"Idiosyncrasy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Aldebaran has been called "rose-red," and it would be an interesting occupation for an amateur to determine, with the aid of some proper color scale, the precise hue of this star, and of the many other stars which exhibit chromatic idiosyncrasy. Aldebaran is further interesting as being a standard first-magnitude star. With the four-inch glass we see without difficulty the tenth-magnitude companion following Aldebaran at a distance of 114", p. 35 deg.. There ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... snow as pupae, bursting their cerements in the sunshine, to live their brief life and perpetuate their race; others eke out a half dormant existence as minute larvae, others pass the winter in the egg state. In fact, each species has its idiosyncrasy. [Footnote: Here, perhaps, I may explode that myth and "enormous gooseberry" of the mild winter or early spring, headed in the newspaper every year as "Extraordinary Mildness of the Season": "We are credibly ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... puzzle over this idiosyncrasy of her father. She retained vague memories of her early childhood, when he had surely been utterly different and would come into the nursery to romp with her. It had not been altogether her mother's death; that had happened when she was only six years old, and there were bright memories ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... treatment of the humane and pathetic, for near the end of the poor woman's narrative the author seems to recollect a fundamental sentence of Sterne's creed, the inevitable admixture of the whimsical, and here he introduces into the sentimental relation a Shandean idiosyncrasy: from page 43 the narrative leaps back to the beginning of the volume, and Schummel advises the reader to turn back and re-read, referring incidentally to his confused fashion of narration. The awkwardness with which this is done proves Schummel's inability to follow Yorick, though ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... payment for his books, presenting the amount due him either to the publisher, or, more generally, to some friend who had been most active in aiding their publication. Few will applaud this idiosyncrasy, the general and sensible opinion being that the laborer is worthy of his hire: but Landor took peculiar pride in writing for fame alone, without thought of the more tangible product of genius; and, unlike most authors, he could well afford to indulge in this heroic taste. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... military problems, as well as for all others (page 22). This purpose, however, cannot be served by a mere collection of nouns or noun-phrases. Such expressions make no statements of cause and effect. Their meaning is therefore left to inference and to the idiosyncrasy of individual interpretation. The formulation, moreover, of useful principles cannot be satisfactorily established by the more-or-less random selection of matters, however important, pertaining to the subject at hand. What is required is a systematic analysis of the essentials of the subject, ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... Farfrae's look at Elizabeth-Jane at that juncture. Yet he could not forget that the Scotchman had once shown a tender interest in her, of a fleeting kind. Thereupon promptly came to the surface that idiosyncrasy of Henchard's which had ruled his courses from the beginning and had mainly made him what he was. Instead of thinking that a union between his cherished step-daughter and the energetic thriving Donald was a thing to be desired for her good ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... jaded, unassuming way; but her patient face wore a constant expression of suppressed terror, as if she expected every moment to be the victim of some terrible and unexplained exposure. And that feature at least in her idiosyncrasy could hardly be put down to Gilbert Gildersleeve's account; for hectoring and strong-minded as the successful Q.C. was known to be, nobody could for a moment accuse him in any definite way of deliberate unkindness to his wife or daughter. On the contrary, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... of contradiction is particularly to be recognized when the differing ideas or beliefs have arisen not within the same individual mind but in different minds, and are therefore colored by personal or partisan interest and warped by idiosyncrasy of mental constitution. The contradictions of, or rather among, ideas and beliefs, with which we are now concerned, are more extensive and more varied than mere logical duels; they are also less definite, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... contrast those fair, large parchments in which he has stated his results with those tattered and filthy papers which the latter- day literary rag-picker exists but to grope out from kennel and sewer is to know the difference between the artist in health and the artist possessed by an idiosyncrasy as by a devil. ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... outsight, and he suffered in a way not to be readily conceived, from any failure in beauty, physical, moral, or intellectual. It is not, therefore, mere love of upholstery that impels him to ask for perfect settings to priceless gems of art; but a native idiosyncrasy, which always made me feel that "the New Jerusalem," "even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal," "where shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither what worketh abomination nor maketh a lie," would alone satisfy him, or rather alone ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and other teachings of an altogether priceless sort. But what they professedly had taught me, what I then considered as the net result of my eight years at school, was a competent knowledge of Latin and Greek, and nothing else. Now, here was a young man of my own age, or little more, about whose idiosyncrasy there was something especially simpatico to me, as the Italians say—who knew nothing whatever of the only things which I knew, but knew a whole world of things of which I was profoundly ignorant. I was (of course) full of prejudices ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Turk for the same period—and know at the end of the time as little of the real feelings of the one as we should about the domestic relations of the other. But there are ways and means for lifting the veil which equally favour our national idiosyncrasy; and a new and remarkable novel is one of them—especially the nearer it comes to real life. We invite our neighbour to a walk with the deliberate and malicious object of getting thoroughly acquainted with ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... it was her idiosyncrasy that these tailors, furriers, machinists, shirtmakers, by whom she was surrounded in East London, stirred her imagination far more readily than the dwellers in great houses and the wearers of fine raiment had ever stirred it. And Marcella, in the kindled sympathetic ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... affected superiority in regard to the word "opera"—), just as the word "spirit" is a misunderstanding in the New Testament.—He was not enough of a psychologist for drama; he instinctively avoided a psychological plot—but how?—by always putting idiosyncrasy in its place.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Very modern—eh? Very Parisian! very decadent!{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Incidentally, the plots that Wagner knows how to unravel with the help of dramatic inventions, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... character, type, quality, crasis^, diathesis^. habit; temper, temperament; spirit, humor, grain; disposition. endowment, capacity; capability &c (power) 157. moods, declensions, features, aspects; peculiarities &c (speciality) 79; idiosyncrasy, oddity; idiocrasy &c (tendency) 176; diagnostics. V. be in the blood, run in the blood; be born so; be intrinsic &c adj.. Adj. derived from within, subjective; intrinsic, intrinsical^; fundamental, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... extraordinary character, who, in most other points, commanded respect: he was a kind man and a good officer; but from the idiosyncrasy of his disposition, whether from habit or from nature, could not speak the truth. I say from nature, because I have witnessed the vice of stealing equally strong, and never to be eradicated. It was in a young messmate of good ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... shock his lordship recognized the sound as one which he and the marshal had heard more than once at this hour, and, after discussion, had attributed to an idiosyncrasy of water under the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... right. Some shockingly false claims are already made to a metaphysical practice; mesmerism, its very antipodes, is one of them. Hitherto we have never, in a single instance of our discovery, found the slightest resemblance between mesmerism and metaphysics. No especial idiosyncrasy is requisite to acquire a knowledge of metaphysical healing; spiritual sense is more important to its discernment than the intellect; and those who would learn this science without a high moral standard of thought and action, will fail to understand it until they go up higher. Owing to our ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... are a scandal and an offence in the eyes of the gentle burghers, who accordingly never issue out of their town walls. They have forgotten the use of ordinary appliances of country life, such as thick boots and walking-sticks; you will not see them hereabouts. Unaware of this idiosyncrasy, I used to carry a stick on my way through the streets into the surroundings, but left it at home on learning that I was regarded as a kind of perambulating earthquake. The spectacle of a man clattering through the streets on horseback, such as one ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... arose; how far chiller climate and sourer soil, centuries of unequal yet not inglorious conflict, a separate race of kings, a body of separate traditions, and a peculiar crisis of reformation issuing in peculiar forms of religious worship, confirmed and strengthened the national idiosyncrasy. If a difference between the races be allowed, it is sufficient for the present purpose. That allowed, and Scot and Southern being fecund in literary genius, it becomes an interesting inquiry to what extent the great literary men of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... a simple fairy story. It is the only opera in which character, a personal idiosyncrasy as distinct from an overwhelming passion, produces the dramatic action. It has been urged that Lohengrin's stipulation is monstrous; but seeing that he is bound—we do not know how—and that if Elsa had not agreed ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... physiologist's demand, that in the education of girls, as well as of boys, the machinery and methods of instruction shall be carefully adjusted to their organization. If it were possible, they should be adjusted to the organization of each individual. None doubt the importance of age, acquirement, idiosyncrasy, and probable career in life, as factors in classification. Sex goes deeper than any or all of these. To neglect this is to neglect the chief factor of the problem. Rightly interpreted and followed, it will yield the grandest results. Disregarded, ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... conditions? What brand can ever be lit at altars that have borne no fire? And you find the secondary schoolmaster who complies with these restrictions becoming the zealous and grateful agent of the tendencies that have made him what he is, converting into a practice those vague dreads of idiosyncrasy, of positive acts and new ideas, that dictated the choice of him and his rule of life. His moral teaching amounts to this: to inculcate truth-telling about small matters and evasion about large, and to cultivate a morbid obsession in the necessary dawn of sexual consciousness. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Malincourt temperament, of which he had recognized the share she had inherited. And she realized that her guardian and Miles Herrick had been equally discerning. Though differing in its effect upon each of them, consequent upon individual idiosyncrasy, the fact remained that she and Garth were both "breaking" beneath the strain which ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... ignored by both—was more Spanish than American. An early residence in Lower California, marriage with a rich Mexican widow, whose dying childless left him sole heir, and some strange restraining idiosyncrasy of temperament had quite denationalized him. A bookish recluse, somewhat superfastidious towards his own countrymen, the more Clarence knew him the more singular appeared his acquaintance with Flynn; but as he did not exhibit more communicativeness on this ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... of boys, who seemed to share my private feelings in regard to the performance, had entered the sacred precincts, their pockets stuffed with living cicadas. These Albanian youngsters, like all true connaisseurs, are aware of the idiosyncrasy of the classical insect which, when pinched or tickled on a certain spot, emits its characteristic and ear-piercing note—the "lily-soft voice" of the Greek bard. The cicadas, therefore, were duly pinched and then let loose; like squibs and rockets they careered among the congregation, dashing ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... any case, all the conditions and habits of the patient—pecuniary, physical and psychical—must be considered, as the spa must be fitted to the patient, not the patient to the spa. Besides the particular disease, the idiosyncrasy of the patient must be considered, the same morbid condition in different people requiring very different treatment. Retarded convalescence is a condition often treated at the spas, although hygienic surroundings, both mental and physical, are usually all that is necessary to ensure complete ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... it less attention than it deserves. But criticism has been hindered, perhaps, by the fact that these books of Henry James's, in which the art is written large, are so odd and so personal and so peculiar in all their aspects. When the whole volume is full of a strongly-marked idiosyncrasy, quite unlike that of anyone else, it is difficult to distinguish between this, which is solely the author's, and his method of treating a story, which is a general question, discussible apart. And thus it happens that the novelist who carried ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... were possible to change Miss Thusa's opinions and peculiarities into something after the similitude of her kind! Change Miss Thusa! As soon might you expect to change the gnarled and rooted oak into the flexible and breeze-bowed willow. Her idiosyncrasy had been so nursed and strengthened by the two great influences, time and solitude, it spread like the banyan tree, making a dark pavilion, where legions of weird ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... recreations—a thing largely governed by national idiosyncrasy—the masses have advanced. And this we may say without losing sight of the devastations of intemperance since the distillation of grain was introduced, about a century and a half ago. With an enhanced demand upon man's faculties civilization brings an increased use of stimulants. There are many ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... two distinct lines of treatment, that of diet and that of drugs, but each must be modified and determined entirely by the idiosyncrasy of the patient, which varies in this condition between very wide limits. That of diet is of primary importance inasmuch as it has been proved beyond question that certain kinds of food have a powerful ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... its idiosyncrasy, its constitution, often its own code of morality. The levity of some of the younger women in and about Trantridge was marked, and was perhaps symptomatic of the choice spirit who ruled The Slopes in that vicinity. The place had also a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... as existing in those about them, as a defect in the eye produces the appearance of a corresponding defect in every object toward which it is turned. This defect in character is more generally the result of vicious or improper habits of mind, than any constitutional idiosyncrasy. It is the result of the indulgence of gloomy thoughts, morbid fancies, inordinate ambition, habitual melancholy, a complaining, fault-finding disposition. It is generally early acquired, not in childhood, but in youth. ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... Charman, it is I alone who am to blame. I...the explanation is difficult; it involves a multiplicity of detail. I beg you to interpret my unjustifiable behaviour as—as pure idiosyncrasy.' ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... with what treachery and cruelty murders were perpetrated by chiefs and lairds, pretenders and usurpers—how anarchy, violence, and barbarism reigned in that land; yet, when he is dealing with a similar state of things in Ireland, he uniformly takes it as proof of an incurable national idiosyncrasy, and too often generalises from a few cases. For example, in speaking of Shane O'Neill, who killed his half-brother, Matthew Kelly, Baron of Dungannon, in order to secure the succession for himself, he says—'They manage things strangely ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... are afflicted with the same idiosyncrasy. We want to save our lives, and we don't mind saving ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... know better the history of the political and ecclesiastical struggles in which he took part, and the philosophical doctrines which he accepted and interpreted; and conversely, we understand the period the better when we see how its beliefs and passions affected a man of abnormal genius and marked idiosyncrasy of character. The historical revelation is the more complete, precisely because Dante was not a commonplace or average person but a man of unique force, mental and moral. The remark may suggest what is the special value of the literary criticism or its bearing upon history. We may ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... to manage their own affairs in the best way they could, - a way that commonly ended in their mismanagement and total confusion. Indeed, the idiosyncrasy of the family appears to have been so well known, that we continually meet with them performing the character of catspaw to some monkey who had seen and understood much more of the world than they had, - putting their hands to the fire, and only finding out their ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... taste, it is his vice," returned the gentleman with the pearl stud. "It is his one dissipation. He is noted for it. You, as a stranger, could hardly be expected to know of this idiosyncrasy. Mr. Gladstone sought relaxation in the Greek poets, Sir Andrew finds his in Gaboriau. Since I have been a member of Parliament I have never seen him in the library without a shilling shocker in his hands. He brings them even into the ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... one unbroken piece like a glove or stocking. Before each paroxysm she had an associate symptom of malaise. Even the skin of the nose and ears came off complete. None of the patient's large family showed this idiosyncrasy, and she said that she had been told by a medical man that it had been due to catching cold after an attack of small-pox. Frank mentions a case in which there was periodic and complete shedding of the cuticle and nails of the hands and feet, which ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... abandon the body, and elevating itself above mortal affairs just so far as to get a comprehensive and general view, makes this an estimate of its humanity, as accurate as it is possible, under the circumstances, to that particular spirit. The soul here separates itself from its own idiosyncrasy, or individuality, and considers its own being, not as appertaining solely to itself, but as a portion of the universal Ego. All important good resolutions of character are brought about at these crises of life; and thus it is ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the educator here, it is evident, is to help nature correct a tendency to one-sided development; just as the task is this also in the former case; but here the variation is on the side of idiosyncrasy ultimately, and of genius immediately. For genius, I think, is the more often developed from the contemplative mind, with the relatively dammed-up brain, of this child, than from the smooth-working ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... crushed the youngest gentleman at every step. His bedroom was at the top of the house, and it was a long way; but they got him there in course of time. He asked them frequently on the road for a little drop of something to drink. It seemed an idiosyncrasy. The youngest gentleman in company proposed a draught of water. Mr Pecksniff called him opprobious ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... disagree with him, and to support the weight of his sarcasm and his reproof. I am one of those people. Bellicose by disposition, I nevertheless like to know what I am fighting for. This is perhaps an idiosyncrasy, but many persons share it, and they are not to be ignored. It may be argued that Mr. Asquith has defined what we are fighting for. He has not. He has only defined part of what we are fighting for. His reference ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... This was partly instinct and partly the result of cultivation. She would shrink, with uncontrollable disgust, from any of the lower classes with whom she came unavoidably in contact. A slight breach of the conventions earned her distrust of one of her own caste. As this personal idiosyncrasy fell in line with the de Laney pride, it was approved by the head of the family. Under encouragement ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... know that Eileen had studied her harder than she ever studied any book, that she had deliberately set herself to make the most of every defect or idiosyncrasy in Marian, at the same time offering herself as a charming substitute. Marian was prepared to be the mental, the spiritual, and the physical mate ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... him, his conception of and attitude towards the Unseen. He wore his religion as Sir William Gull wore the fur of his coat, INSIDE. Outwardly he died as he had lived, a Stoic; that on the most personal and sacred of all topics he should consult the Silences was in keeping with his idiosyncrasy. Another famous man, questioned as to his religious creed, made answer that he believed what all wise men believe. And what do all wise men believe? "That all wise men keep ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... a poem full of the peculiarities of his genius, tending through a wilderness of fanciful beauties to a thicket of mystical speculation, one curious idiosyncrasy is more prominent than in any other—curious, as belonging to the poet of beauty and loveliness: it is the tendency to be fascinated by what is ugly and revolting, so that he cannot withdraw his thoughts from it till he ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... physician who attended him at the request of a servant, who describes the first attack of his madness coming on when "a poor simple child came to him from the printers; the boy had no sooner entered the room, but he cried out 'the devil was come!'" The constant idiosyncrasy he had that his writings against France and the Pope might endanger his liberty, is amusingly hit off; "he perpetually starts and runs to the window when any one knocks, crying out ''Sdeath! a messenger from the French King; I ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... to Zulma Carraud in 1834, "is to represent all social effects without anything being omitted from it, whether situation of life, physiognomy, character of man or woman, manner of living, profession, zone of social existence, region of French idiosyncrasy, childhood, maturity, old age, politics, jurisdiction, war." And in the Forties the same intention was stated as clearly. "I have undertaken the history of the whole of society. Often have I summed up my plan in this simple sentence: A generation is a drama in which ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... we may find out, on examination, that De Foe had discovered in 'Robinson Crusoe' precisely the field in which his talents could be most effectually applied; and that a very slight alteration in the subject-matter might change the merit of his work to a disproportionate extent. The more special the idiosyncrasy upon which a man's literary success is founded, the greater, of course, the probability that a small change will disconcert him. A man who can only perform upon the drum will have to wait for certain combinations ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of it, was a living legend. Had she not been inspired by her voices and her visions to take up arms for the salvation of her country, Joan of Arc would probably have lived and ended her obscure life in some place of holy retreat. An all-absorbing love for all things sacred was her ruling idiosyncrasy. From her childhood her delight was to hear the church bells, the music of anthems, the sacred notes of the organ. Never did she miss attending the Church festivals. When within hail of a church it was her wont, however hurried the march, ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... things I always avoid in my dress—possibly an idiosyncrasy of my bachelor existence. These tabooed articles are red neckties and tan shoes. And not only were the shoes the porter lifted from the floor of a gorgeous shade of yellow, but the scarf which was run through ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... took deep-sea soundings, not only that the depth of the water might be known, but also its temperature and the character of the bottom, so one could judge of its effect upon the cable when laid, every idiosyncrasy of that cable being already a study of some import to ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... and giving force to its errors; all the purpose of life degenerating into instinct; and the web of his work wrought, at last, of beauties too subtle to be understood, his liberty, with vices too singular to be forgiven—all useless, because magnificent idiosyncrasy had become solitude, or contention, in the midst of a reckless populace, instead of submitting itself in loyal harmony to the Art-laws of an understanding nation. And the life passed away in darkness; and its final work, in all the best beauty of it, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... She knew every idiosyncrasy of the hooks and buttons of her well-worn afternoon frock. It was dark blue, of some clinging material that fell naturally into graceful lines, and was relieved at the throat and wrists by embroidered bands always immaculate. The damp sea breeze had ruffled her hair into rebellion against ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Moliere, of Corneille, of Racine, of Voltaire, of Alfieri, of Goethe, of those dramatists, in many forms, and with genius the most diverse, who have so steadily set themselves to idealize the great types of public life and of the phases of human history. Let us all beware lest worship of the idiosyncrasy of our peerless Shakespeare blind us to the value of the great masters who in a different world and with different aims have presented the development of civilization in a series of dramas, where the unity of a few great types of man and of society is made paramount to subtlety of character ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... slept on soundly, secure in that stodgy immobility that takes no risks. Oblivious, apparently, of all secret warnings of excitement or alarm, she lay in a tight round ball, inactive, undisturbed. Even her breathing revealed her peculiar idiosyncrasy: no actual movement on her surface was discernible. Her breathing involved the least possible disturbance of the pink and white contours that bulged the sheets and counterpane. Her face was calm, expressionless, and even dull, yet wore a certain look as though she knew so much that ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... given. But he went on to say, that it would be a sad thing, if no fools could get to heaven,—nor any unamiable, narrow-minded, sour, and stupid people. Now, said he, with great force of reason, religion does not alter idiosyncrasy. When a fool becomes a Christian, he will be a foolish Christian; a narrow-minded man will be a narrow-minded Christian; a stupid man, a stupid Christian. And though a malignant man will have his malignity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... an organization, which may be termed an alcoholic idiosyncrasy; with them the latent desire for stimulants, if indulged, soon leads to habits of intemperance, and eventually to a morbid appetite, which has all the characteristics of a diseased condition of the ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... this: "Am I 'like folks'?" To be normal and to be well is to be "like folks." Can the average man stand this or that? If he can, then you are not normal if you cannot. Do the people around you eat the thing that upsets you? If they do, ten chances to one your trouble is not a physical idiosyncrasy, but a nervous habit. In bodily matters, at least, it is a good thing to be one of ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... properly; not by a great deal of slaughter, that is quite unnecessary, but by promptitude, and striking a blow at the right moment. The Chinese do not care much about being killed, but they hate being frightened, and the knowledge of this idiosyncrasy of theirs is the key of the position. I have just written a letter to my friends the Imperial Commissioners here, which will, I think, shake their nerves considerably, and bring them to ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the claret. The Doctor's wine was admirable, and it may be communicated to the reader that while he sipped it Morris reflected that a cellar-full of good liquor—there was evidently a cellar-full here—would be a most attractive idiosyncrasy in a father-in-law. The Doctor was struck with his appreciative guest; he saw that he was not a commonplace young man. "He has ability," said Catherine's father, "decided ability; he has a very good head if he chooses to ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... "Merely an idiosyncrasy of mine," answered Von Stein, showing his teeth. "Before anything is done I must, in order to aid the receptivity of your mind, go a little further with the explanation of certain things which I mentioned the other day. I promise not to bore you. More than that, Mr. Parker, I promise that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... with dates—cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates—new style, old style, precession of the equinox, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in favor of incidents; and an authority more appropriate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoirs at eighty, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... convictions into other minds. He was a believer in the sense of the old Puritans, and, amid the doubt and skepticism of the nineteenth century, held as firmly as any of them by the doctrines of atonement and grace. He had most of the idiosyncrasy of Baxter, though not without the contemplation of Howe. The doctrines of Calvinism, mitigated but not renounced, and received simply as dictates of Heaven, without any effort or hope to bridge over their inscrutable depths by philosophical theories, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... frozen face all the character and idiosyncrasy of life. He has not changed one line of his grave, grotesque countenance, nor smoothed out a single feature. The hue is rather bloodless and leaden; but he was alway sallow. The dark eyebrows seem abruptly arched; the ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... engaging figure in American history, none more entirely free from disfiguring idiosyncrasy, than the son ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... warn you that my actions often speak more unmistakably than my words. It is what learned persons term an idiosyncrasy." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... not in all cases produced instantaneously; much will of course depend (as the celebrated M. Dupuytren, of the Hotel Dieu, at Paris, informed the inventor) on the physical idiosyncrasy of the party using it, with reference to the constituent particles of the coloring matter constituting the fluid in the capillary vessels. Often a single application suffices to change the most hopeless-looking head of red hair to as deep a black; but, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... to our common progenitors, the Simians—that is, if we believe the evolutionists; but our friend here has no intention of claiming that affinity. His sprouting moustache and beard are a token of patriotic zeal, and a sacrifice upon the altar of national idiosyncrasy. Henceforth he will be known as a Hungarian in appearance also, and nobody will be justified in calling ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Pope and the ordinary work of his followers is confined within narrow limits, and not easily perceived at a glance. The difference between blank verse in the hands of its few masters and in the hands of a third-rate imitator strikes the ear in every line. Far more is left to the individual idiosyncrasy. But it does not at all follow, and in fact it is quite untrue that the distinction which turns on an apparently insignificant element is therefore unimportant. The value of all good work ultimately depends on touches so fine ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... potnia meter] appeared the beauty, who isolated herself in the consciousness of her charms and in the perfection of her varied culture, and exhibited herself to the public admiration. The tendency to idiosyncrasy often approached wilfulness, caprice and whimsicality, and opposition to the national moral sense. A Diogenes in a tub became possible; the soulless but graceful frivolity of an Alcibiades charmed, even though it was externally condemned; a Socrates completed the break in consciousness, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... purpose? Why loves she these lone rambles under the wild-wood shade? She has declared that she delights in them; but can we trust her declaration? True, hers a strange spirit—tinged, no doubt, with the moral tendencies of her mother's race—in which the love of solitude is almost an idiosyncrasy. But with her this forest-ranging is almost a new practice: only for a month or so has she been indulging in this romantic habit—so incomprehensible to the home-loving Lilian. Her father puts no check upon such inclinations: ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... stark, shining and invincible. Through all the fine, divaricating ways of the new life, it grew ever more evident, there were for every one certain persons, mysteriously and indescribably in the key of one's self, whose mere presence gave pleasure, whose mere existence was interest, whose idiosyncrasy blended with accident to make a completing and predominant harmony for their predestined lovers. They were the essential thing in life. Without them the fine brave show of the rejuvenated world was a caparisoned steed ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... and other "arians", most foods are good (making allowances for personal idiosyncrasy) if thoroughly masticated. The oft-quoted analogy of the cow is incorrect, for herbivora are able to digest cellulose; but even cows masticate ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... all these characters has two constant qualities: objectivity and justice. The author has not merged the sharp outlines of humanity into the background of his own idiosyncrasy. Ibsen's characters speak and act as though they had suddenly stepped from another world and were still haunted by a breath of their strange doom; the people of Shaw are often eloquent exponents of a theory of character and ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... all. But we should not force this consideration too far: Hood is a central figure in the group and the period, and the tendency of the time may be almost as much due to him as he to the tendency. Mainly, we have to fall back upon his own idiosyncrasy: he was born with a boundlessly whimsical perception, which he trained into an inimitable sleight-of-hand in the twisting of notions and of words; circumstances favored his writing for fugitive publications and skimming ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... nature from sundry pre-Lutheran confessors and martyrs of old, from whom I claim to be descended, and by whose spirit I am imbued. Not but that I profess myself broad, and wide, and liberal enough for all manner of allowances to others, and so far as any narrow prejudices may be imagined of my idiosyncrasy, I must allow myself to be changeable and uncertain—though hitherto having steered through life a fairly straight course—and that sometimes I can even doubt as to my politics, whether they should be defined Whig or Tory; as to my religion, whether ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless. He who daily hears and reads well-framed sentences, will naturally more or less tend to use similar ones. And where there exists any mental idiosyncrasy—where there is a deficient verbal memory, or an inadequate sense of logical dependence, or but little perception of order, or a lack of constructive ingenuity; no amount of instruction will remedy the defect. Nevertheless, some practical ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... causes and effects, whole nations must have already been extinguished under its use. Many mighty nations have used it for centuries, and show no aggregated deterioration from its employment. Individual exceptions exist in every community. They arise either from idiosyncrasy or from excess, and they have no weight in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... and murmured something sympathetic: but he did not believe in the reality of his wife's ailments. She had played the invalid more or less ever since their marriage; and he had grown accustomed to the assumption as a part of his wife's daily existence—a mere idiosyncrasy, like her love of fine dress and strong tea. If at dinner she ate hardly enough for a bird, he concluded that she had spoiled her appetite at luncheon, or by the consumption of sweet biscuits and pound-cake at five o'clock. Her refusal of all invitations to dinners and garden-parties he attributed ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... hence, as having produced "literature." He is so unassuming, so mild, so intensely and unconsciously original in the expression of his naive emotions before the spectacle of life, that a hasty inquirer into his idiosyncrasy might be excused for entirely missing the point of him. His new book (which helps to redeem the enormous vulgarity of a booming season), "A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs" (Methuen), is soberly of a piece with his long and deliberate ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... ever enumerating them. They pass in a fraction of a second, three or four succeeding one another. My eyes are not shut, nor do I look different. I have always seen them. I was alarmed about them once, and went to a doctor; but he said he could not explain it—it was probably a nervous idiosyncrasy: and I felt all the better for my habit having ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... could always get his arguments heard, in which he could always make those who have the responsibility of action think of them before they acted—in which he could know that the schemes which he had set at work in the world were not the casual accidents of an individual idiosyncrasy, which are mostly much wrong, but the likeliest of all things to be right—the ideas of one very intelligent man at last accepted and acted on by the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... a special development of idiosyncrasy, and with it of friction. Kept below much of the time by inclement weather, we are crowded and jumbled incessantly together; you jostle against the shoulders of one, you rub elbows with another, you clamber over the knees ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... uncertainties seemed worse than useless. The question has, indeed, been raised, whether he did not make changes in the ancient creed of China [2], but I cannot believe that he did so consciously and designedly. Had his idiosyncrasy been different, we might have had expositions of the ancient views on some points, the effect of which would have been more beneficial than the indefiniteness in which they are now left, and it may be doubted so far, whether ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... as the professional chronometer watches that make a specialty of being exact within a few seconds a month. They think too much of themselves. So does everybody that considers himself as having a right to fall back on what he calls his idiosyncrasy. Yet a man has such a right, and it is no easy thing to adjust the private claim to the fair public demand on him. Suppose you are subject to tic douloureux, for instance. Every now and then a tiger that nobody can see catches one side of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... difference between golden and black hair lies in that there is in the one case an excess of sulphur and oxygen with a deficiency of carbon, and in the other an excess of carbon and a deficiency of sulphur and oxygen, it can easily be seen why such deficiency or excess, if arising from idiosyncrasy of the system, should predispose to dissimilar diseases. But here a wide field yet lies open ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... support an attack on a public servant exposed to every form of open and insidious abuse from those who are prejudiced against his person or his birthplace, who are jealous of his success, envious of his position, hostile to his politics, dwarfed by his reputation, or hate him by the divine right of idiosyncrasy, always liable, too, to questioning comment from well-meaning friends who happen to be suspicious or sensitive in their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... can one settle these things? It's a matter of idiosyncrasy. What is true for one man isn't true for another. There's ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... has not passed at least twenty years in a district where people dine at one o'clock, and dining after dark is regarded as a wild idiosyncrasy of earls, can appreciate ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... that has come a change of talk about sin, the thing that was supposed to be responsible for making the world so bad. Sin is not such a damnable thing now, apparently. It is largely constitutional weakness, or prenatal predilection, or the idiosyncrasy of individuality. (Big words are in favor here. They always make such talk seem wise and plausible.) Heaven has slipped largely out of view; and—hell, too, even more. Churchmen in the flush of phenomenal material prosperity, with full stomachs and luxurious homes and pews, are well ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... nature of the leading principles' which guide them. The philosophy of the matter rests mainly on the fact that it is very rare for any two persons to write hands similar enough to deceive a careful observer, unless one is imitating the other. "Fists," like faces, have all some special idiosyncrasy, and the imitator has not merely to copy that of some one else but to ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... her. As she grew older, it became known that she was "booky,"—a social crime in San Francisco. As for Helena, she was one of those favoured mortals who are permitted to be anything they please. She, too, devoured books, but she did so many other things besides that people forgot the idiosyncrasy, or ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... he generally ends either in an asylum or on the throne of an Emperor. Of these men Strafford was one, and we cannot but feel that Browning somewhat narrows the significance and tragedy of his place in history by making him merely the champion of a personal idiosyncrasy against a great public demand. Strafford was something greater than this; if indeed, when we come to think of it, a man can be anything greater than the friend of another man. But the whole question is interesting, because Browning, although he never again attacked a political drama of such ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... simple and contented lives; for the most part honest, and amongst themselves cheerful and kindly: preserving much grace of colour, of costume, of idiosyncrasy, because apart from the hueless communism and characterless ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... actual dislike for her late husband's memory. The mood of attachment grew and continued when the statue was removed. A permanent revulsion was operant in her, which intensified as time wore on. How fright could have effected such a change of idiosyncrasy learned physicians alone can say; but I believe such cases of reactionary instinct ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... was any such being as a first man, some seven thousand years old; that his existence, his history, is a myth, traced upon the cylinders of Babylon; that man never fell except to himself and his own conscience; that the "redemption" scheme is an idiosyncrasy of Paul; that a priesthood is avowedly a pagan conception, and sacrifice a relic of barbarism. Tell them this, for you know it is true, and that your creeds and confessions are false. Speak out as your conscience bids you speak, that yours is no ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... once a brawny chest; his loose trousers half-covered by a leathern apron; and his two coats both threadbare, and decorated with ribands in an equally worn-out state—such, bowing and smiling as he approached, was the proprietor alike of the dogs and the workshop. In spite of his poor appearance and idiosyncrasy—almost approaching to madness—he had a certain dignity of manner which we could not fail to notice. But he was very trying to deal with. Whenever the price was the object of our inquiry, he began in the following strain: "Very good, very good; which does Monsieur like? which does Ma'm'selle ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... to me above all else as appointed of God for all that organization means in the attainment of any other object. Atmospheric religion is desirable, but to progress, to permanence, organization is essential. Moreover, being conscious of the idiosyncrasy of the human mind, I have every use for the various communions if no ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... original and fundamental wisdom, springing from the very roots of life. And he submitted. At intervals he would say resentfully: "But surely she could find five minutes each day to drop me a line! What's five minutes?" But he submitted. Submission was made easier when he co-ordinated with Hilda's idiosyncrasy the fact that Maggie, his own unromantic sister, could never begin to write a letter with less than from twelve to twenty-four hours' bracing of herself to the task. Maggie would be saying and saying: "I ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the reflective faculties of the reader, excepting in the first and third of the accompanying sketches, and even in these have only ventured to suggest ideas, the full scope and pregnancy of which it must be left to his own idiosyncrasy to appreciate and develop, the more especially as they bear upon a certain current of investigation which has recently ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... you compared with the preceding. Besides, I have long observed, that arguments drawn from your own personal interests more often act on you as narcotics than as stimulants, and that in money concerns you have some small portion of pig-nature in your moral idiosyncrasy, and, like these amiable creatures, must occasionally be pulled backward from the boat in order to make you enter it. All success attend you, for if hard thinking and hard reading are merits, you have deserved ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... else could make more captivating, or clothe more adroitly. It may be doubted whether the collector will set much store by Bret Harte's Queen of the Pirate Isle or the Pied Piper of Hamelin, suitable at first sight as is the latter, with its child-element, to her inventive idiosyncrasy. But he will revel in the dainty scenes of "Almanacks" (1883 to 1895, and 1897); in the charming Birthday Book of 1880; in Mother Goose, A Day in a Child's Life, Little Ann, Marigold Garden and the rest, of which the grace is perennial, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... guardian's back is turned, and induces her to elope before Bartolo has discovered the fraud practised upon him. The music is a delightful example of Rossini in his gayest and merriest mood. It sparkles with wit and fancy, and is happily free from those concessions to the vanity or idiosyncrasy of individual singers which do so much to render his music tedious to modern ears. Of Rossini's lighter works, 'Il Barbiere' is certainly the most popular, though, musically speaking, it is perhaps not ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... notorious, and easily demonstrated by the records of the police courts, that "a shop-lifter once, a shop-lifter always." It is a lamentable psychological idiosyncrasy that, despite the most earnest and apparently sincere resolutions to lead an honest life, the female shop-lifter, intent on making a legitimate purchase, is incapable of withstanding the temptation offered ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... reader will be ready to set Father Uria down as a mere fool, or a half-crazy old man, and to sneer at him and his precious cats. But are not we all crazy on some subject; has not each one of us some hobby or idiosyncrasy which makes us appear more or less demented to our neighbors? And just because the twist in our poor Father's mind takes the particular form of a love for cats: why should we, how dare we, say he is crazy? No, he was no more ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... is apt to be a little downhearted at times; and empty rooms somehow act on her idiosyncrasy. A good woman, but weak. So she's gone for the present to her sisters; and as for the girls, why, Emily is with her mother, and Jane is at the Joneses. Very decent people the Joneses. I put Jones up to a thing which would have made his fortune the week before last; but he wouldn't have ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... master of Wendover Abbey, to whom the possession of things that money could buy must needs be a dead certainty. But it was evidently a part of his character to make light of his wealth; assuredly a pleasant idiosyncrasy. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... hard not to offend him, for in some ways he was as sensitive as Wetherell himself. Even Coniston folk had laughed at the idiosyncrasy which Jethro had of dressing his wife in brilliant colors, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of idiosyncrasy against letters did not hold me back I should have told you long ago what pleasure your charming letter from Paris gave me, and what a sincere part I have taken in your late successes, dear enchantress. But you must know all that far better ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... our delight, moccasined and tomahawked, to ride down with those whoops that announce the scenting of blood. He neither laughed nor sneered, as the Olympians would have done; but possessed of a serious idiosyncrasy, he would contribute such lots of valuable suggestion as to the pursuit of this particular sort of big game that, as it seemed to us, his mature age and eminent position could scarce have been attained without a practical knowledge of the creature in its native lair. Then, too, he ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Paris was worth a few masses. But the leader knows by experience that only when symbols have done their work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd. In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common target, and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas blotted out. No wonder he hates what he calls destructive criticism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination of buncombe. "Above all things," says Bagehot, "our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... view, let who would be the teacher. Runciman no more took his style from Fuseli, than Fuseli from Runciman, and the unquestionable resemblance between their works was only the natural result of a similarity of idiosyncrasy. They both worked hard together, making painstaking copies of the great masters. 'Runciman I am sure you will like,' Fuseli wrote home, 'he is one of the best of us here.' No doubt Fuseli found him quite a kindred spirit—mad as himself about heroic art—given to like insane ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... spot, it owes to its climate. Something there is,—some meteorological idiosyncrasy in its location,—which guards its still, mild air, the winter through. Storms rage impotently down from the mountains or across the Landes; they cannot pass the charmed barrier of the coteaux. Winds are rare in Pau. Rain is not rare; but the atmosphere, even when damp, is not chilling, and the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... was the more singular, as he belonged to a branch of the Church of England well inclined to regard its temporalities with avowed favour, and had habitually lived with men who were accustomed to much worldly comfort. But such was his idiosyncrasy, that these very facts had produced within him, in early life, a state of mind that was not natural to him. He was content to be a High Churchman, if he could be so on principles of his own, and could strike out a course ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... respect, was exceedingly agreeable, and had insisted—and this she stated was the one particular thing that endeared him to her—had insisted on paying his board a MONTH IN ADVANCE, instead of waiting until the thirty days had elapsed. His excuse for this unheard-of idiosyncrasy was that he might some day be suddenly called away, too suddenly even to notify her of his departure, and that he did not want either his belongings or his landlady's mind ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "It is an idiosyncrasy of Aunt Frances," Helena explained, with the grandest phrase she could pick out of her "Synonymes," to cow ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney |
