"Predilection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... LORD DE, birth of, i. 1; singular record of his ancestors, 2; his predilection for the navy, 17; enters his name on the books of the Solebay, 18; his talents, 19; his regard for Captain Goodall, 21; joins the Levant, 22; hospitality of the English families in Smyrna towards, ib.; passes examination for ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... Ludovico, he was an ambitious man, full of courage and astuteness, familiar with the sword and with poison, which he used alternately, according to the occasion, without feeling any repugnance or any predilection for either of them; but quite decided to be his nephew's heir whether he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to the prince was increased by the doubts which were entertained of his religious bias. So long as the Emperor, his benefactor, lived, William believed in the pope; but it was feared, with good ground, that the predilection for the reformed religion, which had been imparted into his young heart, had never entirely left it. Whatever church he may at certain periods of his life have preferred each might console itself with the reflection that none other possessed him more entirely. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... West (Morocco); the next was Sultan of Bornou; and the third and youngest was Sultan of Aghadez in remote times. But how remote, it is impossible for En-Noor to tell, and, of course, for me to relate. I was much amazed by the predilection of En-Noor (who is not absolutely a white man) for black people. He praised Overweg, because he was getting brown and black. As for me, his highness was almost inclined to express his disgust for the whiteness of my ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... insure prosperity. In due time Slee replied that, while boarding was a "miserable business anyhow," he had been particularly fortunate in securing a place on one of the most pleasant streets—"the family a small one and choice spirits, with no predilection for taking boarders, and consenting to the present arrangement only because of the anticipated pleasure of your company." The price, Slee added, would be reasonable. As a matter of fact a house on Delaware Avenue—still the fine residence street of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... grave diplomats, stately ambassadors, were swayed by her light charm and impulsive frankness of youth. And to have her who could have all London at her feet, including his distinguished self, show a predilection, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... its uncertainties of theology and morality. He had a natural gift for deriving pleasure from his actual circumstances, a dull and brutal civil war, or a prison, though none could utter more dismal groans. By predilection he basked in a Court, where simultaneously he could adore its mistress and help ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... anomaly that two so opposed to each other in character; the one verging on extreme recklessness, the other pushing prudence almost to prudery; the one so gay as to seem to live for frolic, the other quiet and reserved should conceive this strong predilection for each other; but so it was. I have heard persons say, however, that these varieties in temperament awaken interest, and that they who have commenced with such dissimilarities, but have assimilated by communion, attachment, and habits, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... and consequent reputation, attracted the attention of Dr Brightwell, the clergyman of our parish, who had the kindness to let me share the instructions of his children, and still further advanced my education, and still more increased my natural predilection for religious information. By the time I was thirteen, I became quite a prodigy in Christian learning, and was often sent for to the parsonage, to astonish the great people of the neighbourhood, by ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... matter-of-factness in some of his poems, consisting in a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the representations of objects, and in the insertion of accidental circumstances, such as are superfluous in poetry. Thirdly, there is in certain poems an undue predilection for the dramatic form; and in these cases either the thoughts and diction are different from those of the poet, so that there arises an incongruity of style, or they are the same and indistinguishable, and then it presents a species ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... with me, one of those febrile attacks to which persons who have once suffered from malarious disease are so liable, and I could not fail to remark his sensible observations thereon, and his judicious management of his sickness. He had a great natural predilection for medical science, and always took great interest in all that related to the profession. I endeavored to persuade him to commit to writing the results of his medical observations and experience among the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Joseph's predilection for art was developed by a very commonplace incident. During the Easter holidays of 1812, as he was coming home from a walk in the Tuileries with his brother and Madame Descoings, he saw a pupil drawing a caricature of some professor on the wall of the Institute, and stopped ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... observing details noticed that he had ranged his cocoa-nut and ice on the edge of his plate, and was beginning to attack his herring with every sign of relish. His portion consisted mostly of hard roe, for which he had no natural predilection, but this evening he seemed to enjoy it, helping it down with occasional bites at the bun, and keeping up ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... hero never has shown any remarkable predilection for duty, the reader will not be surprised at his requesting from Captain Wilson a few days on shore, previous to his going on board of the Aurora. Captain Wilson allowed the same licence to Gascoigne, as they had both been cooped up for some time ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... wisely