"Prone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... narrow crest—when the cowboy suddenly checked his horse and slipped from the saddle. With a gesture he bade his companion follow his example, and in a moment Patches stood beside him. Leaving their horses, they crept the few remaining feet to the summit. Crouching low, then lying prone, they worked their way to the top of a huge rounded rock, from which they could look over and down upon the country that ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... him such attendance as his state needed, and as only a woman can give. Yet his life hung in the balance; and I was still strong and whole and free. Wherefore great gloom reigned at Zenda; and save when they quarrelled, to which they were very prone, they hardly spoke. But the deeper the depression of the rest, young Rupert went about Satan's work with a smile in his eye and a song on his lip; and laughed "fit to burst" (said Johann) because ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life as it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... seem nonsense to you is not the same to her. You must be forbearing, Ethel. Remember that dependence is prone to morbid sensitiveness, especially in those who have a humble ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... ready at that time to take back his speech advocating the government ownership of railroads, a gesture against "the interests," made at the bidding of Hearst, at the beck of whose agents he is prone to bestir himself. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... issues: many people are landless and forced to live on and cultivate flood-prone land; water-borne diseases prevalent in surface water; water pollution, especially of fishing areas, results from the use of commercial pesticides; ground water contaminated by naturally occurring arsenic; intermittent water shortages because of falling water tables ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... sense not to make duty to him an excuse for indolence and dislike of responsibility. You have often disappointed yourself by acting precipitately; and now you are throwing yourself prone upon him, in a way that is unwise ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... how many false reports must fly about: in such multitudes imagine how many disappointed men there must be; how many chatterboxes; how many feeble and credulous (whereof I mark some specimens in my congregation); how many mean, rancorous, prone to believe ill of their betters, eager to find fault; and then, my brethren, fancy how the words of my text must have been read and received in Pall Mall! (I perceive several of the congregation looking most uncomfortable. One old boy with ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forest a little wearisome and to wish for a change, when the trees suddenly stopped, and before them lay a sunny interspace full of tall grass with here and there a fallen tree, and on these trees prone great lizards sunned themselves, nodding their heads in a motion ever the same. Something had died in that beautiful interspace, for a vulture rose sullenly and went away over the top of the trees, and Azariah begged Joseph not to pursue his search but to hasten out of the smell of ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... confer spontaneous empire over men and those abilities which lure them on by opening a way for the fulfilment of their interested hopes. And as for himself, by the stealthy growth of selfishness, which is so prone to become developed when circumstances are tempting, he every day made his personal fortunes of greater and greater account in his views and his conduct. His ambitious appetite grew by the very difficulties it encountered as well as by the successes it fed upon. The Count ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... effect; they kindled chivalry in hearts that, after all, were nothing if not prone to chivalry—according to their own lights—and presently something very near enthusiasm prevailed. But the supercilious and very ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... has been often remarked by musical teachers who have had experience with these islanders that as singers they are prone to flat the tone and to drag the time, yet under the stimulus of emotion they show the ability to acquit themselves in these respects with great credit. The native [Page 172] inertia of their being demands the spur of excitement to keep them up to the mark. While human nature everywhere shares ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... Leif, wiping his brow, "because thoughts, if kept long in the brain, are apt to hatch, and the chicken-thoughts are prone to run away at the moment of birth, and men have a tendency to chase the chickens, to the utter forgetting of the original hens! What ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... lived at the lower end of the village, was well to do, a leading cranberry grower, and very prominent in the church. A mild, easygoing person was Mr. Snow, with an almost too keen fear of doing the wrong thing and therefore prone to be guided by the opinion of others. He was distinctly ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... spot, motionless and confused. Montigny, according to some, but, according to others, the Count of Soissons, who happened to be near him, laid hands upon him, saying, "Here is the assassin, either he or I." Henry IV., always prone to pass things over, pooh-poohed the suspicion, and was just giving orders to let the young man go, when the knife, discovered on the ground close to Chastel, became positive evidence. Chastel was questioned, searched, and then handed, over to the grand provost ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... his horses, for they also seemed imbued with the languidness of the season. He let them rest frequently, especially at the end of the furrow where there was a grassy bank on which the plowman could lie prone on his back and look into the dreamy distances of the hills or up ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... midst of a naturally unrighteous community, can only be forced and temporary. When, instead of reaping advantages, interests and passions are injured by acting rightly, these notions of justice, unsustained by innate integrity suddenly fail. Contrary to universal belief, criminals are very prone to betray their companions and accomplices, and are easily induced to act as informers in the hope of gaining some personal advantage or of injuring those they envy or suspect of treachery ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... so congruous, so consistent in every detail, came trippingly and without the least hesitancy from her tongue. Andreuccio remembered that his father had indeed lived at Palermo; he knew by his own experience the ways of young folk, how prone they are to love; he saw her melt into tears, he felt her embraces and sisterly kisses; and he took all she said for gospel. So, when she had done, he answered:—"Madam, it should not surprise you that I marvel, seeing that, in sooth, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and provocative rudeness; which do never work otherwise upon masculine souls than so as to procure disdain and resistance. Such persons, knowing the benefit of a good name, being wont to possess a good repute, prizing their own credit as a considerable good, will never be prone to bereave others of the like by opprobrious speech. A noble enemy will never speak of his enemy ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... well without the intrusion of such a person as Quisante. Thirdly there was the small but gradually growing group which inclined to think that there was something in Dick's notions and a good deal in his friend's head. A reinforcement came no doubt from the persons who were naturally prone to love the new and took up Quisante as a welcome change, as something odd, with a flavour of the unknown and just a dash of the mystery-man ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... heather—fortunate mortals, who, banned from the murder of partridges and grouse, have for the last few days of our contemporary, been dwellers in merry London! What exulting faces! What crowds of well-dressed, well-fed Malvolios, "smiling" at one another, though not cross-gartered! To a man prone to ponder on that many-leaved, that scribbled, blurred and blotted volume, the human face,—that mysterious tome printed with care, with cunning and remorse,—that thing of lies, and miseries, and hypocritic gladness,—that volume, stained with tears, and scribbled over and over with daily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... tell he had discounted all this, knowing what an impetuous lot his followers were, and how prone to push aside all thought of personal danger when tempted to perform some act that might redound to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... nature of this anomaly. Some writers, and among them Masters in his "Vegetable Teratology" consider the deviations to be merely accidental. According to them some species are more subject to this anomaly than others, and the houseleek is said to be very prone to this change. Goeppert, Hofmeister and others occasionally found the pistilloid poppies in fields or gardens, and sowed their seeds in order to ascertain whether the accidental peculiarity was inheritable or not. ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... conversant with his study of the military aspects of the Revolution and had noticed the careful attention paid by Mr. Belloc to military matters in various books could scarcely have been prepared for such an avalanche of highly-specialized knowledge. For we are all prone to the mistake of confusing a man with ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... thus we are all prone to reason, gauging the tide of each other's feelings by the ebb and flow ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... people of Sauveterre thought he did not look stern and solemn enough for his profession. To be sure he was very highly esteemed; but his optimism was not popular; they reproached him for being too kind-hearted, too reluctant to press criminals whom he had to prosecute, and thus prone ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... liberal, comprehensive view of historical relations (such for instance, as we find in Montesquieu's L'Esprit des Lois) that can give truth and interest to reflections of this order. One Reflective history, therefore, supersedes another. The materials are patent to every writer; each is prone to believe himself capable of arranging and manipulating them, and we may expect that each will insist upon his own spirit as that of the age in question. Disgusted by such reflective histories, readers have often returned with pleasure to narratives adopting no particular point of view—which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the source of ten thousand acts of injustice, by making bargains with him at a risk to yourself, or by having him as a companion at the festival of Dionysus? Or would you, if you wanted to apply a touchstone to a man who is prone to love, entrust your wife, or your sons, or daughters to him, perilling your dearest interests in order to have a view of the condition of his soul? I might mention numberless cases, in which the advantage would be manifest of getting to know a character in sport, and without ...
— Laws • Plato
... dodging from side to side, generally contrived to escape it; fatal duels, therefore, seldom if ever occurred; and the parties, having thus given and received satisfaction, retired from the field reconciled.[1] They appear more prone to sudden bursts of passion than most Indians I have seen, and quarrel often and abuse each other in the most scurrilous terms. With the Sauteux, Crees, and other tribes on the east side of the mountains, few words are ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... his hand. Womble stirred uneasily, feeling for the other the hatred one is prone to feel for one ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... was the prevailing tone in tapestry, carpet, and furniture, so that the whole room seemed to shine with the sweet tints of the inner side of a shell, and when lit up, as it was then, formed such a chamber as some fairy hero might have built up for his princess. At the further side, prone upon an ottoman, her face buried in the cushion, her beautiful white arms thrown over it, the rich coils of her brown hair hanging in disorder across the long curve of her ivory neck, lay, like a drooping flower, the woman whom he had come ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... befriended her. She hid herself in the old orchard, lay prone upon the warm grass, her cheek upon her folded forearms, and let herself go. She did not cry even now. Grief was not what she felt, still ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to sleep, and when they waked the rain had ceased altogether. The lawn in front of the house was a muddy lake and many trees lay prone on the ground. It was a scene of devastation that greeted Mr. Campbell as he hurried home at daylight in a 'riksha. He had dispatched a messenger in the night, paying a large fee, to see if the girls were safe at home and had spent the night in ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... storms remote but murmur on thine ear, Nor waves in ruinous uproar round thee roll, Yet, yet a moment check thy prone career, And curb the keen ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... his estimates of other men, but in this case the tragedy of Burns's "life of fragments" attracts and softens him. He grows enthusiastic and—a rare thing for Carlyle—apologizes for his enthusiasm in the striking sentence, "We love Burns, and we pity him; and love and pity are prone to magnify." So he gives us the most tender and appreciative of his essays, and one of the most illuminating criticisms of Burns that has appeared in ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... uphold the general who was doing England's work in Spain. There was need of all the support his genius could contribute to this task, for parliament was slow to grasp the deep purpose of the campaign, was impatient for results, and prone to grumble at the bill of expense. Yet in the end Canning enjoyed the satisfaction of pointing to the complete verification of his hopes. He might have been Foreign Minister in the Liverpool ministry at its outset (1812) had he been willing ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... him, yet he faces judge, jury, counsel, witnesses and audience with a calm dignity worthy of an emperor. He listens imperturbably to facts which may hang him, to lies which may lend color to the facts, to well-meaning guesses which are wide of the mark. Truthful and false evidence is equally prone to err when guilt or innocence must be ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... one pang of fear, one quicker beat of the heart before. But the image presented to his irritable fancy (always prone to brood over terrors),—the image of that companion chained to him night and day,—suddenly quelled his courage; the image stood before him palpably like the Oulos Oneiros,—the Evil Dream ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Old man, these many years side by side Our parallel paths have lain; Now, in life's long journey, diverging wide, They can scarcely unite again; And tho', from all that I've seen and heard, You're prone to chafe and to fret At the least restraint, not one angry word Have we two exchanged as yet. We've shared our peril, we've shared our sport, Our sunshine and gloomy weather, Feasted and flirted, and fenced and fought, Struggled and toiled together; In happier ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... he called a halt, bidding us rest. We all lay flat on the grass by the roadside. The moon was still battling with clouds. The darkness of the fields on either side was total. I crawled on hands and knees to the sound of silver-trickling water and found a little spring-fed stream. Prone, weight on elbows, I drank heavily of its perfect blackness. It was icy, talkative, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... and all rat-eaten and broken ones carefully excluded. Canes may, however, be kept some days without fermenting, provided they be not broken or damaged, it being, as we said before, the mixture of the sap and the cane juice that makes the liquid so prone to fermentation; and the mill, gutters, and everything with which the juice is likely to come in contact, should be kept carefully clean, and whitewashed immediately after, and the whitewash removed before use, as acetate of lime being an exceedingly ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the mind is weak. I came back into the bedroom where my husband was asleep, closing my eyes as I passed through, and went off to the open terrace beyond, on which I lay prone, clasping to my breast the end of the sari tied over the gold. And each one of the rolls gave me a shock ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... One at least of them paid the price of inexactitude then and there; he still shudders to think how, put to the test, he unintentionally left the Park for a no less fashionable but much more crowded thoroughfare, to arrive eventually, in the prone position, in a byway of Piccadilly, where small fragments of the machine may still be collected by industrious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... traveled wide and far, as ones of his predatory stamp are prone to do, and with a Russian facility for tongues spoke English, German, French, and half the languages of Europe. The instinctive purpose of Storri's existence was to make money. To him, money was a prey, and stood as do deer to wolves; and yet, making a fine distinction, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... many people are landless and forced to live on and cultivate flood-prone land; limited access to potable water; water-borne diseases prevalent; water pollution especially of fishing areas results from the use of commercial pesticides; intermittent water shortages because of falling water tables in the northern and central parts of the country; soil degradation; ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... crime—which he will not mention for humanity's sake—may be atoned for by it, is sublime of its kind and a worthy representative of this whole mode of thinking. You might perhaps make Sperate's story a little shorter still, as it comes in at the end where one is prone to hurry impatiently to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... companions, but with a face burning with extraordinary fires, Fergus Carrick sprang for the clean edge of the trap-door, caught it first with one hand and then with both, drew himself up like the gymnast he had been at his Scottish school, and found himself prone upon the floor and trap-door as the latter closed under him on the release of the lever which Stingaree understood so well. A yell of execration followed him into the upper air. And Stingaree was across the counter before his new ally had picked ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... bina sesquipedalia paulum ab imo praeacuta, dimensa ad altitudinem fluminis, intervallo pedum duorum inter se iungebat. Haec cum machinationibus immissa in flumen defixerat fistucisque adegerat—non sublicae {5} modo derecte ad perpendiculum, sed prone ac fastigate, ut secundum naturam fluminis procumberent—eis item contraria duo ad eundem modum iuncta intervallo pedum quadragenum ab inferiore parte contra vim atque impetum fluminis conversa statuebat. {10} Haec utraque insuper bipedalibus trabibus immissis, quantum eorum ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... fail to set the house of his mind in order; he can sweep the dust of unfinished investigation into obscure nooks and corners; he can make fair the outside of the cup and the platter for cursory inspection. Herein lies his peculiar temptation. The public is prone to take his scientific spirit for granted, and is a long time in opening its eyes. Meanwhile he lives a life of delightful leisure, teaching as many hours a week as a business man labours in a day. Not one man in a hundred is proof against the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... here name the fact that I was in boyhood extremely prone to castle-building—a habit which continued throughout youth and into mature life: finally passing, I suppose, into the dwelling on schemes more or less practicable. In early days the habit was such that on going to bed it was a source of satisfaction to me to think I should be able to lie for a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... About twenty-five years ago it occurred to me that one of the above objections to the extensive dietetic use of nuts might be overcome by mechanical preparation of the nut before serving so as to reduce it to a smooth paste and thus insure the preparation for digestion which the average eater is prone to neglect. The result was a product which I called peanut butter. I was much surprised at the readiness with which the product sprang into public favor. Several years ago I was informed by a wholesale grocer of Chicago that the firm's sales of peanut butter amounted on an average to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. He lies prone, his face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... destined to be left behind in the onward march of the human intellect. It belongs to an infantile stage of intellectual development, when experience, dependent on testimony, becomes the slave of credulity. Children and childish nations are prone to superstition. Religion belongs properly to such. Hence the endless controversies of religious sects. But as man advances into the knowledge of the physical sciences, and becomes familiarized with ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... they do not fraternize. The convention is sure to be of one feather or the other. They do not flock together. That is no doubt just as well, for I have great respect for the flicker. He is a whimsical old codger, very prone to talk to himself and go through strange gymnastics in a rather ridiculous way, but the flicker is honest. He brings up a large family in the strictest probity and I have never known a flicker to do a wrong thing. On the other hand, the blue ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... and Europe is disclosed as a prone and emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the branching mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of Spain forming a head. Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from the north of France across Russia like a grey-green garment hemmed by the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in the administration. When I think over this rumor, hardly can I express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames? For by the cart-load they are annually burned. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... of the glories of Egypt and be glad to turn our backs upon her. He will cure us of idols by showing forth their helplessness when they are cried unto; and when Israel is in its most grievous strait and therefore most prone to attach itself to whosoever helpeth it. He will prove Himself at last by His power. Aye, thou hast said. Israel can suffer little more without perishing. Therefore is redemption ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... did not convince the son, but the words which he had spoken helped to create a doubt which already had almost an existence of its own. Anton Trendellsohn was prone to suspicions, and now was beginning to suspect Nina, although he strove hard to keep his mind free from such taint. His better nature told him that it was impossible that she should deceive him. He had ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... the dull sounds of the falling dirt, they had completed their task when the nearer approach of voices and of stumbling footfalls within the tunnel warned them to desist. Bob and Frank on one side of the slight opening, Captain Folsom and Tom Barnum on the other, they threw themselves prone on the ground. The bricks had been divided into two piles, one by ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... while the Texan searched the trail with keen eyes that missed nothing. Suddenly he drew up his horse. Blizzard had shied at something lying prone ahead of them, and The Kid's eyes had seen it at the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... the minor princes and princesses of his dynasty is insisted upon to such an extent by the aged Emperor of Austria, the kindliest, most warm-hearted and sympathetic of old men, always prone to patient forbearance and indulgence, it will be readily understood that it is exercised to its fullest extent by Emperor William, in whose character the tendency to autocracy, and the spirit of command, is far more developed ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... religion themselves concern and make it their business all; Sitting,[FN53] they weep for the pains of hell and still for mercy bawl! If they could hearken to Azzeh's speech, as I, I hearken to it, They straight would humble themselves to her and prone before her fall. ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... building of the world, a long, high ridge of stones had been reared up by the sea, dividing the swampy grassland from the sand. Some of these stones—"pebbles," so they called them round about—were as big as a man, and many as big as a fair-sized house; and when the sea was angry—and very prone he was to anger by that lonely shore, and very quick to wrath; often have I known him sink to sleep with a peaceful smile on his rippling waves, to wake in fierce fury before the night was spent—he would snatch up giant handfuls of these pebbles and fling and toss them here ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... own name, the marriage would take place. This propensity on the part of parents to live their children's lives is very common. Few be the parents and very great are they who can give liberty and realize that their children are only loaned to them. I fear we parents are prone to be perverse ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... lit up faintly the grey sheet of water where the river was embayed. In the distance along the course of the slow-flowing Liffey slender masts flecked the sky and, more distant still, the dim fabric of the city lay prone in haze. Like a scene on some vague arras, old as man's weariness, the image of the seventh city of christendom was visible to him across the timeless air, no older nor more weary nor less patient of subjection than in the days of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... intensity of her then locked arms with anguish and torment and a cheated, unsatisfied love. Strength of mind and body involuntarily resisted the ravages of this catastrophe. Will power seemed nothing, but the flesh of her, that medium of exquisite sensation, so full of life, so prone to joy, refused to surrender. The part of her that felt ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... are much more satisfactory as park trees than Chinese chestnuts. People are so prone to break off branches ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... stood twirling the letter between his fingers. Joanna bade him open it. It might be something important Paragot drew from the envelope half a sheet of note-paper. He looked at it, made a staggering step to the door and fell sprawling prone upon the carpet. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... simply a financial system, to which the doctrines of Judaism happen to be tacked on. How many of the councillors believe in their Established Religion? Why, the very beadles of their synagogues are prone to surreptitious shrimps and unobtrusive oysters! Then take that institution for supplying kosher meat. I am sure there are lots of its Committee who never inquire into the necrologies of their own chops and steaks, and who regard kitchen Judaism ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Harris stretched prone on the floor and rested the muzzle of his rifle on a crack between the logs. It was hard shooting. He was forced to shift the butt end of the gun, moving with it himself to line the sights instead of swinging the ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... from his gorgeous throne, which awed the world, The mighty Monarch of the east was hurl'd, To dwell with brutes beneath the midnight storm, By Heaven's just vengeance changed in mind and form. 215 —Prone to the earth He bends his brow superb, Crops the young floret and the bladed herb; Lolls his red tongue, and from the reedy side Of slow Euphrates laps the muddy tide. Long eagle-plumes his arching neck invest, 220 Steal round his arms, and clasp his sharpen'd breast; Dark ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... "pleasure-thinking" for the more purposeful thinking of the actual world, but the child who loiters too long in the realm of fancy may ever after find it hard to keep away from its borders. His natural interest in sex, if artificially repressed, is especially prone to satisfy itself by ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... women are not sentimental, i.e., not prone to permit mere emotion and illusion to corrupt their estimation of a situation. The doctrine, perhaps, will raise a protest. The theory that they are is itself a favourite sentimentality; one sentimentality will be brought up to substantiate ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... feet six. Madison was naturally timid and retiring in the presence of other men, but he was at his best in the company of his friend Jefferson, who valued his attainments. Indeed, the two men supplemented each other. If Jefferson was prone to theorize, Madison was disposed to find historical evidence to support a political doctrine. While Jefferson generalized boldly, even rashly, Madison hesitated, temporized, weighed the pros and cons, and came with difficulty to a conclusion. Unhappily ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the conventionality and artificiality of the scholastic methods they find about them are prone to resort to nature as a standard. Nature is supposed to furnish the law and the end of development; ours it is to follow and conform to her ways. The positive value of this conception lies in the forcible way in which it calls attention to the wrongness ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... not gone near this watchman's gate, might have strayed to my staircase and dropped asleep there,—and my nameless visitor might have brought some one with him to show him the way,—still, joined, they had an ugly look to one as prone to distrust and fear as the changes of a few ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... whether any modern woman would cherish a mid-Victorian sentiment like "Always Faithful." On the other hand, many men might. His experience as a detective had led him to the belief that men were more prone to such sentiments than the other sex, though their conduct rarely accorded with their protestations ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... know what he meant, and so very probably would they who defied him. It may be that the son of a butcher of the village shall become as well fitted for employments requiring gentle culture as the son of the parson. Such is often the case. When such is the case, no one has been more prone to give the butcher's son all the welcome he has merited than I myself; but the chances are greatly in favour of the parson's son. The gates of the one class should be open to the other; but neither to the one class nor to ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... did their truth-telling do them. At nine o'clock the guards, paid bravoes of the smug citizens who constitute the state, full of meat and sleep, were upon us. Not only had we had no breakfast, but we had had no water. And beaten men are prone to feverishness. I wonder, my reader, if you can glimpse or guess the faintest connotation of a man beaten—"beat up," we prisoners call it. But no, I shall not tell you. Let it suffice to know that these beaten, feverish men lay seven hours ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... heart of mine To earthly idols prone, Should'st all those clinging cords untwine, And take again Thy own,— Help me to lay my hands in thine, And say ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... Bahadur, "O my lord, I was busy washing my clothes and knew not of thy being here; for our appointed time was nightfall and not day-tide." But Amjad cried out at him, saying, "Thou liest, O vilest of slaves! By Allah, I must needs beat thee." So he rose and, throwing Bahadur prone on the ground, took a stick and beat him gently; but the damsel sprang up and, snatching the stick from his hand, came down upon Bahadur so lustily, that in extreme pain the tears ran from his eyes and he ground his teeth together and called out for succour; whilst Amjad cried ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... to the sacred books, and not quote poets or profane authors; they closed the churches to profane assemblies and burlesques (fetes des fous); they ordered the parish priests, in their addresses (au prone), to explain the gospel of the day; they ruled that a stop should be put to the abuses of excommunication; they interdicted the publication of any book on religious subjects without the permission of the bishop of the diocese. . . . Troyes at that time contained some enlightened ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... wood, we found a wounded trooper prone on the ground and gasping for breath; while beside him grazed his horse. He was bleeding from his side, and too faint to turn his head as ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... prone on the floor of the library in various positions of juvenile comfort, watching the firewood in the big wide grate sparkle and crackle, or the broad snowflakes "spat" against the window-panes, where ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... problems, and may be turned by the operator himself into various shapes by heating small probe-pointed steel rods in a spirit lamp, the proximal end being turned over at a right angle for a controlling handle. Hooks with a greater curve than a right angle are prone to engage in small orifices from which they are with difficulty removed. A right angle curve of the distal end is usually sufficient, and a corkscrew spiral is often advantageous, rendering removal easy by a reversal of the twisting motion ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... and distresses, make him prone enough to any desperate resolution, yet says he in the language ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... children, commingled with the hoarse shouts of excited men.... On every side were hurrying forms of men and women, bareheaded, partially dressed, some almost nude, and all nearly crazed with fear and excitement.... A few steps away, under the gas-lamp, a woman lies prone and motionless on the pavement, with upturned face and outstretched limbs, and the crowd which has now gathered in the street passes her by, none pausing to see whether she is alive or dead ... no one knows which way to turn, ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... of his puppy, dropped it incontinently, and made an onslaught on Tyr, the old wolf-hound, who basked dozing, whimpering and twitching in his hunting dreams. Prone went Rol beside Tyr, his young arms round the shaggy neck, his curls against the black jowl. Tyr gave a perfunctory lick, and stretched with a sleepy sigh. Rol growled and rolled and shoved invitingly, but could only gain from the ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... giant, prone in an endless ease, who stretched from the waterfall at the topmost point of the valley to the shore of the sea, and about me ran in many futile excitements the natives of Atuona, small creatures whose ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... people had rather a tendency to the useful, than to the beautiful. Unable to assimilate the elements of beauty and grace furnished by more genial races, this mystic and vanished nation was rather prone to the stupendously and minutely practical, than devoted to the beautiful for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... She was ever prone thus to answer questions before they were fully asked, or could be properly understood by her, and from such premature decisions as she hastened to give she could never afterwards be persuaded to retreat. Knowing this the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... ascend into communion with a being that seems to him so vast, remote, and incomprehensible; and when danger threatens, when his hopes are broken, when the black wing of sorrow overshadows him, he is prone to turn for relief to some inferior agency, less removed from the ordinary scope of his faculties. He has a guardian spirit, on whom he relies for succor and guidance. To him all nature is instinct with mystic influence. Among those mountains ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... seeking satisfaction from another—human love does conquer it, but yet conquers it partially. The demons turn round upon all other would-be exorcists, and say, 'Jesus we know ... but who are ye?' It is only when the Ark is carried into the Temple that Dagon falls prone before it. If you would drive self out of your hearts—and if you do not it will slay you—if you would drive self out, let Christ's love and sacrifice come in. And then, what no brooms and brushes, no spades ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... less is he at times a gift to the spirit. There are times in life when one needs just such companionship as the pig's, and just such shelter as one finds within his pen. After a day in the classroom discoursing on the fourth dimension of things in general, I am prone to feel ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... guard that I could see nothing in the street except the figures that immediately surrounded me, I wished that I had given him the money. At such times, when all hangs in the balance and the sky is overcast, the mind runs on luck and old superstitions, and is prone to think a crown given here may avail there—though THERE be a ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... Justice Harlan, stressed the abundance of medical testimony tending to show that the life expectancy of bakers was below average, that their capacity to resist diseases was low, and that they were peculiarly prone to suffer irritations of the eyes, lungs, and bronchial passages; and concluded that the very existence of such evidence left the reasonableness of the measure under review open to discussion and that the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... PRUE, and brother TIM, (I scarcely recollected them), Magnificent in gala trim: Dear me, how I respected them! I deemed them quite grown up, so bold Seemed they, glared so defiantly: Yet they, too, cowered to behold Prone before JACK the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... have been sound in the circumstances then existing. Until the banking system was reformed, there was real danger of contracting the currency by a withdrawal of treasury notes. President Cleveland was making a mistake to which reformers are prone; he was taking the second step before he had taken the first. The realization on the part of others that his efforts were misdirected not only made it impossible for him to obtain any financial legislation but actually fortified the position of the ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... worthy man, was killed. Ere this, he had exercised the peaceful profession of a schoolmaster; but finding there was no employment for him in these perilous times, he had boldly shouldered the musket, and died a soldier. But so prone are mankind to pass over the merits of this most useful class of men, that had he not fallen by the side of a Marion, perhaps his memory would have been forgotten. About the same time, Mr. Bentley, another schoolmaster, was killed in action. The suspension ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... Storrs, he is prone to take the other side of the Square when he sees me on my accustomed bench. In repose his face is as grim as ever, but I have seen him smile at a child. Probably the weight of our collective sins ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Particularizing as to the members of his staff, Washington described their several characteristics: Stuart was intelligent and apparently honest and attentive, but vain and talkative, and usually backward in his schedule; Crow would be efficient if kept strictly at his duty, but seemed prone to visiting and receiving visits. "This of course leaves his people too much to themselves, which produces idleness or slight work on the one side and flogging on the other, the last of which, besides the dissatisfaction ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... distance to one side, the young son and heir had thrown himself prone upon the grass in the shade of a magnificent oak, story-book in hand. Much interested he seemed in his book, yet occasionally his eye would wander from its fascinating pages to watch, with pride and delight, the tiny Rosebud ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... self-condemnation, a conviction of outlawry and a desolation passing speech. He looked for comfort, for promise of restoration, and found none, in things material or things intellectual, in others or in himself. For his mind, always prone to apprehend by images rather than by words, and to advance by analogy rather than by argument, discovered, in surrounding aspects and surrounding circumstance, a rather hideously apt parable and illustration of its present state. Just as this seemingly fair city was proven, on intimate ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... assistance in his perplexity. It is singular that in times of difficulty and danger, when a clear head is particularly necessary, men who have charge of property, and the lives of their fellow-men, are prone to consult the rum bottle, which always produces an effect precisely the reverse of what ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the modern men, whose privations in early life in no wise approached those of our hero look back with gratitude upon their early days? Are we not prone to excuse and condone our shortcomings, either of character or of achievement, by murmuring at the hard fate which deprived us of those advantages which more fortunate brothers and sisters enjoyed in infancy and youth? Do we not to-day swing too far in the direction of sickly sentimentality ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... chronic from the onset, and is a slow creeping degeneration of the kidney substance, and in many respects an anticipation of the gradual changes which take place in the organ in extreme old age. Families in which the arteries tend to degenerate early are more prone to this disease. Doctor Osler says: "Among the better classes in this country Bright's disease is very common and is caused more frequently by over-eating than by excesses ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Marcia. Any one who knows Chicago knows that smoke-blackened pile, the Congress Hotel; and any one who knows the Congress Hotel has walked down that glittering white marble crypt called Peacock Alley. It is neither so glittering nor so white, nor, for that matter, so prone to preen itself as it was in the hotel's palmy '90s. But it still serves as a convenient short cut on a day when Chicago's lake wind makes Michigan Boulevard a hazard, and thus Hannah Winter was using it. She was to have met Marcia at the Michigan Boulevard entrance at two, sharp. And here ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... did not bother Joel very much. He knew how prone baseball players are to boast when things are turning their way; and at the same time find all sorts of plausible excuses when the reverse tide begins to ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... of a moment—the shout, the vision of the boy, and the rescue—so sudden, indeed, that Mrs Cruden had barely time to clutch Horace by the arm before Reginald lay prone in the middle of the road. In another moment Horace was beside his brother, helping him up out of ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... first assault the teams found themselves thus: The Kingstonians were stretched prone upon the board with their legs straight against the cleats; Sawed-Off was braced against his cleat and seated, facing Troy. The rival team was seated, but with knees bent; and their captain glared amazed at Sawed-Off, who was busily taking in over a ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... disposed as not to care about riches, and sometimes on account of something else. More frequently, however, he inclines to intemperance, both because through spending too much on other things he becomes fearless of spending on objects of pleasure, to which the concupiscence of the flesh is more prone; and because through taking no pleasure in virtuous goods, he seeks for himself pleasures of the body. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 1) "that many a prodigal ends in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of the class who upon trial have been found to have light, clear voices and who are not prone to shout. Let ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... only flow down. The tendency of human nature is towards what is good, as that of water is to flow downwards. One may, indeed, by splashing water, make it spurt upwards, but that is forcing it against its true character. Even so, when a man becomes prone to what is evil it is because his Heaven-implanted nature has been diverted ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... likes, and dislikes of all creatures. This is unfair. I tell them so. But they cannot get away from their own miserable egos long enough to hear me. They think I am crazy. In return, I am sympathetic. It is a state of mind familiar to me. We are all prone to think there is something wrong with the mental processes of the man who ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... fired the load into the face of the thing with its voice of the dead, had not something burst on his head with a staggering, overpowering blow, and despite his efforts to stand, his knees gave way beneath him and it seemed pleasant for him to lie prone upon ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... beliefs, that in which man has, at all times of his history, been most prone to set faith, is that of a golden age of peace and plenty, which had passed away, but which might be expected to return. Such a period was looked for when Augustus closed the temple of Janus, and ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... and may be seen in myriads in the dust of the streets or skipping in the sunbeams which fall on the clay floors of the cottages. The dogs, to escape them, select for their sleeping places spots where a wood fire has been previously kindled; and here prone on the white ashes, their stomachs close to the earth, and their hind legs extended behind, they repose in comparative coolness, and bid ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... to be doubted if Mr. Croker realizes how prone and dead he is. One knows when one is wounded, but one knows not when one is killed. Some near day, or some far day, Mr. Croker will seek to return. Then, and not until that time, will he comprehend the palsy that has stricken his supremacy. Mr. ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... the bilberry hummocks, till he caught sight of a bit of print cotton in a hollow just below the quaint stone shooting-hut, built some sixty years ago on the side of the Scout for the convenience of sportsmen. David stalked the cotton, and found her lying prone and with her hat, as usual, firmly held down over her ears. At sight of her something told him very plainly he had been a brute to tell her his news so. There was a strong moral shock which for ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to multiply, to intersect, to become more and more complicated; the first monuments no longer sufficed to contain them, they were overflowing in every part; these monuments hardly expressed now the primitive tradition, simple like themselves, naked and prone upon the earth. The symbol felt the need of expansion in the edifice. Then architecture was developed in proportion with human thought; it became a giant with a thousand heads and a thousand arms, and fixed all this ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... himself along Dowst's prone form, and then along Rip's. When Dominico had reached the shelter of the crystals, Dowst crawled along with Rip's body for his guide, passed over him, ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... rationale than a violent extension of the enharmonic principle.[A] With a certain quality of kaleidoscope, there is besides (in the harmonic manner of Cesar Franck) an infinitesimal kind of progress in smallest steps. It is a dangerous form of ingenuity, to which the French are perhaps most prone,—an originality mainly in details. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... the 25th of January, 1605, the first white man in over sixty years. A large harbour which struck his fancy was named in honour of the saint's day, Puerto de la Conversion de San Pablo, for the sun seldom went down without a Spaniard of those days thus propitiating a saint. We are more prone to honour the devil in these matters. The Gila they called Rio del Nombre de Jesus, a name never used again. So it often happens with names bestowed by explorers. The ones they regard most highly vanish, while some they ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... scientists are prone to ascribe to man as a whole the faculties which only the best trained and most talented possess. They fail to consider our cannibal brethren, such as are found among the Dyaks on the Island of Borneo, whose chief articles of adornment in the house are heads of murdered men, and whose savage and ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... seeing that Claude was less pliant than he had looked to find him, shunned occasion of collision with him, or the Paduan being in better spirits was less prone to fall foul of his companions, certain it is that life for a time after the outbreak at supper ran more quietly in the house in the Corraterie. Claude's gloomy face—he had not forgiven—bade beware of him; and little save on the subject of Louis' ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... boy seemed entirely comfortable, and the lady not at all disturbed, the colonel did not interrupt them for a while. But when the lady at length rose, holding Phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was a child of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might be proving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of his Revolutionary ancestor and hastened ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt |
