flippie was doing his work well, but in reality to keep a watchful eye on the other inmates. She seemed to be always looking for something, and the time was soon to come when this unpleasant propensity should become a source of real ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... la Tour then related to me her dream which was exactly the same as Margaret's in every particular; and as I had never observed in either of these ladies any propensity to superstition, I was struck with the singular coincidence of their dreams, and I felt convinced that they would soon be realized. The belief that future events are sometimes revealed to us during sleep, is one that is widely diffused among the nations of the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... and to gain control over the minds of the brethren, is apparent throughout his records. He raised objections in order to show how he could remove them, and started difficulties about matters which had not before been brought into question. In the beginning of his ministry, he manifested this propensity. At a church meeting at John Putnam's house, Feb. 20, 1690, less than three months after his ordination, he threw open the whole question of baptism for discussion among the brethren. There is no reason to suppose that their attention had been drawn to it before. He ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... hundred years, or more, for that purpose. Some, indeed, may be absolutely stationary, and others even retrograde. The cause of this slow progress in population cannot be traced to a decay of the passion between the sexes. We have sufficient reason to think that this natural propensity exists still in undiminished vigour. Why then do not its effects appear in a rapid increase of the human species? An intimate view of the state of society in any one country in Europe, which may serve equally for all, will ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... the exception of a small savour of Irishmen, foreigners. Scarcely one Englishman, not one Scot, will be found among the whole tribe; and this fact is as welcome to us as it is singular, because it speaks volumes in favour of the national propensity, of which we have reason to be proud, to be ever doing something, producing something, applying labour to its legitimate purpose, and not turning another man's handle to grind the wind. Yet there is, alas! a scattered and characteristic ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... are singularly polite, and uniformly unembarassed. His voice is melodious, and he is eminently endowed by nature with the gift of eloquence. A person of your penetration will therefore readily imagine, that his society is courted by the fair. His propensity to the tender passion appears to have been very great, and he of consequence lays himself out in a gallantry that I can by no ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... worry, for his acquaintance throughout the trade had extended rapidly, due to his propensity for making friends, and he had heard one or two little rumors that Morrow & Company had bitten off more than they could chew in a few big deals of late and had been badly pinched; in fact, to such an ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... twenty times for such a sight. We came into the harbour last night, and landed as soon as we could collect our wits, and mother collect us; Madame has been at Gibraltar before, and so ought to have had the use of hers, but knowing her propensity to lose her way, we made Hargrave look after her, while we three elder girls each took a little child. Both the mothers looked after our things. The boys and Jenny were left behind. So we landed just before gun fire, passing through ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... the first notion, it has prevailed by turns in every literature. One stage of society, in every nation, brings men of impassioned minds to the contemplation of manners, and of the social affections of man as exhibited in manners. With this propensity cooperates, no doubt, some degree of despondency when looking at the great models of the literature who have usually preoccupied the grander passions, and displayed their movements in the earlier periods of literature. Now it happens that the French, from an extraordinary defect ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... bitterness and present warmth, and, gratified to find that at least there was no galling at their mutual relations, responded with a smile and a caress that led Lucilla to continue—'As for the word that dismayed you, I only meant to acknowledge an unlucky propensity to be excited about any nonsense, in which any man kind is mixed up. If Sarah would take to it, I could more easily abstain, but you see her coquetries are with nobody more recent than ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... products of Hyres, as indeed of all the Riviera, are olives, wine, and cork. The olive-berry harvest commences in December. The small berries make the best oil. The trunk has a curious propensity to separate and form new limbs, which by degrees become covered with bark. If the sap be still in a semi-dormant state, and the weather dry, the trunk and branches can bear a cold of 12 Fahr., while the orange and lemon are killed by a cold ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... their hips swell out "like boiled rice." The marriage ceremonies, he tells us, are conducted with feasting, music and flogging. On first entering the nuptial hut the bridegroom draws forth his horsewhip and inflicts chastisement upon his bride, with the view of taming any lurking propensity to shrewishness. As it is no uncommon event to take four wives at once, this horsewhipping is naturally rather exhausting for the husband. Burton considered polygamy to be indispensable in countries like Somaliland, "where children are the principal wealth;" but he saw less necessity for it ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... conversion. For—let the reader take earnest heed—it is not the conscious evil in men that has been oftenest the oppressor of their fellows; almost always the plea for it has been the general good. Church and State both have set this propensity down among the great cardinal virtues. As Saul of Tarsus thought he was doing God service when he persecuted the early Church, so the Church herself sang Te Deums over St. Bartholomew, and believed verily that the groans of the Inquisition and the fires of her autos de fe were for ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... The propensity of the Arab mind for the tale and the anecdote has had a wider influence in shaping the religious and legal development, of Muhammadanism than would appear at first sight. The 'Qur'an' might well suffice as a directive code for a small body of men whose daily life ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... this nation. Originally, his name was Winfred, or Winfrith, and he was born at Kirton, in Devonshire, then part of the West-Saxon kingdom. When he was only about six years of age, he began to discover a propensity to reflection, and seemed solicitous to gain information on religious subjects. Wolfrad, the abbot, finding that he possessed a bright genius, as well as a strong inclination to study, had him removed to ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... England; which I answered as best I might. But this best, I am bound to say, was bad enough. I knew nothing about England, and the Court, and the noble families there; but, led away by the vaingloriousness of youth (and a propensity which I possessed in my early days, but of which I have long since corrected myself, to boast and talk in a manner not altogether consonant with truth), I invented a thousand stories which I told him; described the King and the Ministers to him, said the British ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their time much to their satisfaction. The reception they met was respectful in the highest degree, and the behaviour of the Indians to the English indicated a fear of them, mixed with a confidence that they had no propensity to commit any kind of injury. In an intercourse which the lieutenant and his friends carried on, for several days, with the inhabitants of this part of the island, it appeared that the terrors which Tupia had expressed of the Bolabola ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... proportionately to its growth, it extends its members by little and little, which were exactly folded in the first month. In this posture it usually keeps until the seventh or eighth month, and then by a natural propensity and disposition of the upper first. It is true there are divers children, that lie in the womb in another posture, and come to birth with their feet downwards, especially if there be twins; for then, by their different ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... probably native. Others, like hopping and skipping, are probably learned. As to climbing, there is some evolutionary reason for suspecting that an instinctive tendency in this direction might persist in the human species, and certainly children show a great propensity for it; while the acrobatic ability displayed by those adults whose business leads them to continue climbing is so great as to raise the question whether the ordinary citizen is right when he thinks of man as essentially a land-living or surface-living animal. As to swimming, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... long in Spain, which, with its innate propensity to bombast, was more fertile soil for it than other nations. Innumerable poetasters of the early eighteenth century enjoyed fame in their day and some possessed talent; but the obscure and trivial style ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... land in the quickest possible way with no reference to the ultimate improvement of the farm itself. If he ever managed to get a little money, he was likely to spend it at once and to become as impecunious as before. Such a propensity did not make for progress, for poverty begets slovenliness in all ages and ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... to the report that I was a sot—an unfounded rumor, which originated with a Richmond paper." Governor Marcy used to joke Mr. Mason a good deal on the forwardness of the Old Dominion, the mother of Presidents, in urging the claims of her children for Federal office—a propensity which was amusingly illustrated at a private dinner where they were both in attendance. "How strange it is, Mason," said he, "that out of the thousands of fat appointments we have had to make, there is not one that Virginia does not furnish a candidate for, and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... a fair hostelry for unfastidious travellers, its chief drawback being the propensity of tourists to get up at three o'clock in the morning in order to behold the sunrise from the Hoheneck. Good beds, good food, and from the windows, one of the finest prospects in the world, might well tempt many to linger here ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... a young wolf was put to school, to endeavour, by instruction, to correct his natural propensity to voracity. His master, in order to teach him to read, transcribed, in large characters, some letters of the alphabet, and attempted to make him understand these signs. But instead of reading K L S, as it was written, the savage animal read fluently Kid, Lamb, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... who have a propensity to lecture others have a strong constitutional dislike to being lectured themselves. Such was decidedly the case with Harry Norman. In spite of his strong love, and his anxious desire to make himself agreeable, his brow became somewhat darkened, and his lips somewhat compressed. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... trait in their character, and is due in some degree to the quiet deliberation of their manners, and their love of repose rather than of action. The young are obedient to the wishes of their elders, and seem to feel none of that propensity to mischief which European boys exhibit. How long would tame squirrels continue to inhabit trees in the vicinity of an English village, even if close to the church? They would soon be pelted and driven away, or snared and confined in a whirling cage. I have never heard of these pretty animals ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and no man knoweth it. I can cheat, lie, commit adultery, rob, murder, and I elude detection by smooth-tongued villainy. Ani- 252:21 mal in propensity, deceitful in sentiment, fraudulent in purpose, I mean to make my short span of life one gala day. What a nice thing is sin! How 252:24 sin succeeds, where the good purpose waits! The world is my kingdom. I am enthroned in the gorgeousness of matter. But a touch, an accident, the law of ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... his usual indulgence, that he might be enabled to take charge of the property committed to his care, and find his way to his destined port. It was a point on which his interest overcame, for a time, his darling propensity: and his rigid adherence to sobriety, when afloat, was so well ascertained, that his character as a trustworthy seaman was not injured by his continual intemperance when in harbour. Latterly, however, since Newton had sailed with him, he had not acted up to his important resolution. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... infernal ball. It became endowed with a fiendish propensity to run up a player's leg and all about him, as if trying to hide in his pocket. Grace's efforts to find it were heartbreaking to watch. Every time it bounded out to center field, which was of frequent occurrence, Tom would fall ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... time located in New York as an editorial contributor and occasional "special correspondent" of a leading newspaper. He had seen much of life—tasted much of its pains and pleasures—perhaps thought more than either; and though with a little too much of a propensity for late hours and those long stories which would grow out of current events seen in the light of past experience, he was held to be a very pleasant companion by ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... whispered Eurie, her propensity to see the ludicrous side of things in no whit destroyed by her conversion. "Look at their troubled faces; they think that we are harbingers of mischief. Oh me! What a reputation to have! But I declare it is funny." Whereupon ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... behalf, that of course she won't fall in love. We know that she will, sooner or later; and probably as much sooner as opportunity may offer. That is our experience of the genus girl in the general; and we quite approve of her for her readiness to do so. It is, indeed, her nature; and the propensity has been planted in her for wise purposes. But as to this or that special sample of the genus girl, in reference to this or that special sample of the genus young man, we always feel ourselves bound to take ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... on one's heart," murmured Riccabocca. "Don't cry, Jemima; it may be bad for you, and bad for him that is to come. It is astonishing how the humours of the mother may affect the unborn. I should not like to have a son who has a more than usual propensity ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... subjugate the propensity of the wealthy to avarice, ambition, and sensuality, expel luxury from them and their families, keep down pauperism, diffuse knowledge among the poor, and labor to raise the abject from the mire of vice ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... be people who had been blown from some island. [50] They were naked, and had no firearms, nor even weapons of iron. Their ship had no nails, and a chisel that was found was made of bone. They ate lice with a good grace—by that propensity, being people of good taste. Some thought them to be from an island more distant than Borney; for the inhabitants of that island eat lice, and the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... reflected with much satisfaction, that the solemn scenes of piety never lose their sanctity and influence, though the cares and follies of life may prevent us from visiting them.... I hoped that, ever after having been in this holy place, I should maintain an exemplary conduct. One has a strange propensity to fix upon some point of time from whence a better course of life may begin.' This is a revelation of the inner Boswell. On the eve of the appearance of the Tour in Corsica, he had written to Temple, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... a good specimen of the mischievous, high-spirited and roystering youngster, who would go to any pains and run any risk for the sake of the fun it afforded. This propensity was carried to such an extent that the youth earned the name of being a "bad boy," and there is no use of pretending he did not deserve the reputation. He gave his parents and neighbors a good deal of anxiety, and ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... endurance, A perfect gem for life insurance, A kind of maddened John the Baptist, To whom the harshest word comes aptest, Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred, Hurls back an epithet as hard, Which, deadlier than stone or brick, Has a propensity to stick. His oratory is like the scream 140 Of the iron-horse's frenzied steam Which warns the world to leave wide space For the black engine's swerveless race. Ye men with neckcloths white, I warn you— Habet a whole haymow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Swift as a man, let us say something about his genius. That, like his character, was intensely peculiar. It was a compound of infinite ingenuity, with very little poetical imagination—of gigantic strength, with a propensity to incessant trifling—of passionate purpose, with the clearest and coldest expression, as though a furnace were fuelled with snow. A Brobdignagian by size, he was for ever toying with Lilliputian slings and small craft. One of the most violent of party ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... that firmness with which he behaved in these last moments of his life might probably be owing to natural courage, of which certainly Barton had a very large share. But the remains of virtue and religion, to which the man had always a propensity, notwithstanding that he gave way to passions which brought him to all the sorrows he knew, yet the return he made, when in the shadow of death, to piety and devotion, enabled him to suffer with great calmness, on Friday the 12th of May, 1721, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... stretching himself upon a bench, and reading, as old Ascham expresses it, "a merry tale in Boccace." In other words, he was reading a French version of the Decameron of that celebrated author. Indeed, I had already received sufficient proof of the general propensity of the common people to read—whether good or bad books ... but let us hope and believe the former. I left the bibliomaniacal postboy to his Boccaccio, and prepared to visit the CASTLE... the once proud and yet commanding residence of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... numerous disquisitions on the subject scattered through my agricultural papers, in many of which I noticed that there was great fault-finding because men in this country undertook the cultivation of twice as much land as they could properly manage. The propensity for going on and enlarging their possessions seemed a very general one. Thus even I, in my small way, was insensibly becoming a disciple of these deluded people. But there was this comfort in my case, that, while others were able to enlarge, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... What in the world could that mean? Such a propensity we had never discovered in cream before; we could gain no solution of the mystery from Tom; all he said was, that we must go on churning till ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... studying the effect on character of education when divorced from religion. The effect on a few has been that the cultivation of their mental gifts in secular study has helped them to understand and assimilate Christian truth. Others, with a natural propensity for evil, have had their capacities for mischief quickened by the varied knowledge which they acquired. But with the vast majority of Indians, and more especially Hindus, English secular education does not alter their character, and except for the assumption ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... but put no further questions. Remembering somewhat of Mr. Jones's propensity in the old days, he thought perhaps something besides children and opposition had had to do with the downfall. He stood for a moment looking at the station which had not been completed when he last saw it—and a very ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... honor. Besides, as a matter of course, everybody at the chateau was ignorant of the interview which had taken place between La Valliere and the king. Montalais, perhaps, with her usual chattering propensity, might have been disposed to talk about it; but Montalais on this occasion was held in check by Malicorne, who had securely fastened on her pretty lips the golden padlock of mutual interest. As for Louis XIV., his happiness was so extreme that he had forgiven Madame, or nearly so, her little ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... greater age. It is well-known that preying upon other animals and feeding upon their flesh, is not a natural instinct of the brown bear; it is a habit that has its origin, first in the scarcity of other food, but which, once entered upon, soon develops itself into a strong propensity—almost ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... prison-house, the doors of which he burst in the night and was no more heard of in that quarter. When I knew him, his life had fallen in quieter places, and he had no cares beyond the dulness of his dogs and the inroads of pedestrians from town. But for a man of his propensity to wrath these were enough; he knew neither rest nor peace, except by snatches; in the gray of the summer morning, and already from far up the hill, he would wake the "toun" with the sound of his shoutings; and in the lambing time, his cries were ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an open countenance, an agreeable manner of conversation, a politeness always uniform, a dignity sometimes affected, but never offensive, with a natural propensity to esteem men, courtesy in obliging them, and perseverance in serving them. The favour he enjoyed was at first the reward of unexampled readiness in business; of indefatigable activity; of pure intentions, lofty views, probity, proof against ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... town again; still, we spent half a day in a most delightful manner, making a tour of the "rows" and the odd corners with quaint buildings. The tourist, fortified with his red-backed Baedecker, is a common sight to Chester people, and his "dollar-distributing" propensity, as described by the English writer I have quoted, is not unknown even to the smallest fry of the town. Few things during our trip amused me more than the antics of a brown, bare-foot, dirt-begrimed little mite not more than two or three years old, who seized my wife's skirts and hung ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... combat at the celebration of peace. On the tenth of July, Henry the Second died of the wound inflicted by Montgomery in the tournament held eleven days before. Of this weak and worthless prince, all that even his flatterers could favorably urge was his great fondness for war, as if a sanguinary propensity, even when unaccompanied by a spark of military talent, were of itself a virtue. Yet, with his death the kingdom fell even into more pernicious hands, and the fate of Christendom grew darker than ever. The dynasty of Diane de Poitiers was succeeded by that of Catharine de Medici; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... not interpreted materialistically, is an inextricable dream. Berkeley and his followers, when they look in this direction, towards nature and the rationale of experience and science, are looking away from their own system, and relying instead on the automatic propensity of human nature to routine, so that we spontaneously prepare for repeating our actions (not our experience) and even anticipate their occasions; a propensity further biased by the dominant rhythms of the psyche, so that we assume a future not so much similar to ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... their love of beauty, as in some of the birds, are secondary. It is quite certain that the animals that store up food for the winter do not take any thought of the future. Nature takes thought for them and gives them their provident instinct. The jay, by his propensity to carry away and hide things, plants many of our oak and chestnut trees, but who dares say that he does this on purpose, any more than that the insects cross-fertilize the flowers on purpose? Sheep do not take thought of the wool upon their backs that is to protect them from the cold of winter, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... Corporal Trim. The style is of rather forced buoyancy and sprightliness, with intentional inconsequence and confusion, an attempt at humor of narration, which is choked by characteristic national desire to convey information, and a fatal propensity to description of places,[43] even when some satirical purpose underlies the account, as in the description of Erlangen and its university. The servant Johann has mild adventures with the maids in the various inns, which are reminiscent of Yorick, and in one case ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... come between two vowels, and are such as cannot begin a word, they must be divided, as, ut-most, un-der."—Id. "Shall the intellect alone feel no pleasures in its energy, when we allow pleasures to the grossest energies of appetite and sense?"—Harris and Murray cor. "No man has a propensity to vice as such: on the contrary, a wicked deed disgusts every one, and makes him abhor the author."—Ld. Kames cor. "The same grammatical properties that belong to nouns, belong also to pronouns."—Greenleaf ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... another whispering many temptations, by which to keep them away. He will even follow persons into the door of the council and induce some at that time to bend their steps away; many resist until they have entered, and then leave. This habit once indulged in, obtains fast hold and the evil propensity increases with age. This is a great sin, and should be at once abandoned. ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... model, made a sort of idol; this was worshipped, copied, and observed, from all manner of mingled feelings, but most of all because it was the 'thing to do,' the then accepted form of human action. When once the predominant type was determined, the copying propensity of man did the rest. The tradition ascribing Spartan legislation to Lycurgus was literally untrue, but its spirit was quite true. In the origin of states strong and eager individuals got hold of small knots of men, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... owing to this effeminate propensity, that all manly exercises, all useful knowledge, and that noble emulation which inspires virtue, and keeps alive respect for the public good, are here unknown. Those amusements which serve in other countries to relax the labours of the industrious, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... sending chocolate from his own table, to his crew, in order to play the magnifico, on the score of his own good luck. There was no use in "kicking against the pricks," and I let Marble enjoy the pleasure of believing the worst of his captor; a sort of Anglo-Saxon propensity, that has garnished many a page in English and American history—to say nothing of the propensities and histories of others, among the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... belles had begun to flaunt in the French fashions of flimsy muslins, shortwaisted—narrow-skirted. These we had already heard Jael furiously inveighing against: for Jael, Quakeress as she was, could not quite smother her original propensity towards the decoration of "the flesh," and betrayed a suppressed but profound interest in ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... stroked the kittens—her propensity for such pets was not her lightest merit in Meliora's eyes. Then she suffered herself to be tenderly soothed into acknowledging that she ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... which he picked up in a neighbouring bush, was unharmed, but did not survive long. Pairs have often been shot in the same jungle, but seldom in close proximity, and it accords with all experience that they betray an aversion to each other's society, except at the one season. This propensity of the father to devour his offspring seems to be due to jealousy or to blind unreasoning hate. To save her offspring the female always conceals her young, and will often move far from the jungle which she ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... commenced among the convicts of disposing of the slops and blankets which they had lately received to the Lascars, who, trembling with the cold even of this climate, very readily availed themselves of their propensity to part with them; which was so great, that it became necessary to punish with severity such offenders ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... form an adequate substitute for them. No one need fear that the supply of mystery will ever give out; but a great deal depends on our taste in mystery; that certainly needs refining. What disturbs the so-called rationalist in the mystic's attitude is his propensity to see mysteries where there are none and to fail to see those that we cannot possibly escape. In declaring that one is not a mystic, one makes no claim to be able to explain everything, nor does he maintain that all things are explicable in ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... other wholesome topics of meditation—for wholesome it is to the healthy spirit, although of some little danger to the presumptuous and inflated—the study of the sure word of Prophecy has more than once excited the writing propensity of your author's mind. On most matters it has been my fate, rather from habits of incurable revery than from any want of opportunities, to think more than to read; and therefore it is, with very due diffidence, that as far as others and their judgments are concerned, I ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... fascination of terror and rage, would not move. Flinging all thoughts of her dependence on David—of the money she had come to ask—of her leave-taking on the morrow—to the winds, Louie revenged herself amply for her week's unnatural self-control, and gave full rein to a mad propensity which had been gradually roused and spurred to ungovernable force by the trivial incidents of the afternoon. She made mock of Lucy's personal vanity; she sneered at her attempts to ape her betters, shrilly declaring that no one would ever take her for anything else than what she was, the daughter ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... should I Major? The courts decided that it was no marriage; and what more could a man want? The woman took advantage of a slight amorous propensity that may be a weakness in my disposition, perhaps, and inveigled me into a contract which was found to ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... and of course give children's minds such a tone, that they are afterwards too fond of similar useless baubles."[3] This species of delight is soon over, and is succeeded by a desire to triumph in the ignorance, the credulity, or the cowardice, of their companions. Hence that propensity to play tricks, which is often injudiciously encouraged by the smiles of parents, who are apt to mistake it for a proof of wit and vivacity. They forget, that "gentle dulness ever loved a joke;" and that even wit and vivacity, if they become troublesome and mischievous, will be feared, and shunned. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... usurpation, I declare I am not going to write a vindication of him. All I mean to show, is, that though he may have been as execrable as we are told he was, we have little or no reason to believe so. If the propensity of habit should still incline a single man to suppose that all he has read of Richard is true, I beg no more, than that that person would be so impartial as to own that he has little or no foundation for ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... drowsy from the excessive cold that he was only glad of the pretext for remaining still, and yielding to the uncontrollable propensity. But Mr. Holt pulled him on his feet and commanded him to gather brushwood and sticks, while he went about himself picking birch-bark off the dead and living trees. This he spread under the brush and ignited with his tinder-box. The sight of the flame seemed ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... to the extreme edge and looked over. A deep, dull roar smote upon his ears; he was bewildered and satisfied. Knowing the Indian propensity to exaggerate, he had half expected to find merely a cascade wilder than anything above; or perhaps a wide straggling series of falls. It was neither. The entire river gathered itself up, and plunged sheer into ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... God, within the limits of my own home. The best I can say for it is that I do not think it was a vicious childhood. I do not think, trying to look at the past impartially, that I had a strong natural propensity then developed to what are termed the mortal sins. But truth obliges me to record this against myself. I have no recollection of being a loving or a winning child; or an earnest or diligent or knowledge-loving ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... bestowed in some safe place, and sentinels posted at suitable stations, to warn all comers to look out for something almost as much to be dreaded, as a fiery locomotive in full speed. In short, if the propensity to be exceedingly good-natured after a hearty meal, had not been given to the bee, it could never have been domesticated, and our honey would still be procured from the clefts of rocks, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... service dependent on him for the expected support. If he could realize this, how much the quicker would others be to attach the blame to him! how much the more necessary must it be to lose no time in diverting suspicion elsewhere! The fatal propensity to distort or disobey, which perhaps he could have downed had Tintop or Riggs been there, he could not resist with Warren,—an envied contemporary, presumably new to his idiosyncrasies. Nor would he, of course, even with him, have disobeyed could he have foreseen the fatal consequences. That ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... readily be differentiated from rabies by the persistence of muscular cramps, especially of the face and abdomen, which cause these muscles to become set and as hard as wood. In tetanus there is also an absence of a depraved appetite or of a willful propensity to hurt other animals or to damage the surroundings. The cow remains quiet and the general muscular contraction gives her a rigid appearance. There is an absence of paralysis which marks the advanced stage of rabies. The form of dumb rabies in dogs is ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... that the present overthrow of credit would have been prevented by the existence of a national bank. Proneness to excessive issues has ever been the vice of the banking system—a vice as prominent in national as in State institutions. This propensity is as subservient to the advancement of private interests in the one as in the other, and those who direct them both, being principally guided by the same views and influenced by the same motives, will be equally ready to stimulate extravagance of enterprise by improvidence of credit. How strikingly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... Professor, solemnly, after dinner, when the neat parlourmaid had left them at dessert, "one thing on which I think it my duty to caution you. If you are to justify the confidence we have shown in sanctioning your engagement to Sylvia, you must curb this propensity of yours to ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... American codefendant).[798] On the other hand, it was held in a recent case, that Oregon was entitled to require that one pleading insanity as a defense against a criminal charge should prove same beyond a reasonable doubt, and to make "morbid propensity" no defense.[799] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... as distinct and different as their sex. And therein lay its charm, for it merely translated itself in his mind that she had very pretty eyes, which he had never noticed before, without any aggressive intellectual quality. And with this, alas! came the man's propensity to reason. It meant of course but ONE thing; he saw it all now! If HE, in his preoccupation and coolness, had noticed her eyes, so also had the younger and emotional Chris. The young fellow was in love with her! It was that which had stimulated ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... to joke, Frank," said Professor Scotch, reprovingly. "Are you never able to restrain your propensity for making sport?" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... characteristics discoverable by the stranger in Mr F.'s Aunt, were extreme severity and grim taciturnity; sometimes interrupted by a propensity to offer remarks in a deep warning voice, which, being totally uncalled for by anything said by anybody, and traceable to no association of ideas, confounded and terrified the Mind. Mr F.'s Aunt may have ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts, through passion, what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility, instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... was the same propensity in mankind for investigating the motives, as there is for censuring the conduct, of public characters, it would be found that the censure so freely bestowed is ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... day, and he would return to kennel in the evening, proudly trotting along, covered with blood and wounds, but always so fierce that he refused all aid and medical attendance; he was merely ready for his dinner. He had of course tackled his adversary, and indulged his propensity for a stand-up fight, with results which we never could discover; probably the leopard had been glad to retire honourably from the uncertain conflict. This grand dog was ultimately killed in a fight with an immense boar, and ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... that hung under the wagon and in a pail or two, ready to be plumped into the ambulance if a start was to be made for the river, or "toted" up the hill if the order was to take to the cave. And then the irrepressible propensity of the negro had cropped out again. There lay Black Jim peacefully snoring in the ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... their signs had indulged his fancy in wild excesses of phlebotomy. We had found that, as we came south from Venice, science grew more and more sanguinary in Italy, and more and more disposed to let blood. At Ferrara, even, the propensity began to be manifest on the barbers' signs, which displayed the device of an arm lanced at the elbow, and jetting the blood by a neatly described curve into a tumbler. Further south the same arm was seen to bleed at the wrist also; and at Naples ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... doing; and just, as of old, they called Halgerdr Long-breeks, so this very day a fellow of Horncastle called, in my hearing, our noble-looking Hungarian friend here, Long-stockings. Oh, I could give you a hundred instances, both ancient and modern, of this unseemly propensity of our illustrious race, though I will only trouble you with a few more ancient ones; they not only nicknamed Regner, but his sons also, who were all kings, and distinguished men: one, whose name was Biorn, they ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... only with reference to Griqualand West. But similar acts of violence have marked the land-grabbing propensity of the Cape in Bechuanaland, in Peddie and the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... die, except in justifiable defence of his faith, his person, or his lawful rights. It must be admitted, that a liberal construction of the reserved privileges would leave sufficient matter, to exercise the subtlety of one subject to any extraordinary propensity to arms. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... author. The poet considering, as he states in his introduction, that the subject of OEdipus tearing out his eyes was too horrible to be presented before ladies, qualifies its terrors by the introduction of a love intrigue betwixt Theseus and Dirce. The unhappy propensity of the French poets to introduce long discussions upon la belle passion, addressed merely to the understanding, without respect to feeling or propriety, is nowhere more ridiculously displayed than in "OEdipe." ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... to the Appetites and Affections applies to Benevolence; it is a distinct motive or urgency, and should have its scope like every other propensity, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... Dyaks do not interfere with the crocodile until he has shown some sign of his man-eating propensity. If the crocodile will live at peace with him, the Dyak has no wish to start a quarrel. If, however, the crocodile breaks the truce and kills someone, then the Dyaks set to work to kill the culprit, and keep ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... cause," asks Dr. Cosmo Innes, "or was it the natural propensity to extol him who, living and dead, had humbled the crown of England, that led William to take St. Thomas as his patron saint, and to entreat his intercession when he was in greatest trouble? Or may we consider the dedication of his new abbey, and his invocation ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... derived any real pleasure from these moods of the mind. The imaginary positions I loved most, were generally of the painful kind: the greater the sufferings of the personages concerned in my various plots of combined circumstances, the more was my propensity gratified. From this morbid state of excitement, I was, of course, often precipitated, by the mere decay of the cerebral energy that fed it; and when I was forced again to contemplate and mix with the common affairs of life, I felt the contrast operate to the disadvantage ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... turbulent a set, whose quarrels with their chiefs, or among each other, are constantly involving them in civil wars, which render life and property exceedingly insecure. Besides, as I have stated, their propensity to keep bands of thieves, robbers, and murderers in their baronial castles, as poachers keep their dogs, has scared away the wealthy and respectable capitalist and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... has only too great a propensity to relax. Left by himself man seeks repose. That is why I give him a devil for a companion. He will excite him and keep him from ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... arose, one of the infernal potentates, and after making his obeisance to the king, he said, "O emperor of the Air! mighty ruler of Darkness! no one ever doubted my propensity to malice and cruelty; the sufferings of others have been, and still are, my supreme delight. It is as capital sport to me, to hear the shrieks of infants perishing in the fire as of old, when thousands of ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... Kitab Sifat-el-Houkama it is said: "There is a great diversity of inclinations among men. Everyone has his own propensity. One is borne naturally toward riches, another toward patience and resignation, another toward study and good works. And in this world the humors of men are so varied that they all differ in nature. Among this infinite variety of dispositions ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... shows the spirit of gambling so largely developed in nations of Spanish descent. The Mexicans are noted for it, and Santa Ana, who spent his exile in Cuba, and recently sailed from Havana for Vera Cruz, indulged in the propensity to a great extent. But he had two strings to his bow, and whilst playing his fighting cocks was also playing for an empire, and has won the game. How long he will hold it ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... principal agricultural products of Hyres, as indeed of all the Riviera, are olives, wine, and cork. The olive-berry harvest commences in December. The small berries make the best oil. The trunk has a curious propensity to separate and form new limbs, which by degrees become covered with bark. If the sap be still in a semi-dormant state, and the weather dry, the trunk and branches can bear a cold of 12 Fahr., while the orange and lemon are killed ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... gaunt Frenchman, with a freckled face, a profusion of crisp, sandy hair, and an inveterate propensity to speak English. His knowledge of the language was somewhat limited, and he burlesqued it by adding an s to almost every word, and giving out each phrase ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... narrow construction of the original law, and renders it a two-edged sword that pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. When the Hebrew legislator says to me: "Thou shalt not kill," it is possible for me, with my propensity to look upon the outward appearance, and to regard the external act alone, to deem myself innocent if I have never actually murdered a fellow-being. But when the Lord of glory tells me that "whosoever is angry with his brother" is in danger of the judgment, my mouth is stopped, and ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... vacant place there were numbers of applicants. The Bhils freely hunted down and captured their friends and relations who continued to create disturbances, and brought them in for punishment. Outram managed to check their propensity for liquor by paying them every day just sufficient for their food, and giving them the balance of their pay at the end of the month, when some might have a drinking bout, but many preferred to spend the money on ornaments and articles of finery. With the assistance of the corps ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... by which a dog can be beset is a propensity for killing sheep. It is not a common vice, but, where it exists, it appears to be inveterate and beyond all hope of reform. Shutting up the delinquent with a dangerous ram has often been recommended as a certain mode of disgusting him with mutton, should he survive the discipline ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... enjoyment in the fulness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man completely happy; I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling which I gave an account of in my first setting out in the world to have been so predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, and I might, at sixty one years of age, have been a little inclined to stay at home, and have done venturing ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... market is held every Saturday, and where once a year is also held that great event of Nottingham, the Michaelmas goose fair. Here also disport themselves at election-times the rougher element, who, from their propensity to bleat when expressing disapprobation, are known as the "Nottingham lambs," and who claim to be lineal descendants from that hero of the neighboring ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... nervous or sensational excitements of criminal detail; nor can there be conceived a more perverse or futile misapprehension than that which represents John Webster as one whose instinct led him by some obscure and oblique propensity to darken the darkness of southern crime or vice by an infusion of northern seriousness, of introspective cynicism and reflective intensity in wrong-doing, into the easy levity and infantile simplicity of spontaneous wickedness which distinguished the moral and social corruption of renascent ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to the fracture and destruction of straps; or the hornets, whose nests, suspended from the branches, were disturbed by the passage of the caravan, would drive the unlucky oxen nearly mad, by a stinging assault upon their hind quarters. Finally, both horses and bullocks had a singular propensity to stray back during the night to the previous halting place, whence they had to be fetched in the morning, causing great delay, and often postponing the start till mid-day. Here is a significant little entry in the log, comprising the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... tall, stooping figure, spoke plainly of a hard, laborious life. Her sharp features and keen, piercing eyes, made more prominent by the unusual lowness of the forehead, told more surely than language, of their owner's propensity to investigate the affairs of her neighbor, and proved her claim to the complimentary title, they had bestowed upon her, viz:—"That prying old mother, Wynn." But what was still more strange, was the silver hair of both these old people, and which their age did not seem to ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... awoke before long by the sound of loud growlings, which made Uncle Mark and several of the party start to their feet, with guns ready to receive the bear from whom they expected an attack. Recollecting Jacques' propensity to practical joking, I lay quiet; and I heard my uncle come back soon afterwards, growling almost as much as the supposed bear, and observing that the brute had got off, though it must have been close to the camp. I said nothing, though I suspected who had ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... his mother. 'A big brother is more effective in such cases than any one else can be. Wilfred is the only one of you all who ever seemed to take pleasure in causing pain—and I hardly know how to meet the propensity.' ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Kinsale; and Sir Richard Piercy, who commanded in the town with a small garrison of one hundred and fifty men, found himself obliged to abandon it on their appearance. These invaders amounted to four thousand, and the Irish discovered a strong propensity to join them, in order to free themselves from the English government, with which they were extremely discontented. One chief ground of their complaint was the introduction of trials by jury,[25] an institution abhorred by that people, though nothing contributes more to the support ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... drunkard's habits cling to him through life? He may repent—he may reform—he may look with actual abhorrence upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reformation and compunction, who can tell the moment in which the base and ruinous propensity may not recur, triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, everything, and prostrating its victim once more in all that is destructive and revolting in ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... article in La Lectura, Ortega y Gasset illustrates my propensity to become offensive by recalling that as we left the Ateneo together one afternoon, we encountered a blind man on the Calle del Prado, singing a jota, whereupon I ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... years after Benito's arrival at San Buenaventura, a dreadful misfortune befell Father Uria, in the death of his largest and finest cat—San Francisco. This saint had always manifested a most singular and inveterate propensity, to hunt tarantulas. More than once he had been discovered when just on the point of beginning a battle with one of those monsters, and had been stopped in the nick of time. With almost constant watchfulness, the Father had succeeded in preserving the life of his ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... involuntary lapses under the constant pressure of a strong inclination, as in the vice of parsing, and it remains innocent as long as it is not wilfully yielded to and indulged. But to yield to the ratification of an evil desire or propensity, without restraint, is to doom oneself to the most prolific of evils and to lie under the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... on the northern slope of the Alps a race of men made of sterner stuff is reared (Rudolf Greinz, Karl Schoenherr). In Bavaria, finally, people are even more rough and ready and lyrical sentimentality yields to a pugnacious propensity to ridicule, which gives satirical seasoning to the works of the genuinely Bavarian writers ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... opera-glass, the glass itself was not there. With immense energy he resumed his detective duties, and was so fortunate as to recover the glass in a short time. Thus peace was restored, and the natives were taught to feel that their propensity to steal would prove a source of great annoyance and some danger to them, should they venture to give ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... myself but will take care to transmit him his poem, when I have read it. I saw Le Grice the day before his departure, and mentioned incidentally his "teaching the young idea how to shoot"—knowing him and the probability there is of people having a propensity to pun in his company you will not wonder that we both stumbled on the same pun at once, he eagerly anticipating me,—"he would teach him to shoot!"—Poor Le Grice! if wit alone could entitle a man to respect, &c. He has written a very witty little pamphlet lately, satirical ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... score off his tyrannising wife and the fortunate, amiable Percy. Nigel's jealousy of Percy—and not of Percy only, but in a less degree of most men Bertha knew—was not very far behind his wife's jealousy of him. A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering. Nigel sometimes found himself positively imitating Mary in many little ways; watching, ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... aristocratic broad-cloths." Aristocracy having once been brought upon the scene, was made to figure largely in several sentences, and was very roughly handled indeed. To have heard Mr. Clapp, one would have supposed aristocracy was the most sinful propensity to which human nature was liable; the only very criminal quality to which republican nature might he inclined. Of course the defendants were accused of this heinous sin; this brilliant passage concluded with a direct allusion to the "very aristocratic trio before him." Mr. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... and female thieves a la detourne, I here only speak of robbers by profession; but there are also amateurs, who, beneath the cover of a well-established reputation, make small acquisitions slyly and unsuspectedly. They are very honest people they say, who with little scruple indulge their propensity for a rare book, a miniature, a cameo, a mosaic, a manuscript, a print, a medal, or a jewel that pleases them; they are called Chipeurs. If the Chipeur be rich, no heed is paid to him, he is too much above such a larceny ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... contributor and occasional "special correspondent" of a leading newspaper. He had seen much of life—tasted much of its pains and pleasures—perhaps thought more than either; and though with a little too much of a propensity for late hours and those long stories which would grow out of current events seen in the light of past experience, he was held to be a very pleasant companion by other men than ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... lulled him so fast to sleep, as it were instantaneously, that it was found necessary to convey him to his own chamber, where his footman undressed and put him to bed: nor was Jolter (naturally of a sluggish disposition) able to resist his propensity to sleep, without suffering divers dreadful yawns, which encouraged his pupil to administer the same dose to him, which had operated so successfully upon the other Argus. This cordial had not such gentle effect upon the rugged organs of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... fact of the presence of motives of a most powerful kind renders it impossible to be certain of the presence of the disease; whereas other motives being apparently absent, we presume disease as the readiest way of accounting for the propensity; I do not therefore think it is the only way. I believe there are cases in which it comes of pure greed, and is of the same kind as any other injustice the capability of exercising which is more generally distributed. Why should a thief be unknown in a class, a proportion of the members ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... They differ greatly in vocal talent, but all have a delightful way of crooning over, and, as it were, rehearsing their song in an undertone, which makes their nearness always unobtrusive. Though there is the most trustworthy witness to the imitative propensity of this bird, I have only once, during an intimacy of more than forty years, heard him indulge it. In that case, the imitation was by no means so close as to deceive, but a free reproduction of the notes of some ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... religious, bordering on bigotry. He has no mistress, loves his queen, and is too much governed by her. She is capricious like her brother, and governed by him; devoted to pleasure and expense; and not remarkable for any other vices or virtues. Unhappily the King shows a propensity for the pleasures of the table. That for drink has increased lately, or, at least, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... thing went on every night. His colleague's unblushing lying propensity aroused in the magistrate an indignation that was sometimes real, and sometimes feigned. It was so seldom that a Galician dared to boast and exaggerate before an Andalusian, that he, wounded in his amour propre and respect for his country, sometimes ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... it can percolate, not perhaps without the help of some sophistry and intimidation, into the mass of the people, who are told that their government's fortunes are their own. Now the rabble has a great propensity to take sides, promptly and passionately, in any spectacular contest; the least feeling of affinity, the slightest emotional consonance, will turn the balance and divert in one direction sympathetic forces which, for every practical purpose, might just as well have rushed ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantile airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. Do not foster these prejudices, and they will naturally ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... external objects, stealthily began to gnaw the end of the bone that rested on the hearth. As long as it had in mind the fear of interruption, it was permitted to feast moderately; but when its ravenous propensity urged it to more active and vigorous operations, Joe once more opened his eyes, and after looking slowly around, but not down, again attempted to raise the rib to ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... obtain a ticket-of-leave in one, two, or two and a-half years, from a sentence of seven, ten years, or life. He deprecated those lengthened punishments, which deprive men of the years of youth, and strengthen and ripen every evil propensity into fatal maturity. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... progress. We refer to suicide. Morselli devotes a chapter of his interesting treatise upon this subject to proving that "the purer the German race—that is to say, the stronger the Germanism (e.g., Teutonism) of a country—the more it reveals in its psychical character an extraordinary propensity to self-destruction." ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... gentleman standing on the steps, with a colored servant guarding a pile of guns, fishing-rods, and other tackle, with which idle men frequently came down from the city to endure Caleb's humble fare for a while, and gratify their masculine propensity ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... as best I might. But this best, I am bound to say, was bad enough. I knew nothing about England, and the Court, and the noble families there; but, led away by the vaingloriousness of youth (and a propensity which I possessed in my early days, but of which I have long since corrected myself, to boast and talk in a manner not altogether consonant with truth), I invented a thousand stories which I told him; ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... formidable appearance. This animal happening to grunt, one of them was so much terrified, that he became, from that moment, uneasy, and impatient to get out of the ship. In carrying his purpose into effect, however, he did not lose his propensity to thieving, for he seized hold of, and endeavoured to carry off, the smith's anvil: but, finding it infinitely too heavy for his strength, he laid hold of the large hammer, threw it on the ice; and, following it himself, deliberately laid it on his sledge, and drove off. As ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... not enough that we adopt the principles already insisted on by some of our wisest medical men, and even by one or two medical societies,[Footnote: Those of Connecticut and New Hampshire.] that children in this way often acquire a propensity for exciting drinks, that may end in their downright intemperance. What if it should not, in every case, proceed quite so far as to make the child a drunkard? If it but lays the foundation of a constitutional fondness for excitements, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... particular effort was needed to do that, yet sometimes he saw, or fancied he saw, little things which made him feel that in important matters he was left out of account. Roy would slap him on the shoulder and tousle his hair, but he would ask Tom's advice—and take it. Perhaps Roy had allowed his propensity for banter and jollying to run too far in his treatment of Pee-wee. At all events, the younger boy had found himself a bit chagrined at times that their discussions had not been wholly three-handed. And now, as he watched the others hiking ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... India is in high estimation with the pious Hindoos, who resort to it from the most remote parts of the empire. The town is surrounded by groves of trees, which are the residence of innumerable apes, whose propensity to mischief is increased by the religious respect paid to them in honour of a divinity of the Hindoo mythology, who is represented as possessing the body of an ape. In consequence of this superstition, such numbers of these animals are supported ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... maids. As those delightful creatures now-a-days, not content with being grey aspire to be actually blue; we cannot help recommending to them a kind of study, for which their propensity to cutting up renders them peculiarly adapted; we mean Anatomy. And since it is on the foulest and most odious points of character that they chiefly delight to dwell, we more especially suggest to them the pursuit of Morbid Anatomy, as one which is likely to be attended ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... description, we are sure to be greeted by the loud voice of the Blue Jay, one of the most conspicuous tenants of the forest. He has a beautiful outward appearance, under which he conceals an unamiable temper and a propensity to mischief. Indeed, there is no other bird in our forest that is arrayed in equal splendor. His neck of fine purple, his pale azure crest and head with silky plumes, his black crescent-shaped collar, his wings and tail-feathers of bright blue with stripes of white and black, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... life's gravity: at least, as we go on in years, we are all tempted to frown upon our neighbour's pleasures. People are nowadays so fond of resisting temptations; here is one to be resisted. They are fond of self-denial; here is a propensity that cannot be too peremptorily denied. There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbours good. One person I have to make good: myself. But my duty to my neighbour is much more nearly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was looking things over he became aware that Stella had ridden away. He looked anxiously after her, for he knew her propensity for getting into trouble when she rode alone. Soon she dropped out of sight behind a swell in the prairie with a flash in the sunlight ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... up thy fault with this great lever—will; However deeply bedded in propensity; However firmly set, I tell thee firmer yet Is that great power that comes ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... find cases in which the propensity to murder has been accompanied by cannibalism. In 1598 a tailor of Chalons was sentenced by the parliament of Paris to be burned alive for lycanthropy. "This wretched man had decoyed children into his shop, or attacked them in the gloaming when they strayed ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... here one might mention a few characteristics of Lady Burton. She was always very generous, but her generosity was not of the kind which would commend itself to the Charity Organization Society. For instance, she had an incurable propensity of giving away to beggars in the street. She never let one go. The result was that she frequently returned home with an empty purse; indeed, so aware was she of her weakness, she took out little money with her as a rule, so that she might not be tempted too far. When people remonstrated with her ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... to securing tobacco-pipes. And I am well aware that the man who for a quarter of a century industriously collects snuffboxes has a supreme contempt for the man who collects both snuffboxes and clocks. And in this does the specialist reveal that his normal propensity to collect has degenerated. That is to say, it has refined itself into an abnormality, and from the innocent desire to collect, has shifted off into a selfish ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... sobs could always be soothed into smiles by an open bureau with large liberty to upheave its contents from turret to foundation-stone. As the infant world ascended from cambric and dimity to broadcloth and crinoline, its propensity for investigation grew stronger. It loved not bureaus less, but a great many other things more. What sad consequences might have ensued, had this passion been left to forage for itself, no one can tell. But, by the wonderful principle of adaptation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the notables of this region, of sable lineage, called, on account of a peculiar propensity to split two-inch planks with his head, "Abe Bunter," not long since honored the students of this institution with a series of calls for the purpose of soliciting money to purchase for himself a bovine, to replace one providentially ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... and profanity of swearing. By Saint Gregory de Northbury!—no, that's an oath too, and, what is worse, a Popish oath. By—I have several tremendous imprecations at my tongue's end, but they shall not out. It is a sinful propensity, and must be controlled. In a word, then, you let ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... words of traffic absolutely necessary for the practice of hex vocation, together with sundry oaths and terms of reproach, that kept her customers in awe; so that, except among her own countrymen, she could not indulge that propensity to conversation, for which she had been remarkable from her earliest years. Nor did this instance of her affection fail of turning to her account in the sequel. She was promoted to the office of cook to a regimental mess ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... legend of Tuna threw light on the etymology of the name of Daphne. Mangaian and Greek are not allied languages. Nor did I give the Tuna story as an explanation of the Daphne story. I gave it as one in a mass of illustrations of the savage mental propensity so copiously established by Dr. Tylor in Primitive Culture. The two alternative explanations which I gave of the Daphne story I have cited. No mention of Tuna ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... I reflected on his desire to keep the Sabbath. I think he came to know which was the sermon and which the prayer, for during the latter he invariably stood up. It was only by persevering effort that I convinced him his church-going propensity could not be allowed. But now, though you know he often accompanies me when I ride on horseback, and follows the carriage when we all go, he never attempts to do so ...
— Minnie's Pet Dog • Madeline Leslie
... to the confusion, the dogs became affected with the spirit of excitement that filled their masters, and gave vent to their feelings in loud and continuous howling which nothing could check. The imitative propensity of these singular people was brought rather oddly into play during the progress of traffic. Buzzby had produced a large roll of tobacco—which they knew the use of, having been already shown how ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... she will, sooner or later; and probably as much sooner as opportunity may offer. That is our experience of the genus girl in the general; and we quite approve of her for her readiness to do so. It is, indeed, her nature; and the propensity has been planted in her for wise purposes. But as to this or that special sample of the genus girl, in reference to this or that special sample of the genus young man, we always feel ourselves bound to take it as a matter ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... sailor to make all the money he could, and given on the eve of departure, may seem out of place to some of my romantic readers; but it was, perhaps, the best Mattie could have given him. She was a girl of strong affections, and it was only natural that she should have something of the propensity so strong in both her parents. But beyond and above this there was something frank and generous, something of real good in her nature. Young as she was, she saw in Tite's courage and ambition traits of character that promised ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... out of the investigation, (not without some blame, for which of us is faultless, but) with a character unsullied even in this respect, and in all other respects irreproachable." Mankind are, more or less, the children of error; but their propensity to exaggerate human frailty deserves to be reprobated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... training. He was as near the aboriginal as it was possible for a white man to approach. He was a Siwash (male Indian) with one exception—his love of the coin. But then, he had an object in this ambition; and a fault, if it is a means to a worthy end, must be commended. He had this propensity developed to the most pronounced degree. It was a disease with him, for which there was no cure. In outward appearance he was a typical B.C. specimen of the obsolete "coureur de bois" of eastern Canada ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... corpulent fellow, raised from a full-blooded Gascon breed, and sired by a comic actor of some reputation in his way. He was remarkable for nothing but his good-humor, his love of cards, and a strong propensity to test the quality of his own liquors by comparing them with those sold ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... say, but that, having been lately in a versifying mood, I have set to rhyme your story of the cook and the lottery ticket; and herein I have avoided that malicious propensity of our numerous tellers of stories, whose only pleasure, as it appears to me, lies in the plunging the heroes and heroines of their tales into inextricable troubles and difficulties, and in continuing them in a state of perplexity beyond the power of human sufferance; and who slur ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... acquired their first footing in the territory which he had called his own, had in the course of time—while adhering substantially to the great fundamental idea of Hellenizing the east —changed and expanded into the construction of a system of Hellene- Asiatic states. The unconquerable propensity of the Greeks for migration and colonizing, which had formerly carried their traders to Massilia and Cyrene, to the Nile and to the Black Sea, now firmly held what the king had won; and under the protection of the -sarissae-, Greek civilization peacefully domiciled itself everywhere ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... about Emily, spite of all unreason, such was the family opinion of Fred's propensity to fall in love, that Albinia's first suspicion lighted upon him, but as her eye fell on the pink envelope the handwriting concerned her ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... This propensity is pretty frequent among peace-lovers, who, needing little nourishment, have no cause to fear competition. The others, the big eaters, take possession of estates, of hunting-grounds from which their fellows are excluded. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... more than I was of any other one poet. True poetry seemed to me to lie where they met on common ground; their individual characteristics lent them, on the one hand, the charm of individuality, while, on the other hand, they shared the general propensity of mankind to err. Goethe, in particular, had, since the death of Schiller, turned his attention from poetry to science. By distributing his talents over too many fields, he deteriorated in each; his latest ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... country, and in every department of taste, the earliest object of art is, the display of the power of the artist; and it is in the last period of its improvements alone, that this miserable propensity is overcome. It is hence that the imitation of Nature is not what is at first attempted; that the forms which she presents are uniformly neglected, and the merit of the artist is thought to consist ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... stale tenderness, stale emotion, stale melancholy, stale poetry.... How many lovely things profaned, rare things, used in season or out! For the worst of it was that it was all useless: a habit of undressing their hearts in public, a fond and foolish propensity of the honest people of Germany for plunging loudly into confidences. With nothing to say they were always talking! Would their chatter never cease?—As well bid frogs in a ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... twentieth-century physician would deny the cloud-suffering association, he would not deny Clayton's propensity for observation and his attempts to discern relationships. The approach of the better seventeenth-century Virginia physician can be labeled scientific even ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... and agreement with hell"—in other words, from the Union,—whereby they would not have liberated one slave. They included possibly too many of that sort who would seek salvation by repenting of other men's sins. But even these did not indulge this propensity at their ease, for by this time the politicians, the polite world, the mass of the people, the churches (even in Boston), not merely avoided the dangerous topic; they angrily proscribed it. The Abolitionists took their lives in ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... indications of an appetite, which he considers one of the symptoms of a forming disease, says: "This early stage is marked by an occasional desire to drink, which recurs at shorter and shorter intervals, and a propensity, likewise, gradually increasing for a greater quantity at each time. This stage has long been believed to be one of voluntary indulgence, for which the subject of it was morally responsible. The drinker has been held as criminal for his occasional indulgence, and ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... author, regardless of his beauties or his faults, young Reynolds attended to both these, displaying a happy knowledge of what he read, and entering with ardor into the spirit of his author. He discovered likewise talents for composition, and a natural propensity to drawing, in which his friends and intimates thought him qualified to excel. Emulation was a distinguishing characteristic of his mind, which his father perceived with the delight natural to a parent; and designing him for the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... her that, though the last year's care had done much to loosen the bonds of the subtle and alluring habit, yet that any resumption of it tended to plunge its victim into the fatal condition of the confirmed opium-eater, giving her every hope at the same time that this propensity might be entirely shaken off, and that the improvement in Mr. Egremont's health and habits which had set in might be confirmed, and raise ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... estimated that with due diligence on the part of the secretary, it should be possible for him to execute his mission in time to be back in Nombre by the afternoon of the following day; but Don Sebastian was not so sanguine; he knew the Spanish propensity to procrastinate, and he also knew that Don Silvio Calderon, the Governor of Panama, was not the man to permit himself to be hurried, particularly in the interests of other people; also he knew, a great deal better than George, how many difficulties ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... abhorrence, and with a thief no one is willing to trade." Latter voyagers have borne similar testimony to their brethren still further north; but their honesty seems to have arisen from the want of temptation; for the same missionaries add: "We have discovered that this propensity is not altogether wanting in the northern Esquimaux, who now and then, if they think they can do it without detection, will make a little free with their neighbour's property." And a further acquaintance with the natives discovered to the northern ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... what that proves?' said Tom, with an arch subsmile lighting on his eyes and mouth; and as a glow awoke on her pale cheek, he added, 'and won't you believe, too, that my propensity to "contemptuous irony" was all from my instinctive fear of what ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bequeathed to places, ample memorials, by which they may be clearly traced out. It may seem strange, that in the first ages there should have been such an universal defection from the truth; and above all things such a propensity to this particular mode of worship, this mysterious attachment to the serpent. What is scarce credible, it obtained among Christians; and one of the most early heresies in the church was of this sort, introduced ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... cowardly and degenerate individuals really represent that devoted sex. But these writers are indeed well out of the ruck of ordinary humanity, because they tell us that "whatever the means employed, and whether righteous or not, the propensity to limit the highest form of life operates silently and steadily amongst the more thoughtful members of all civilized countries," and yet add that "it is not perhaps good taste to consider the means employed ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... hears a confused buzz of admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in the assurance that their distinguished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... truth—a love which as yet she knew not how to regulate or apply. She was a beautiful child; and for a time her mother's vanity was gratified by having her brought from the nursery to her drawing-rooms, to be caressed, admired, and praised for her smart speeches; but after a time her truth-telling propensity became too evident. The polite occupants of the drawing-room began to whisper among themselves that Miss Emma was a spoiled child, and had better be kept ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... life the man was compelled to resort; and taking the chair every night, at some low theatrical house, at once put him in possession of a few more shillings weekly, and enabled him to gratify his old propensity. Even this resource shortly failed him; his irregularities were too great to admit of his earning the wretched pittance he might thus have procured, and he was actually reduced to a state bordering ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... The Company have a steamboat and several sailing vessels, for the purpose chiefly of trading with the natives along the coast. The primary object, however, is not so much the trade, as to keep brother Jonathan in check, (whose propensity for encroaching has of late been "pretty much" exhibited,) and to deter him from forming any establishments on the coasts; there being a just apprehension that if once a footing were obtained on the coast, an equal eagerness ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... venture on board till Tupia had used numerous arguments to persuade them—among others, an assurance that the strangers did not eat men. This remark, coupled with those of the boys, gave the English their first suspicions of the horrible propensity of the people with whom they were now attempting to open up an intercourse. The old chief, after remaining a short time on board, returned with the three men ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... conspirators. The court itself was listening with silence and gravity to the reading of the testimony taken on the day previous. General Wallace produced on the spectators an impression a little different from the other members, by exhibiting an artistic propensity, which subsequently took a different direction in "Ben Hur." The most impressive sight was that of the conspirators, all heavily manacled; even Mrs. Surratt, who kept her irons partly concealed in the folds of her gown. Payne, the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Monsieur's" observation, and even the greatest virtues and genius, if combined with any quality which can afford matter for a joke, will scarcely prevent their possessor from being made a laughing-stock. Napoleon was so well aware of this propensity of his subjects, that he was prevented by it from placing his own figure in the car which surmounts the triumphal arch erected between the Court of the Tuileries and the Place du Carousal, being apprehensive ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... beginning to worry, for his acquaintance throughout the trade had extended rapidly, due to his propensity for making friends, and he had heard one or two little rumors that Morrow & Company had bitten off more than they could chew in a few big deals of late and had been badly pinched; in fact, to such an extent did Matt ponder ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
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