judged it best that his own eyes should be on the spot to see to his own interests. Nobody was sorry for this determination. Mrs. Rossitur always liked what her husband liked, but she had at the same time a decided predilection for home. Marion was glad to leave her convent for the gay world, which her parents promised she should immediately enter. And Hugh and Fleda had too lively a spring of happiness within themselves to care ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... that Russian realism has its roots in a special spiritual predilection, we must not nevertheless forget the historical conditions which prepared the way for it and made its logical development easy. Russian literature, called on to struggle against tremendous obstacles, could hardly have gone astray in the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... peril hovering over its property, peace, safety, and happiness. How they prayed for calmness, prudence, wisdom; begged that the legislators should not suffer themselves to be led into the temptation of partisan pride or party predilection; besought them to remember that their own just powers were loaned to them by the people at the polls, and that they must decide the people's will and not their own political preference; implored them not to hazard the subversion ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... crushing appliances, I shall not say much. "Their name is legion for they are many," and the same may be said of concentrators. It may be old-fashioned, but I admit my predilection is still in favour of the stamper-battery, for the reason that though it may be slower in proportion to the power employed, it is simple and not liable to get out of order, a great advantage when one has so ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... prompt and decisive action. [See the character of Themistocles in the 138th section of the first book of Thucydides, especially the last sentence.] On the vote of Aristides it may be more difficult to speculate. His predilection for the Spartans may have made him wish to wait till they came up; but, though circumspect, he was neither timid as a soldier nor as a politician; and the bold advice of Miltiades may probably have found in ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... scrupulously strict in his moral and religious notions—and resolutely set his face against the least departure from exact propriety, either in matters divine or temporal. The austerity of his opinions and habits was somewhat distasteful to his wife and eldest daughter, both of whom had a decided predilection for gay and fashionable amusements. Previous to his death, they were obliged to conform to his views and wishes; but after that event, they unreservedly participated in all the aristocratic pleasures of ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... endowing Bethlehem and Jerusalem with splendid churches, and his new capital on the Bosphorus with the first of the three historic basilicas dedicated to the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia). One of the greatest of innovators, he seems to have had a special predilection for circular buildings, and the tombs and baptisteries which he erected in this form, especially that for his sister Constantia in Rome (known as Santa Costanza, Fig. 66), furnished the prototype for numberless Italian baptisteries in ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... engrossing feeling. She felt for him an incipient tenderness, but scarcely any passion. Perhaps the nearest approach to the latter that Hetty had manifested was to be seen in the sensitiveness which had caused her to detect March's predilection for her sister, for, among Judith's many admirers, this was the only instance in which the dull mind of the girl had been quickened into an ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... expressed acquiescence, and Mrs. Delano replied: "We will accept your invitation with pleasure. I have a great predilection for sculpture." ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... repeated, blandly, but authoritatively, endeavoring, as zealously as one of Christy's Minstrels, to assimilate my speech to any supposed predilection of the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... theological fermentation. People who fancied themselves favoured with direct revelations from Heaven; people who thought it right to keep the seventh day of the week as a Sabbath instead of the first day; people who cherished a special predilection for the Apocalypse and the Book of Daniel; people with queer views about property and government; people who advocated either too little marriage or too much marriage; all such eccentric characters as are apt to come ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... on Boy's canoe came up with those of Gun and Forday. The latter was a venerable-looking old man, in spite of his wretched semi-European semi-native clothing and a very strong predilection for rum, of which he consumed a great quantity, although his manners and conversation betrayed no signs of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the course of conversation, to inform Rose that, having engaged him chiefly as a guide and interpreter through the country of the Crows, they would not stand in need of his services beyond. Knowing, therefore, his connection by marriage with that tribe, and his predilection for a residence among them, they would put no restraint upon his will, but, whenever they met with a party of that people, would leave him at liberty to remain among his adopted brethren. Furthermore, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... dinner-time. I was on one of the carronades, busy with the sun's lower limb, bringing it into contact with the horizon, when the boy's lower limbs brought him into contact with the baboon, who, having, as well as the boy, a strong predilection for bread-and-butter, and a stronger arm to take it withal, thought proper to help himself to that to which the boy had already been helped. In short, he snatched the bread-and-butter, and made short work of it, for it was in ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... not so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure you I attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction is too industrious a word for the ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... essay may do something for it, but not the debate. Worst of all is the presence of several large, ill-defined, or unsettled terms, of which there are still plenty in our department. A not unfrequent case is a combination of the several defects each perhaps in a small degree. A tinge of predilection or party, a double or triple complication of doctrines, and one or two hazy terms, will make a debate that is pretty sure to end as it began. Thus it is that a question, plausible to appearance, may contain within it capacities of misunderstanding, cross-purposes, and pointless issues, sufficient ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... and a bachelor of sixty-eight, a time of life that, by referring his education to a period more remote by half a century, than that in which the incidents of our legend took place, was not at all in favor of any very romantic predilection in behalf of the rest of the human race. In short, the Herr Hofmeister was a bailiff, much as Balthazar was a headsman, on account of some particular merit or demerit, (it might now be difficult to say which,) of one of his ancestors, by the laws of the canton, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... distinct views of his God; yet, though he may become religious, it is hardly to be expected that he will become a very precise and straightlaced person; it is probable that he will retain, with his scholarship, something of his gypsyism, his predilection for the hammer and tongs, and perhaps some inclination to put on certain gloves, not white kid, with any friend who may be inclined for a little old English diversion, and a readiness to take a glass of ale, with plenty of malt in it, and as little hop as may well be—ale at least two years ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... how its variations are influenced by climate, education, government, and local circumstances. In his rapid panorama of foreign countries, he showed variety of knowledge, and without illiberal prejudice against any nation, an amiable predilection for his native country. Next to his own country he preferred England, which, as he said, by the mother's side, he might call his own. She had early instilled into him an admiration for our free constitution, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... open and bid him enter; he pictured with a vividness he could not suppress her entrance there, carried, her head lolling on her breast. Several times he walked up and down, wondering if she would care to see him, trying to remember if she had ever shown any predilection for him which could make him think she would. Then he turned away and went on, the thought of her and the pity of her going with him. He was not surprised when at supper Carminow began to speak of her; it seemed as though it would not ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... trifles, equally pleased with an unusual postage stamp or a scarce example of an Italian primitive. Nor should the impertinent curiosity of local antiquaries, which sees in every disused chalk-pit traces of Roman civilisation, be compared with the rare predilection requisite for a nobler pursuit. The archaeologist preserves for us those objects which time has forgotten and passing fashion rejected; in the museums he buries our ancient eikons, where they become impervious to neglect, praise, or criticism; while the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... observation, to have noticed phases of Celtic religious practices which other writers had overlooked. In the first place he calls attention to the veneration in which the Gauls held the mistletoe and the tree on which it grew, provided that that tree was the oak. Hence their predilection for oak groves and their requirement of oak leaves for all religious rites. Pliny here remarks on the consonance of this practice with the etymology of the name Druid as interpreted even through Greek (the Greek for an oak being drus). Were not this respect for ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... European practice, and singularly apt to be followed by results quite as propitious. Into such heterodoxy our friend was the more liable to fall because it had been taught him early in life by his old master, Dr. Swinnerton, who, at those not infrequent times when he indulged a certain unhappy predilection for strong waters, had been accustomed to inveigh in terms of the most cynical contempt and coarsest ridicule against the practice by which he lived, and, as he affirmed, inflicted death on his fellow-men. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... group an Italian boy, Rafaello. These four children grew up together, and the Palatine prince was pleased to mark that Frederick, though full of martial ardour, showed intellectual tastes as well; yet the father did not live long to watch the growth of the boy's predilection therein, and there came a day when the crown of Louis III was acquired by his heir, Louis IV. Still quite young, the latter was already affianced to Margaret of Savoy; and this engagement had incensed various nobles of the Rhine, especially the Count of Luzenstein. He was eager ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... blow. "If you think I have practised the small-sword every day of my life for ten years to suffer myself to be shot at like a rabbit in the end—ho, really!" He laughed aloud. "You have challenged me, I think, Sir Terence. Because I feared the predilection you have discovered, I was careful to wait until the challenge came from you. The choice of weapons lies, I think, with me. I shall instruct my ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... a young plant makes its appearance above ground, light, as well as air, becomes necessary to its preservation. Light is essential to the development of the colours, and to the thriving of the plant. You may have often observed what a predilection vegetables have for the light. If you make any plants grow in a room, they all spread their leaves, and extend ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... it, navigate the cutter, or any other craft for that matter. There is probably not one boy in ten thousand of your age, Billy, who could truthfully claim such ability. But two circumstances have been in your favour; in the first place you are naturally a sharp, intelligent lad, with a strong predilection for study; and in the next place there was little else for you to do on this group but learn, until we started to build the cutter. Now, Billy, what you have told me relative to Van Ryn's inquisitiveness and his cross-questioning of you has greatly interested me, for a reason which I will explain ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... stick to my resolve with the heroism of an ancient Roman; though the Romans were hardly so heroic in that matter, by the way—witness the havoc made by that fatal Egyptian, a little bit of a woman that could be bundled up in a carpet—to say nothing of the general predilection for somebody else's wife which prevailed in those days, and which makes Suetonius read like a modern French novel. I did not think there was so much of the old leaven left in me. My sweet Clarissa! I fancy she likes me—in a sisterly kind of way, of course—and trusts me ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... of ages, Its predilection for the past, Turns back about a billion pages And lands us by the Cam at last; Is it the thought of "Granta" (once our daughter), The Freshers' Match, the Second in our Mays That makes our mouth, our very soul to water? Ah no! Ah no! It is the ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... more than one inch and a half in length without the tail, but with a spread of wing of more than eight inches. Its regular food consists chiefly of gnats, midges, and other small flies, in pursuit of which it often frequents the vicinity of water, but it has a curious predilection for raw meat, and in search of this it often makes its way into pantries, where the little thief will be found clinging to a joint of meat, and feeding upon it with avidity. This fondness for meat makes the Pipistrelle very easy ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... belongs to that mysterious science) experience has taught us all, that there are some natures that possess certain repellent qualities, which never can be brought into affinity with our own—persons, whom we like or dislike at first sight, with a strong predilection for the one almost amounting to love, with a decided aversion to the other, which in some instances ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... left, instead of throwing stumbling-blocks in their way, as they now do, should hold out lures for their trade and alliance? What, when they get strength, which will be sooner than most people conceive (from the emigration of foreigners, who will have no particular predilection toward us, as well as from the removal of our own citizens), will be the consequence of their having formed close connections with both or either of those powers, in a commercial way? It needs not, in my opinion, the gift ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... latter bore upon Duncan, it was divided into two rather distinct parties, one of course favouring him; and this was feminine almost exclusively. Tracey Tanner, to be sure, confessed within my hearing to a predilection for the Noo York dood, but was inclined to hedge and climb the fence when assailed by Roland's strictures. Roland, I suspect, was a wee mite jealous; he had been paying attention to—I mean, going with—Josie Lockwood for several months. Instinctively he must have divined his ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... consequence of which he was lame for the rest of his life, and absolutely disabled from taking share either in warfare or in the military sports and tournaments which were its image. As Robert had never testified much predilection for violent exertion, he did not probably much regret the incapacities which exempted him from these active scenes. But his misfortune, or rather its consequences, lowered him in the eyes of a fierce nobility and warlike people. He was obliged to repose the principal charge of his affairs ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... there is any striking and particular talent along any one line, such an education is more than likely to bring it out and to cause it to seek further development. In case there is no such distinct predilection manifested, further and more minute study of the individual will have to be made in order to determine just what kind of intellectual work will give him the best opportunities for success and happiness. Even ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... exist here and there who have no need for the mere physical assistance, the number of those whose mental outlook is undistorted by tradition, prejudice or some form of bias is so small that we regard them as inspired or criminal according to the inclination of our own beloved predilection. And no spectacles will correct the mental astigmatism of the multitude, a fact that is often a cause of considerable annoyance to the possessors of normal sight. That defect of vision, whether congenital or induced by the confinements ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... particularly pleasant. This person had also a peculiarity of judgment that was singularly in opposition to all his open professions, a peculiarity, however, that belongs rather to his class than to the individual member of it. Ultra as a democrat and an American, Mr. Dodge had a sneaking predilection in favour of foreign opinions. Although practice had made him intimately acquainted with all the frauds, deceptions, and vileness of the ordinary arts of paragraph-making, he never failed to believe religiously in the veracity, judgment, good faith, honesty and talents of anything that was imported ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the dangers and battles which he had confronted, and who had goodness and honesty written on his face and breathing from his lips, for which qualities our brave lad had always an instinctive sympathy and predilection. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... benefit concert at Habeneck's, April 26, 1835. The papers praised, but his irritability increased with every public performance. About this time he became acquainted with Bellini, for whose sensuous melodies he had a peculiar predilection. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Nimrods, a certain class of royal tigers is dignified with the appellation of "man-eaters." These are tigers which, having once tasted human flesh, show a predilection for the same, and such characters are very naturally famed and dreaded among the natives. Elderly gentlemen of similar tastes and habits are occasionally met with among the lions in the interior of South ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... all becoming deference, He had a predilection for that tie; But that, at present, with immediate reference To his own circumstances, there might lie Some difficulties, as in his own preference, Or that of her to whom he might apply: That still he'd wed with such ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the time I speak of Bessy's prospects fully entitled her to as opulent a match, and no one apparently foresaw how speedily they would be overcast by her father's improvidence. But Andy Joyce had an ill-advised predilection for seeing things what he called "dacint and proper" about him, and it led him into several imprudent acts. For instance, he built some highly superior sheds in the bawn, to the bettering, no doubt, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... tone made it a crime either to know these things or to be guilty of ignorance; which, Sam could not determine. Sam was of the sleek, oily-haired type of young men, with pimples and pale eyes and a predilection for gum and gossip. He was afraid of Ford ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... acquaintance with Mr. Frend led him to study the philosophy of Hartley, and he became one of his disciples. Perhaps the love of Coleridge for his college, "the ever honoured Jesus," might have had some share in the cause of his early predilection in favour of Hartley. He too was the son of a clergyman, was admitted to Jesus at the age of fifteen, and became a fellow in 1705. According to the account given of him by his biographer, Coleridge in several ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... that he was sensible of, but wanted energy to overcome. His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind. And, upon the whole, our intimacy was rather a mutual predilection than a deep and solid friendship, such as has since arisen between myself and you, Halford, whom, in spite of your occasional crustiness, I can liken to nothing so well as an old coat, unimpeachable in texture, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... this moment. But nevertheless whenever she reached this point she was always really frightened. Her hands really trembled. The Archbishop was to ask her with tempered indignation how much longer she intended to nullify the labours of his ablest colleague, how much longer her selfish predilection for celibacy was to wreck the life and paralyse the powers of a broken-hearted man. Her cruelty was placed before her in glowing colours. She was observed to waver, to falter. A tear was seen in spite of her marvellous self-control to course down her cheek. The eye of an Archbishop misses nothing. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... expressed an accepted convention rather than a personal predilection. It was not the room of a young man of conscious tastes. It was solid, cheerful and somewhat naif. There was a great deal of very clean white paint and a great deal of bright wall-paper. There were deep chairs covered with brighter chintz. There were blue and white tiles around ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... girl closed "Comus" with the drawing inside, and came to sit down again, looking up into the eyes of her "beautiful mamma." And even the commonplace question of dress soon became interesting to her, for her artistic predilection followed her even there, and no lover ever gloried in his mistress's charms, no painter ever delighted to deck his model, more than Olive loved to adorn and to admire the still exquisite beauty of her mother. It stood to her in the place of all attractions in herself—in ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... so many ages, in which, thanks to barbarous persecutions, all ecclesiastical and monastic traditions were lost to Ireland, through the sheer impossibility of following them up, the Irish still show a marked predilection for the holy austerity of penance, though the rest of the Christian world seems to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... test of moral worth, and perhaps our judgment of the decline and rise of social virtue is as easily swayed by personal predilection as was that of Marie-Joseph. To me the persistence of the same cruel and stupid customs throughout the centuries is a source of perplexed pessimism. I cannot brush aside the problem by a facile reference to reincarnation. If John the brigand was a cut-throat and a robber in his twentieth ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... age of twenty, and carry back with me all the experience that forty years more have taught me, I can assure you, that I would employ much the greatest part of my time in engaging the good-will, and in insinuating myself into the predilection of people in general, instead of directing my endeavors to please (as I was too apt to do) to the man whom I immediately wanted, or the woman I wished for, exclusively of all others. For if one happens (and it will ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... very melancholy if I had to spend a long time in Meyrick's company. In the first place, his views on literature are directly opposed to mine. He has a kind of scheme in his head, and classifies writers into accurate groups. He seems to have no predilection and no admirations except for what he calls important writers. He has no personal interest in writers whatever. He can assign them their exact places in the development of English, but he never approaches an author with the reverential sense of drawing near to a mysterious and divine secret, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the draperies of an upright figure, from side to side (as very notably in the dress of one of the musicians who are playing to the dancing of Herodias' daughter, in one of his frescoes at Santa Croce); and this predilection was mingled with the truly mediaeval love of quartering.[12] The figure of the Madonna in the small tempera pictures in the Academy at Florence is always completely divided into two narrow segments by ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... without favorable results for Science; nay, more mature views excited an eager desire to become acquainted with similar or still greater visitations among the ancients, but, as later ages have always been fond of referring to Grecian antiquity, the learned of those times, from a partial and meagre predilection, were contented with the descriptions of Thucydides, even where nature had revealed, in infinite diversity, the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... what to look for. He had the loud, gruff voice which implies the right to command. He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers, with bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door work. He had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to do something fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring multitudes gathered at mighty musters or imposing ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... with him, even in childhood, almost a passion. At twelve years of age, his whole soul was occupied by Robinson Crusoe and his island. His romantic love of adventure seeming to his parents to announce a predilection in favour of the sea, he was sent by them with one of his uncles to Martinique. But St. Pierre had not sufficiently practised the virtue of obedience to submit, as was necessary, to the discipline of a ship. He was afterwards placed with the Jesuits at Caen, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... mindful that the Church is the teacher of the great as well as of the humble, he enforces the obligations of sovereigns towards their subjects, not forgetting the fulfilment of all the duties which the people owe to their rulers. In a former Encyclical, Pius IX. had expressed his predilection for the religious orders. This expression was now renewed. Time may have interfered, more or less, with their discipline. Anxious to preserve them and promote their prosperity, he was ever willing to correct such abuses as may have existed. To some communities he offered the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... a feeling or a passion for higher things, and made it the business of his maturer time—even made it his career—to carry out on a scale and on lines dictated and governed by circumstances the predilection formed in boyhood. On the contrary, there are for our consideration and instruction the libraries which owed their existence to less interesting motives, to the vague and untrained pursuit of rare and expensive books ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... not commit yourself?" said Colonel Brownlow. "Remember that your children's interests are at stake, and must not be sacrificed to a predilection." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... predilection for horse races, before he ascended the English throne; they were in high estimation in Scotland during his minority, previously to which, the English parliament seem to have turned their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... little threadbare, but the curtains are new and match the furniture—a pretty flowered chintz, you know. And I will make little dishes for you, since you have no appetite! A "navarin," my dear, I make it well, and a real "fricassee"! We Frenchwomen can all cook! The "navarin" was my poor husband's predilection—when he had eaten one made by me, he used to say that the fleshpots of Egypt were certainly the "navarin" and nothing else. But when I am alone it is not worth while to take so much trouble. An egg, five sous' worth of ham and brawn, and a roll—that suffices me when I am alone! But if you will ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... struck with quiet certainty the vein that was his by nature in poetry; and this has broadened almost continually, yielding richer results, which have been worked out with an increasing refinement of skill. His predilection is for the picturesque; for romance combined with simplicity, purity, and tenderness of feeling, touched by fancy and by occasional lights of humor so reserved and dainty that they never disturb the pictorial harmony. The capacity for unaffected utterance of feeling on matters common to humanity ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... question is therefore changed. It is now how corrupt nations will act against corrupt nations equally enlightened? But if the citizen of Geneva drew his prediction of the extinction of monarchy in Europe from that predilection for democracy which assumes that a republic must necessarily produce more happiness to the people than a monarchy, then we say that the fatal experiment was again repeated since the prediction, and the fact proved not true! The excess of democracy inevitably ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that a predilection for Birmingham, is entertained by every denomination of visitants, from Edward Duke of York, who saw us in 1765, down to the presuming quack, who, griped with necessity, boldly discharges his filth from the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... predilection, he was disposed to the interest of King James. Hereditary tendencies scarcely ever lose their hold upon the mind entirely: notions on politics are formed at a much earlier age than is generally supposed. The family of Fraser had been, as we have seen, from ages immemorial ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... great practical consequence. The gradual amelioration of the criminal code—a restriction of capital punishments, demanded by the humanity of the British public—was allowed by the ruling classes with doubt and grudging. Some conspicuous cases confirmed their predilection in favor of the scaffold. What punishment, they asked, would transportation have proved to Fontleroy, who from the spoil of his extensive forgeries, might have reserved an ample fortune? It was reported, and not untruly, that many had carried to the penal colonies the profit ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... always wanted a son, a twelve year old son, who should have left behind the noise and follies of childhood, and have become old enough to be an intelligent and agreeable companion. Now Rolf fulfilled these conditions; and moreover displayed a decided predilection for Uncle Titus, who began to feel a most paternal interest spring up in his heart towards the lad. So gladly did he feel it, that as he strode through the garden, in the light of the shining, starry host, he ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... party, to assault any party, at a moment's notice. To them all administrations, and all oppositions were the same. They regarded Bute, Grenville, Rockingham, Pitt, without one sentiment either of predilection or of aversion. They were the King's friends. It is to be observed that this friendship implied no personal intimacy. These people had never lived with their master, as Dodington at one time lived with his father, or as Sheridan afterwards ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seventeen years of age. He became a tutor in the college, but soon abandoned this occupation to commence the study of the law at Burlington in Vermont, and in a few years he was admitted to practice in the highest courts of the country. An early and ever-increasing predilection, however, led him to the profession of his father, and upon completing his theological studies he was settled over the Park-street Congregational church, in Boston, where, he rapidly acquired the fame of being one ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... attached his heart, where toil, poverty, and retirement had fixed his life. Eleonore Duplay, the eldest daughter of his host, inspired Robespierre with a more serious attachment than her sisters. The feeling, rather predilection than passion, was more reasonable on the part of Robespierre, more ardent and simple on the part of the young girl. This affection afforded him tenderness without torment, happiness without excitement: it was the love adapted for a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... the perfect organization which is a sine qua non to success in our great "national game." Its chief requisites are long hair, leathery lungs and abnormally developed legs. The game owes its popularity to the average boy's predilection for the brutal, his inherent animalism. Football has for ages been a favorite game with savages, while baseball is a product of civilization. I am not decrying football—I incline to the view that an occasional ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... was less than a foot high, besides groups representing the labors of Heracles. In short, the list of his statues of superhuman beings, though it does include an Eros and a Dionysus, looks as if he had no especial predilection for the soft loveliness of youth, but rather for mature and vigorous forms. He was famous as a portrait- sculptor and made numerous statues of Alexander, from whom he received conspicuous recognition. Naturally, too, he accepted commissions for athlete statues; ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... no, not at all, I assure you; I likes it of all things. I can't abide a pipe no-how, but I've quite a prevalence (predilection?) for siggers." So Wiggins puffed and chatted away; and at last, delighted with the sprightly conversation of the lady, seated himself on the small-beer barrel, and so far forgot his economy in the fascination of his entertainer, that he purchased a second. At ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... cities; but the shallowness of the graves contributes to render these vast accumulations of animal dust, at certain seasons more especially, a source of pestilential miasmata. The cemeteries near Scutari are immense, owing to the predilection which the Turks of Europe preserve for being buried in Asia—that quarter of the world in which are situated the holy cities, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Damascus. The author of Anastasius gives the following vivid description of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... inches in the circumference of his body. Being rather corpulent, and not very expert in performing the Chinese ceremony at their public introduction, his hat happened to fall on the ground, upon which the old Emperor began to laugh. "Thus," says he, "I received a mark of distinction and predilection, such as never Embassador was honoured with before. I confess," continues he, "that the recollection of my sufferings from the cold in waiting so long in the morning, was very much softened by this incident." No man will certainly envy ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... an altogether easy bird to shoot, owing to his annoying predilection for the steepest and rockiest hillsides, and those most densely clothed in spiny jungle, wherein lurking, he chooses the inopportune moment when the sportsman is hopelessly entangled, like Isaac's ram, to rise chuckling and ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the title of captain was attached to him, more or less, from beginning to end; and it is a singular circumstance, that it has adhered to the name to this day. His descendants early manifested a predilection for maritime life. During the first half of the present century, many of them were shipmasters. In our foreign, particularly our East-India, navigation, the title has clung to the name; so much so, that the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... which ought to be based upon a profound conviction, an overwhelming passion, an intense enthusiasm, is often little more than the abandonment of a personality to a mood of intoxicating ebullience; while the humour of the Shakespeare story lies in a sense of the way in which a national predilection will override all ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this disease is not identical with the germ causing abortion in cattle. It exerts its action, however, in a similar manner, and appears to have, under certain conditions, a predilection for the genital organs of the mare, where it induces certain morbid changes whereby a premature expulsion of the fetus is the result. The germ is usually present in the fetal membranes and also in the aborted fetus. Mares may harbor the infection without disclosing any apparent ill effects. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... learn from Pliny the younger, Novae Athenae. From this place he afterwards moved to Naples, where he applied himself with great assiduity to Greek and Roman literature, particularly to the physical and mathematical sciences; for which he expressed a strong predilection in the second book of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... interest in the operations of attack and defence, into which they were initiated by their friend, the celebrated Lord Macduff, [4] an exceptionally keen and gallant soldier, who, however, apparently owed his predilection for war to a singularly horrible event in ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... eyes of enfeebled and nervous persons whose sensual appetites crave highly seasoned foods, the eyes of hectic and over-excited creatures have a predilection toward that irritating and morbid color with its ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... run get that pink, long-tailed waist of your'n to let Bettie make one by, please," said Mother Mayberry, with total unconsciousness of that very strong feminine predilection for exclusiveness of design in wearing apparel. The garment in question was a very lovely, simply-cut linen affair that bore a distinguished foreign trade-mark. "I know you feel complimented by her wanting to make one for herself by it, and maybe Clara May and ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... conveniently overlook the joys of a companionship of the soul, it is quite as possible to have a taste in women as in champagne or cigars. Mr. Ditmar preferred blondes, and he liked them rather stout, a predilection that had led him into matrimony with a lady of this description: a somewhat sticky, candy-eating lady with a mania for card parties, who undoubtedly would have dyed her hair if she had lived. He was not inconsolable, but he had had enough of marriage to learn ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... month, nay, in the same week, it was raging in the unconnected and far-distant districts of Behar and Dacca." (Bengal Reports, p. 125.) Again (p. 9), that in Bengal "it at once raged simultaneously in various and remote quarters, without displaying a predilection for any one tract or district more than for another; or any thing like regularity of succesion in the chain of its operations." In support of what is stated in these extracts, the fullest details are given as to dates and places; and at page 9 of those Reports, a curious fact is given, "That the ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... indifference of a man inured to malaria, the habits of the mosquito—his predilection for ankles and wrists, where the big veins and arteries are nearer to the surface—but the girl was not reassured. She would have sat up with Sanders, but the idea so alarmed Hamilton that she ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... calmly letting that girl devour the other half,—she gave him some reputation. He would speak to her; they were old friends; nothing wrong—eh, father? It would not be hard to persuade her. This Pepita had a predilection for anything that was unusual; she was rather—romantic. He would explain to her who the great artist was, enhancing the honor of acting ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... from a personal note summarising the result on my own mind of thirty years of experience of psychical research, begun without predilection—indeed, with the usual hostile prejudice." "The facts so examined have convinced me that memory and affection are not limited to that association with matter by which alone they can manifest ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... in the schools, he must have had a strong predilection for some of the opinions agitated in them; and frequent opportunities of expressing it occurred in his work. He seems to have cautiously avoided them: a single instance, perhaps, is not to be found, where any thing of the kind is discoverable in any of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... denied; his familiarity with Welshmen and Welsh tradition as a Herefordshire Marcher is pretty certain; and his one indisputable book of general literature, the De Nugis Curialium, exhibits many—perhaps all—of the qualifications required: a sharp judgment united with a distinct predilection for the marvellous, an unquestionable piety combined with man-of-the-worldliness, and a toleration of human infirmities. It is hardly necessary to point out the critical incompetence of those who say that a satirist like Map could not have written ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Emperor never recoiled before threats; the son was reserved, cautious, suspicious of all men, and capable of sacrificing a realm from hesitation and timidity. The father had a genius for action, the son a predilection for repose. Charles took "all men's opinions, but reserved his judgment," and acted on it, when matured, with irresistible energy; Philip was led by others, was vacillating in forming decisions, and irresolute in executing them ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... interest of their country. The new ministers combated in council every such plan, however patronised; they openly opposed in parliament every design which they deemed unworthy of the crown, or prejudicial to the people, even though distinguished by the predilection of the sovereign. Far from bargaining for their places, and surrendering their principles by capitulation, they maintained in office their independency and candour with the most vigilant circumspection, and seemed determined to show, that he is the best minister to the sovereign who acts with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett |
