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More "Propensity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advantages promised by a wellconstructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... about this time, happened to meet with a book which in some degree counteracted the inflammatory effects of Random's conversation, and which had a happy tendency to sober his enthusiasm, without lessening his propensity to useful exertions: this book was ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... however, we are forced to do what he would have us do—admire the ingenuity of the poet, together with his knowledge of effect, rhythmical and dramatic, his flexibility and strength of versification, and marvellous faculty of word painting. This propensity to make all things subservient to the advancement of Art is not always productive of present good to one's fellow beings, whatever may be the results to posterity, as the luckless women who cross the path of such men cannot unfrequently testify—oftentimes assiduously ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was, that I was afraid to trust myself in his society. I had no wish to become a politician, and as I found that the principles of liberty, which Mr. Clifford inculcated, had made a considerable impression upon my mind, I was afraid to encourage too far my natural propensity to resist injustice, oppression, and tyranny. I did not wish to fan the flame which Mr. Clifford's eloquence and convincing arguments had lighted in my breast. Another reason for my refusing to make one of the Wimbledon parties was, the probability that I should there meet with Sir Francis Burdett, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... spend, and with a skill in all games where skill enters that would have secured him success of itself, having learned the art of cheating, could not resist its indulgence. No hazard, no warning, could restrain him,—cheat he must; the propensity became iron-strong ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... appeared to be modest; although there was no want of those of a different stamp; and as we had yet some venereal complaints on board, I took all possible care to prevent the disorder being communicated to them. On most occasions they shewed a strong propensity to pilfering; in which they were full as ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... repeated 'Higher, higher,' till he touched the pudenda, and finally, at her request, put his finger into the vestibule. This girl was very handsome and amiable, and a favorite of the boy's mother. No one suspected this propensity." Again, a correspondent (a man of science) tells me of a friend who lately, when dining out, met a girl, the daughter of a country vicar; he was not specially attracted to her and paid her no special ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of our insect enemies which must have special mention, and that is the Maori blow-fly. We have flies of many sorts, house-flies and blue-bottles among them. The latter, the blue-bottles, get very big, and have an increased propensity for multiplying themselves, and that in their usual unpleasant manner. But over all the blue-bottles' old-fashioned systems the Maori blow-fly soars supreme. It is a colonizer with a vengeance. It does not go to the trouble of laying eggs or nits; it carries its family about ready hatched. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... it into the town, and it went the way of his stipend—into the pockets of his gambling companions. Again he returned home as full of grief as before. The Indian soon heard of what had happened, for he loved the padre very much; so he brought him another bag of silver. The padre's propensity was incurable, and he lost that as he had done the first. The Indian's generosity was not yet worn out, and he brought him a third bag full of ore. When the padre saw it, he could scarcely believe his ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in fact one of simulative hysteria, in a young girl having the propensity to deceive very strongly developed. Therewith may be probably associated the power or habit of prolonged fasting. Both patient and mother admitted the occasional occurrence of the choking ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... in feeding him. What with his helplessness, and his propensity to watch her face instead of her hands, and her own mounting sensations of a sweet, natural joy and fitness in her proximity to him, she was hard put to it to show some dexterity as a nurse. And all the time she was aware of Wade, with his quiet, ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... which, in England, give a peculiar force to the accumulating propensity. The long exemption of the country from the ravages of war and the far earlier period than elsewhere at which property was secure from military violence or arbitrary spoliation have produced a long-standing and hereditary confidence in the safety of funds when trusted out of the owner's ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... then a girl of about eleven years, never had any liking for it, which she attributed to the fact that my mother often employed her to bait the hook for her. My sister's "tender-hefted" nature was horribly disgusted and pained by this process, but my own belief is that had she inherited the propensity to catch fish, even that would not have destroyed it in her. I am not myself a cruel or hardhearted woman (though I have the hunter's passion very strongly), and invariably baited my own hook, in spite of the disgust and horror I experienced ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... with the utmost expedition. I repaired to this house, from whence my servant had seen that gentleman issue, but before the nature of my business could be disclosed, that rigid dame assailed me with a tremendous storm of abuse, when my valet, in his zeal to serve me, or rather indulging in a propensity to retaliate, retorted the lady's freedom of tongue with rather too ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... gesticulation, shrugs, and wise shakes of the head, are called into requisition, to effectually and unmistakably express their ideas. The usages of good society are regarded by them as a great restraint upon their besetting propensity to expatiate in phrases of grandiloquence, and to magnify objects of trivial importance. They are always sure to initiate topics which will afford scope for admiration; they delight to enlarge upon the unprecedented ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... He was closely followed, however, by his admirers, whose boisterous behaviour savoured much more of enthusiasm than deference or politeness. I had heard that the Americans profess never to do things by halves, and so set this instance down as a proof of their propensity to "go the whole hog," as they are wont to term their extremes ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... can see that the younger writer was no votary of the older school of high-flying chivalrous romance, with its tournaments, its crusaders, its valiant warriors, and distressed maidens. His youthful aversion for shams and conventionalities, his strong propensity toward burlesque and persiflage, his early life among cities and commonplace folk, seem to have obscured in some degree his appreciation of even such splendid compositions as Ivanhoe or The Talisman; or, at any rate, his sense ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... been; that in this way it might operate even in favour of those who had never heard of it: as to those who did hear of it, the effect it should produce would be repentance and piety, by impressing upon the mind a just notion of sin: that original sin was the propensity to evil, which no doubt was occasioned by the fall. He presented this solemn subject in a new light to me[274], and rendered much more rational and clear the doctrine of what our Saviour has done for us;—as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... believed I could find my way, and without hesitation set off. I had gone but a short distance when a troop of giraffes hove in sight, and beautiful objects they were, with their heads elevated on their long necks. Influenced by the propensity of a hunter I dashed forward in pursuit. Suddenly, my horse swerved on one side, and I saw that he had narrowly escaped a pitfall. Almost directly afterwards, two of the giraffes sank into other pits, and on turning round I saw that the animals were pursued by a party of natives, ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... year's care had done much to loosen the bonds of the subtle and alluring habit, yet that any resumption of it tended to plunge its victim into the fatal condition of the confirmed opium-eater, giving her every hope at the same time that this propensity might be entirely shaken off, and that the improvement in Mr. Egremont's health and habits which had set in might be confirmed, and raise ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conversation. 'Did you know,' said the one who had first spoken of Miss W., 'that she sometimes had seasons of bitter repentance for indulging in this unhappy propensity of hers? She would, at such times, resolve to be more on her guard, but, after all her good resolutions, she would yield to the slightest temptations. When she was expressing, and apparently really feeling sorrow for having wounded ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... said), supposing you had two children entrusted to you to educate, one of them must be brought up with an aptitude for government, and the other without the faintest propensity to rule—how would you educate them? What do you say? Shall we begin our inquiry from the beginning, as it were, with the bare ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... the confusion, the dogs became affected with the spirit of excitement that filled their masters, and gave vent to their feelings in loud and continuous howling which nothing could check. The imitative propensity of these singular people was brought rather oddly into play during the progress of traffic. Buzzby had produced a large roll of tobacco—which they knew the use of, having been already shown how to use a pipe—and ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... society; his own relations fall away from him on account of it; it is only set at rest by the heroic conduct of his wife. Now, this man is stated by many of his friends to have had all the appearance of a man secretly labouring under the consciousness of crime. Moore speaks of this propensity in the following language:— ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... instances of one part of the animal system imitating another part of it, as in some contagious diseases; and also of some animals imitating each other, are given in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII. 3. To which may be added, that this propensity to imitation not only appears in the actions of children, but in all the customs and fashions of the world; many thousands tread in the beaten paths of others, who precede or accompany them, for one who traverses regions ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... approach. He was a Siwash (male Indian) with one exception—his love of the coin. But then, he had an object in this ambition; and a fault, if it is a means to a worthy end, must be commended. He had this propensity developed to the most pronounced degree. It was a disease with him, for which there was no cure. In outward appearance he was a typical B.C. specimen of the obsolete "coureur de bois" of eastern Canada during ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff and his ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... costume. The Conte Leandro Lombardoni,—lady-killer, Don Juan, and poet, whose fortunes and misfortunes in these characters had made him the butt of the entire society, and had perhaps contributed, together with his well- known extraordinarily pronounced propensity for cramming himself with pastry, to give him the pale, puffed, pasty face, swelling around a pair of pale fish-like eyes, that distinguished him,—the Conte Leandro Lombardoni; indeed, had gone to the Castelmare palace as "Apollo," in a costume which young Ludovico Castelmare, the Marchese ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... bee-proof, and not even then, until all the windows of his house were closed, his domestic animals bestowed in some safe place, and sentinels posted at suitable stations, to warn all comers to look out for something almost as much to be dreaded, as a fiery locomotive in full speed. In short, if the propensity to be exceedingly good-natured after a hearty meal, had not been given to the bee, it could never have been domesticated, and our honey would still be procured from the clefts of rocks, or the ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... his incurable propensity for quoting. "What made you so shy at the station, Cecil? I was obliged to put you in a rage ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... aberrant members of the class of the gently-bred. The working population should have no effectual margin of time, energy or means for other pursuits than the day's work in the service of the price-system; so that aberrant individuals in this class, who might by native propensity incline, e.g., to pursue the sciences or the fine arts, should have (virtually) no chance to make good. It would be a virtual suppression of such native gifts among the common folk, not a definitive and all-inclusive ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... attributes) from the earnest of after-life and that it has been evolved through differentiation and integration of the primary tissue of experience, as a preparation through which certain essential modes of skill may be acquired—those animals in which the preparatory play-propensity was not inherited in due force and requisite amount being subsequently eliminated in the struggle for existence. In any case there is little question that Prof. Groos is right in basing the play-propensity on instinctive foundations. ("The Play of Animals" page 24.) None ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... little territories is almost exclusively confined, for no other branch can grow up among so turbulent a set, whose quarrels with their chiefs, or among each other, are constantly involving them in civil wars, which render life and property exceedingly insecure. Besides, as I have stated, their propensity to keep bands of thieves, robbers, and murderers in their baronial castles, as poachers keep their dogs, has scared away the wealthy and respectable capitalist and peaceful ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... amusements of Christmastide, Strutt mentions their propensity for gaming with dice, as derived from their ancestors, for Tacitus assures us that the ancient Germans would not only hazard all their wealth, but even stake their liberty, upon the turn of the dice: "and he who loses submits to servitude, though younger and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... or Hell a place to be mentioned reverently? Blasphemy is speaking evil of God. The priesthood of every religious cult has manifested a propensity to magnify venial faults into cardinal sins and thereby bring worship into contempt by trifling. To Hell with those who make religion a ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... assertions as fables, we cannot deny that the Jews were at an early period addicted to magical arts. This propensity, there can be no doubt, whenever first manifested, was increased through the Hebrews' intercourse with the inhabitants of Egypt, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... such a word as Snob, I will engage, in this wicked and vulgar world. And, O stars and garters! how she would start if she heard that she—she, as solemn as Minerva—she, as chaste as Diana (without that heathen goddess's unladylike propensity for field-sports)—that she too was ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... law and its penalties, and of the loss of reputation, honor, gain, employment, and life, so far it rushes on until it finally longs to rule not only over the entire world but also over the entire heaven, and over the Divine Himself, knowing no limit or end. This propensity lurks hidden in everyone who is in love of self, although it is not manifest to the world, where it is held in check by such bonds as have been mentioned. Everyone can see examples of this in potentates ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... compose them? Mr. Burke thinks they have not; and, indeed, if they had, the following Inquiry would be of no sort of utility. It is of no importance to seek for means of preventing what must of necessity come to pass: but, if the word necessity is changed for tendency or propensity, then it becomes an Inquiry deserving attention, and, as all states have risen, flourished, and fallen, there can be no dispute with the regard to ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... she could be soft and mild as a dove, and she had a gentle voice and pensive expression: her anger was never furious; her love never fierce: it was deep and tender. However, it must be acknowledged, she had faults to foil her gifts. A propensity to be saucy was one; and a perverse will, that indulged children invariably acquire, whether they be good tempered or cross. If a servant chanced to vex her, it was always—'I shall tell papa!' And if he reproved her, even by a look, you would ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... be cut to pieces rather than deceive her husband." Merolla, indeed, enlarges on the constancy of women, whether white or black, when lawfully married to their mates; and praises them for living together in all manner of love and amity. "Hence may be learned what a propensity the women have to chastity in these parts, many of whom meet together on the first day of Lent, and oblige themselves, under pain of severe penance, to a strict continence till Easter." In case of adultery the husband could divorce the wife; he was generally ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 'Are you afraid of old Tom Hardesty? If you are, you needn't be; nobody need be afraid of such an old coward as I am—darned if they need!' And feeling that he was growing melancholy, he determined to subdue the propensity, and to that end commenced cutting the complicated figure entitled a pigeon-wing. This exhilarating sport soon restored the grocer's good humor, and he laughed heartily and made such a racket altogether, that the boy gradually approached him ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... in love. We know that she will, sooner or later; and probably as much sooner as opportunity may offer. That is our experience of the genus girl in the general; and we quite approve of her for her readiness to do so. It is, indeed, her nature; and the propensity has been planted in her for wise purposes. But as to this or that special sample of the genus girl, in reference to this or that special sample of the genus young man, we always feel ourselves bound to take it as a matter of course that there can be nothing of the ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... it is said: "There is a great diversity of inclinations among men. Everyone has his own propensity. One is borne naturally toward riches, another toward patience and resignation, another toward study and good works. And in this world the humors of men are so varied that they all differ in nature. Among this infinite variety of dispositions of soul, that which best suits kings and ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... although they differ much in the propensity to annoy and reduce animals and each other under their individual control; the passive submit at once, but the energetic will not; it is then that the active assailant learns an important lesson, which ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... under long mantles; but Christopher thought it was mostly weights of iron or lead they carried. Further particulars astonished the brothers still more. The greater part appeared to have a strange propensity for increasing the difficulties of their way, by walking in whatever manner was least practicable. Many augmented the burdens, under which they already staggered, with dust and rubbish, which they collected from all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... would be as efficient as other free laborers. But whatever theorists, who know nothing of the matter, may think proper to assume, we well know that this would not be so. We know that nothing but the coercion of slavery can overcome their propensity to indolence, and that not one in ten would be an efficient laborer. Even if this disposition were not grounded in their nature, it would be a result of their position. I have somewhere seen it observed, that to be degraded by opinion, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... many persons sufficiently aware of the ruinous extent to which the amative propensity is indulged by married persons. The matrimonial ceremony does, indeed, sanctify the act of sexual intercourse, but it can by no means atone for nor obviate the consequences of its abuse. Excessive indulgence in the married relation is, perhaps, as much owing to the force of habit, as to ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... seemed to have a natural propensity to retain any form of portable property. One of her arms was so placed that, tug and stretch as he would, Leander could not get the cloak from her shoulders, and his efforts only broke one of the oxidized silver fastenings, and tore ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... thought "represented an attack on over- interference, vested interests, superstition, and tyranny of every form. It showed a marked propensity to ignore history, and to judge everything by its immediate reasonableness. It pictured a society free from all laws and coercion, freed from all clerical influence and ruled by benevolence, a society in which all men had equal rights and were able to attain the fullest ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... you see that woman with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers. "It is our Hester—the town's own Hester—who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years. It was none the less a fact, however, that in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Fanny's propensity to novel-writing had for a time been kept down. It now rose up stronger than ever. The heroes and heroines of the tales which had perished in the flames were still present to the eye of her mind. One favorite story, in particular, haunted her imagination. It was about ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a member of two or three Bohemian clubs in London, to which, as time went on, he became increasingly attached. At these, he passed as a good fellow, chiefly from a propensity to stand drinks to any and everyone upon any pretence; he was also renowned amongst his boon companions for his rendering of "The Village Blacksmith" in dumb show, a performance greeted by his thirsty audience ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... alone repugnant to all we associate with the term childhood, but is also fraught with danger to dawning manhood. On the judicious treatment of a case such as has been sketched, it probably depends whether the dangerous propensity shall be so kept in check as to preserve the boy's health and innocence, or whether one more shattered constitution and wounded conscience shall be added to the victims of sexual precocity and careless training. It ought not to be forgotten that in such cases a quasi-sexual power often accompanies ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... would restrain passions which every thing conspired to rouse in all hearts; fatuity persuaded monarchs that ideal, metaphysical barriers, terrible fables, distant phantoms, would be competent to curb those inordinate desires, to rein in that impetuous propensity to crime, that rendered society incommodious to itself; credulity fancied that invisible powers would be more efficacious, than those visible motives that evidently invited mortals to the commission of mischief. Every thing was understood to be achieved, by occupying man's mind ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... as expressive and original as it is like Bunyan. Death takes the sinner by the throat, and 'hands him down stairs to the grave.' The indulgence in any sinful propensity has this downward, deathly tendency. Every lust, whether for riches or honours, for gambling, wine, or women, leads the deluded wretched votary step by step to the chambers of death. There is no hope in the dread prospect; trouble and anguish possess the spirit. Hast thou escaped, O ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... often landed the sailor in the press-room was his propensity to indulge in "swank." Two jolly tars, who were fully protected and consequently believed themselves immune from the press, once bought a four-wheeled post-chaise and hired a painter in Long Acre to ornament it with anchors, masts, cannon and a variety of other objects emblematic of the sea. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... think, must have an idea that strict justice has been done him in the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described Mount Washington, I thought the Duke felt a propensity to "hunch up some." Somehow it is pleasant to look down on the crowd and have a conscious right to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... and ears, the avenues between these organs and his brain appeared remarkably narrow and untrodden. His energy was much more conspicuous than his wisdom; but his predominant characteristic was a magnanimous ambition to exercise on all occasions an awful rule and supremacy, and this propensity equally displayed itself, as the reader will have observed, whether the matter in question was the baking of a hoe-cake or a point of international law. When such diverse elements as he and the easy-tempered captain came in contact, no wonder some commotion ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... motives in our constitution; but Appetite is not in any sense one of these. We may have instincts answering to the traditional phrase used in defining instinct, "a blind propensity" to act, without aiming at anything in particular, and without any expectation of pleasure or benefit. Such instincts would conform to Butler's notion of appetite: they would be entirely out of the course of self-love ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... of Colonel Burr's propensity to correspond in cipher with his most intimate friends, even on unimportant topics. Hundreds of the same ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... English; was a dead shot, a good angler, and an excellent fencer with the small sword as well as with his own particular weapon. For his faults, they were on his face, and I now knew them all. But the worst of them, his childish propensity to take offence and to pick quarrels, he greatly laid aside in my case, out of regard for the battle of the round-house. But whether it was because I had done well myself, or because I had been a witness ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mechanical/electronic) construction] A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) naive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or 'the system'; (b) a blind-faith propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the 'letter of the law' in exceptional situations; (d) a paralyzing fear of official reprimand or worse ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... closely scrutinised by competent persons. The art of imitating ancient writing has got to a considerable perfection, and it has been the bane of Scottish literature, and disgrace of her antiquities, that we have manifested an eager propensity to believe without inquiry and propagate the errors which we adopt too hastily ourselves. The general proposition that the Lowlanders ever wore plaids is difficult to swallow. They were of twenty different races, and almost all distinctly different from the Scots Irish, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... produces another by a law of nature, this signifies no more, than that one thing, which is called the cause, is constantly and invariably followed by another, which we call the effect, and that we know not how they are connected. But there seems a natural propensity in the mind of man, to endeavour to account for every phenomenon that falls under his view, which has given rise to a number of absurd and romantic conjectures in almost every branch of science. From this source has risen the vibration ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... poor hurt woman. "I don't know what to make of you," she added in a severe tone, fancying herself able to inspire him with respect,—a great mistake made by those who spoil their children. "Listen, my Oscar," she said, resuming at once her tender voice, "you have a propensity to talk, and to tell all you know, and all that you don't know; and you do it to show off, with the foolish vanity of a mere lad. Now, I repeat, endeavor to keep your tongue in check. You are not sufficiently advanced in life, my treasure, to be able to ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... have as great an aversion for traveling as the English have a propensity for it, both English and French have perhaps sufficient reasons. Something better than England is everywhere to be found; whereas it is excessively difficult to find the charms of France outside France. Other countries can ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... easy-going creature, perfectly reckless of money, very fond of his calling, unhappy on shore, manly, noble-hearted, generous to a degree inconceivable to landsmen. He is a child who needs to be put in leading-strings the moment he comes over the side, lest he give way to an unconquerable propensity of his to fry gold watches and devour bank-notes, a la sandwich, with his bread ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... politic concessions to heathenism, so that the successes of the Jesuit missions are magnified by reports of alleged conversions that are conversions only in name and outward form; second, a constantly besetting propensity to political intrigue.[27:1] It is hardly to be doubted that both had their part in the prodigious failure of the French Catholic missions and settlements within the present boundaries ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... running on the other side; and so numerous are the windings of the former river, that although not more than thirty-five miles in a straight line from the sea, the distance by the Hawkesbury is 140 miles. The destructive propensity of the colonists to root up and destroy all trees, whether in the way of agriculture or not, would appear to have worked wonders in this neighbourhood, for among other advantages detailed in an advertisement of property to be sold there, it is stated that fire-wood is so ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... one of the infernal potentates, and after making his obeisance to the king, he said, "O emperor of the Air! mighty ruler of Darkness! no one ever doubted my propensity to malice and cruelty; the sufferings of others have been, and still are, my supreme delight. It is as capital sport to me, to hear the shrieks of infants perishing in the fire as of old, when thousands of sucklings were ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... Lad should absent himself at dinnertime from his time-honored place on the dining-room floor, at the Master's left. And, amusedly, she recalled what her husband had said of the stately dog's new propensity for mischief. Perhaps Lad was exploring the friendly home-woods in search of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... protege of the Collector's, had a streak of genius as an architect and several lesser gifts, among them a propensity for borrowing and a flexible tenor voice. He trolled an old song, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the present one any objection be raised on the score of its truth, it can only be that its author was an Arab, as lying is a very common propensity with those of that nation; though, as they are such enemies of ours, it is conceivable that there were omissions rather than additions made in the course of it. And this is my own opinion; for, where he could and should give freedom to his pen in praise of so worthy a knight, he seems to me deliberately ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... productions to be immortal, as every band of youthful poets does, and dreamt of a future of poetic glory for Steyn by which it would vie with Mantua. Their environment of clownish, narrow-minded conventional divines—for as such they saw them—neither acknowledged nor encouraged them. Erasmus's strong propensity to fancy himself menaced and injured tinged this position with the martyrdom of oppressed talent. To Cornelius he complains in fine Horatian measure of the contempt in which poetry was held; his fellow-monk orders him to let his pen, accustomed to writing ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... great mistake. Time is so eager to talk of novelties, that he never fails to give circulation to the most incredible rumors of the day, though at the hazard of being compelled to eat his own words to-morrow. He shows numberless instances of this propensity while the national elections are in progress. A month ago, his mouth was full of the wonderful Whig victories; and to do him justice, he really seems to have told the truth for once. Whether the same story will hold good another ...
— Time's Portraiture - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... related to me her dream which was exactly the same as Margaret's in every particular; and as I had never observed in either of these ladies any propensity to superstition, I was struck with the singular coincidence of their dreams, and I felt convinced that they would soon be realized. The belief that future events are sometimes revealed to us during sleep, is one that is widely ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... two things, where there is no personal advantage to bias the decision, they will always choose that which seems to them true, rather than the other which appears false. To this is opposed the notorious fact of the remarkable propensity which children have to lying. This is readily admitted; but it does not meet us, unless it can be shown that they have not in the act of lying an eye to its reward,—setting aside any outward advantage,—in the shape of ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... of wealth for Moral Dramatists. In this dramatic version the Author has tried to infuse something of the old Greek sense of an overruling destiny, without detriment to prevailing ideas of moral responsibility. Those who have the misfortune to be born with a propensity for illicit jam, may learn from our Drama the terrible results of failing to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... round-about called crinoline is that, like the moon, they may move in a circle. Our greatest men, likewise, are susceptible to Luna's blandishments. In proof of this we may produce a story told by Mark Lemon, at one time the able editor of Punch. By the way, an irrepressible propensity to play upon words has reminded some one that punch is always improved by the essence of lemon. But this we leave to the bibulous, and go on with the story. Lord Brougham, speaking of the salary attached to a new judgeship, said it was all moonshine. Lord Lyndhurst, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... other dog would have howled; but this dog stiffened his tail with self-respect. He scraped away all the straw to make a clear area for his experiment, and then he stood up like a pillar, or a fine kangaroo, and made trial of his weight against the chain. Feeling something give, or show propensity toward giving, he said to himself that here was one more triumph for him over the presumptuous intellect of man. The chain might be strong enough to hold a ship, and the great leathern collar to secure a bull; but the fastening of chain to collar was unsound, by reason of the rusting ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... but there will be little benefit from the new law unless a reward shall be offered for the destruction of the birds of prey which swarm in every portion of the island—eagles, falcons, kites, hawks, ravens, crows, and last, but in cunning and destructive propensity not the least, the "magpies." These birds exist in such numbers that unless steps are taken to destroy them it will be hopeless to expect any increase of game. When a magpie wakes in the early morning his first thought is mischief, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... involuntary sin of religious ignorance—while Mrs. Horton, unperceived, as she imagined, made the sign of the cross upon her forehead as a guard against the infectious taint of heretical opinions. This pious ceremony Miss Milner by chance observed, and now shewed such an evident propensity to burst into a fit of laughter, that the good lady of the house could no longer contain her resentment, but exclaimed, "God forgive you," with a severity so different from the idea which the words conveyed, that ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... works, plays and sings under the wise and loving care of his "other mother," the teacher. He is living, not simply preparing to live. All life should be joyous, spontaneous, natural. The Rousseau Idea, which was modified and refined by Froebel, is the utilization of the propensity to play. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... is a strong Propensity in Man's Nature, especially the more ignorant part of Mankind, to resolve every strange Thing, or whether really strange or no, if it be but strange to us, into Devilism, and to say every Thing is the Devil, that they ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Flinging all thoughts of her dependence on David—of the money she had come to ask—of her leave-taking on the morrow—to the winds, Louie revenged herself amply for her week's unnatural self-control, and gave full rein to a mad propensity which had been gradually roused and spurred to ungovernable force by the trivial incidents of the afternoon. She made mock of Lucy's personal vanity; she sneered at her attempts to ape her betters, shrilly declaring that no one would ever take her for anything else than what she was, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that medium was possessed, only that those who do not know me, might take the calumny of the devil for truth. After the confession that he was Don Quixote, to make which he was compelled by a higher power, he added according to his lying propensity, that he was Thomas Paine, although he was ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... of a girl—a little girl—who had a propensity for getting into trouble, because she had not learned the lesson of obedience. She masters this, however, as the story tells, and in doing so she and her brother have ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... that, after the world was composed and had produced living creatures, the world out of its own propensity made an inclination toward the south. Perhaps this may be attributed to a wise Providence (they affirm), that thereby some parts of the world may be habitable, others uninhabitable, according as the various climates are affected with a rigorous cold, or a scorching heat, or a just temperament of ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... were famous rivals in its rendering, always the sala-stars to those not dancing. Valencia was the perfection of grace, but it was the grace now of the snake, again of the cat. She suggested fangs and claws, a repressed propensity to sudden leaps. Chonita's grace was that of rhythmical music imprisoned in a woman's form of proportions so perfect that she seemed to dissolve from one figure into another, swaying, bending, ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... indications of an appetite, which he considers one of the symptoms of a forming disease, says: "This early stage is marked by an occasional desire to drink, which recurs at shorter and shorter intervals, and a propensity, likewise, gradually increasing for a greater quantity at each time. This stage has long been believed to be one of voluntary indulgence, for which the subject of it was morally responsible. The drinker has been held as criminal for his occasional indulgence, and his example has been most severely ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... had no idea of anything but virtue in the Atherly blood; he had heard that the upper class of Europeans were fond of field sports and of hunting; it was odd that his sister should inherit this propensity and not he. He regarded her more kindly for this evidence of race. "You think of getting married?" he said more gently, yet with a certain brotherly doubt that any man could like her enough, even with her money. "Is ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... reverent mind, and it sprang instinctively to the defense of ideas and institutions whose value had been tested. Unfortunately, in his "Life of Washington" Marshall seems to have given this propensity a somewhat undue scope. There were external difficulties in dealing with such a subject apart from those inherent in a great biography, and Marshall's volumes proved to be a general disappointment. Still hard pressed ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... vessel he is making. In the words of Santayana, "What had to be done was, by imaginative races, done imaginatively; what had to be spoken or made was spoken or made fitly, lovingly, beautifully.... The ceaseless experimentation and fermentation of ideas, in breeding what it had a propensity to breed, came sometimes on figments that gave it ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... one propensity which sometimes had inwardly disturbed her without causing any outward show or manifestation on her part. At a very early age—perhaps it was when she traversed the ocean of waving grass—she remembered that she had been passionately enamored of a dignified ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... not confined to one nation), when irregular impulses of this sort were known to have haunted and besieged natures not otherwise ignoble and base. I ran over some of the names amongst those which were taxed with this propensity. More than one were the names of people in a technical sense held noble. That, nor any other consideration abated my horror. Better, I said, better, (because more compatible with elevation of mind,) better to have committed some bloody act—some murderous act. Dreadful was the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... as infectious as fire, in a flock. Whenever a sheep feels itself seized by this, it instantly withdraws from all the rest, shunning their society with the greatest care; it even hides itself, and is often very hard to be found. Though this propensity can hardly be attributed to natural instinct, it is, at all events, a provision of nature of ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... would have been the movement of a tortoise, to the rapidity of whatever is most rapid in unpacking or pilfering. But pilfering here we had none; we were all "men of honour;" and, undoubtedly, if any propensity to mistake the tuum for the meum had been exhibited, there were among us sufficient of the stamp of my old friend "who had served with Rodney," to have flung the culprit where men pilfer no more; whatever may be done ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... sale and acquire an enemy is poor policy. To a pedler or a man who ran a booth at a bazaar or fair, it was "get your money now or never." Buyer and seller were at war. One transaction and they never met again. The air was full of hate and suspicion, and the savage propensity of physical destruction was refined to a point where hypocrisy and untruth took the place of violence—the buyer was as bad as the seller: if he could buy below cost he boasted of it. To catch a merchant who had to have money was glorious—we smote him hip and thigh! Later, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... certainty, unless the mother possesses opposite qualities and properties. The children of the vicious are by nature more vicious than the children of the virtuous. Hence, we see that men by ordinary generation, transmit their own peculiar vices to their offspring. Every innate principle, passion and propensity of soul, body and mind, is transmitted from parent to child. This view of the subject need strike us with no surprise, if we would reflect, that men beget the souls, as well as the bodies of their children. I read ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... subsists between the two persons interested. Plato believed, and I believe with him, in the existence of a spiritual antitype of the soul, so that when we are born, there is something within us which, from the instant we live and move, thirsts after its likeness. This propensity develops itself with the development of our nature. The gratification of the senses soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment, which we call love. Love, on the contrary, is an universal thirst for a ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... and that their hips swell out "like boiled rice." The marriage ceremonies, he tells us, are conducted with feasting, music and flogging. On first entering the nuptial hut the bridegroom draws forth his horsewhip and inflicts chastisement upon his bride, with the view of taming any lurking propensity to shrewishness. As it is no uncommon event to take four wives at once, this horsewhipping is naturally rather exhausting for the husband. Burton considered polygamy to be indispensable in countries like Somaliland, "where children are the principal wealth;" but he saw less necessity for it ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... ever since his youth developed a peculiar kind of mean and silly propensity. Having moreover from tender infancy grown up side by side with Tai-Y, their hearts and their feelings were in perfect harmony. More, he had recently come to know to a great extent what was what, and had also filled his head ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of the shepherds' dogs in the wilds of Egypt as not having this faculty; and Columbus found the dogs which he had previously carried to America, almost to have lost their propensity to bark. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the life of sense, and through the sacrifice, even though unnatural, of what is dearest to man, to appease a divinity who as lord and governor rules and subjects to himself the power of nature and every propensity of sense.[9] ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... to the lowest, were found to be thieves; and when the chiefs themselves did not steal they employed their servants to pilfer for them. To check this propensity Captain Clerke suggested a plan, which was adopted with good effect. Whenever any of the lower orders were caught stealing he had their heads completely shaved, so that they became objects of ridicule to their countrymen, and did not again ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... fortitude: and it is a gross slander for anyone to maintain that a few cowardly and degenerate individuals really represent that devoted sex. But these writers are indeed well out of the ruck of ordinary humanity, because they tell us that "whatever the means employed, and whether righteous or not, the propensity to limit the highest form of life operates silently and steadily amongst the more thoughtful members of all civilized countries," and yet add that "it is not perhaps good taste to consider the means employed to this end." While they thus approve and commend the practice of birth ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... that breeds six times a year, pretend to know any thing of the gestation of an elephant."] took the wrong, the pedantic, and the unstatesmanlike side of the question,—while in all these indications of the spirit of that profession, and of its propensity to tie down the giant Truth, with its small threads of technicality and precedent, we perceive the danger to be apprehended from the interference of such a spirit in politics, on the other side, arrayed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... they are used as beasts of burden; but the nature of the goods they carry must be such as will not suffer from being wet, as they have an invincible propensity to lie down in water. The native princes use them to fight with tigers in their public shows; and from their fierce and active nature, when excited, they frequently prove more than a match for their formidable assailants. With the native herdsman, however, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... and among the rest, that of Prethee Put's, of Paska." "Their bodies all swell, sooner, or later," said old Bukhtawar Sing, "when they commit such atrocious crimes, and Prethee Puts will begin to swell when he finds that you are inquiring into his." "I am afraid, my friends, that the propensity to commit them has become inveterate. One man hears that another has obtained lands or wealth by the murder of his father or brother, and does not rest till he has attempted to get the same by the murder of his, for he sees no man punished for such crimes." "It is not all nor many of our clan" (Rajpoots), ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... proportion of the mixed race exists, it may reasonably be inferred that the barriers to license are not more insuperable among those of the same color. That corruption of morals progresses with greater admixture of races, and that the product of vice stimulates the propensity to immorality, is as evident to observation as it is natural to circumstances. These developments of the census, to a good degree, explain the slow progress of the free Colored population in the Northern States, and indicate, with ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of diversion to my master and his family, as well as of mortification to myself. For now I could no longer deny that I was a real Yahoo in every limb and feature, since the females had a natural propensity to me, as one of their own species. Neither was the hair of this brute of a red colour (which might have been some excuse for an appetite a little irregular), but black as a sloe, and her countenance did not make an appearance altogether so hideous as ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... was looking things over he became aware that Stella had ridden away. He looked anxiously after her, for he knew her propensity for getting into trouble when she rode alone. Soon she dropped out of sight behind a swell in the prairie with a flash in the sunlight of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... with which a drunkard's habits cling to him through life? He may repent—he may reform—he may look with actual abhorrence upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reformation and compunction, who can tell the moment in which the base and ruinous propensity may not recur, triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, everything, and prostrating its victim once more in all that is destructive and revolting in that ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the desire for stimulants is a natural propensity implanted in man's nature, as is manifest from the universal tendency to such indulgences in every nation. From this, it is inferred that it is an innocent desire, which ought to be gratified to some extent, and that ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) na"ive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or 'the system'; (b) a propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); blind faith; (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the 'letter of the law' in exceptional situations; and (d) no interest in fixing that which ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... him not to talk before he left—he feared Drake's propensity for speech. But he was the only man in Lost Valley whom he ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... that with peace and comfort, some slight, very slight symptoms recurred of Hester's propensity to self-torment. It could not be otherwise. The wonder was, that for weeks and months she had been relieved from her old enemy to the extent she had been. The reverence with which her husband and sister regarded the temper, in which she had borne unbounded provocation, and ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... for them. No one need fear that the supply of mystery will ever give out; but a great deal depends on our taste in mystery; that certainly needs refining. What disturbs the so-called rationalist in the mystic's attitude is his propensity to see mysteries where there are none and to fail to see those that we cannot possibly escape. In declaring that one is not a mystic, one makes no claim to be able to explain everything, nor does he maintain that all things are ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... "Lo, a coward!" It is only too true that cowards and sluggards both may take shelter under a shield of indifference; but it is equally true that any reasonably acute mind, if only charitably disposed, can readily distinguish between an inactivity which springs from craven or sluggish propensity, and that other which belongs to constitutional temperament, and which, while passing calm and dispassionate judgment upon excesses of opinion of either party, contributes insensibly to moderate the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... slightly over four acres, where the market is held every Saturday, and where once a year is also held that great event of Nottingham, the Michaelmas goose fair. Here also disport themselves at election-times the rougher element, who, from their propensity to bleat when expressing disapprobation, are known as the "Nottingham lambs," and who claim to be lineal descendants from that hero of the neighboring Sherwood Forest, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... numbers of applicants. The Bhils freely hunted down and captured their friends and relations who continued to create disturbances, and brought them in for punishment. Outram managed to check their propensity for liquor by paying them every day just sufficient for their food, and giving them the balance of their pay at the end of the month, when some might have a drinking bout, but many preferred to spend the money on ornaments and articles of finery. With the assistance of the corps the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... sensation, which is the best security for the success of a drama—curiosity. After the two first acts are over, and pleasantly over, with the excellent drawn characters of Ashfield and his wife, and the very just satire which arises from Sir Abel's propensity to modern improvements—the acts that follow excite deep interest and ardent expectation; both of which are so highly gratified at the conclusion of the play, that, from the first night of its performance, it has ranked among the best of the author's productions, and in the first class ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... young nephew of Mrs. Lafirme, whose duty on the plantation was comprehended in doing as he was bid, qualified by a propensity for doing as he liked, rode up from the store one day in the reckless fashion peculiar to Southern youth, breathless with the information that a stranger was there wishing audience ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... Eve have profited little by her example. The curiosity of the fair sex is still insatiable, and, as it is often ill directed, it frequently terminates in error. In the country this feminine propensity is troublesome to a traveller, and he who would avoid importunities would do well to announce at once, on his arrival at a Cumberland inn, his name and his business, the place of his abode and the length of ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... records. He raised objections in order to show how he could remove them, and started difficulties about matters which had not before been brought into question. In the beginning of his ministry, he manifested this propensity. At a church meeting at John Putnam's house, Feb. 20, 1690, less than three months after his ordination, he threw open the whole question of baptism for discussion among the brethren. There is no reason to suppose that their attention had been ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... seemed to value himself not a little on the distinction. Pride in skepticism is a peculiar distinction of young men. It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures. Elderly skeptics generally regard their unbelief ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Warwick, I think, must have an idea that strict justice has been done him in the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described Mount Washington, I thought the Duke felt a propensity to "hunch up some." Somehow it is pleasant to look down on the crowd and have a conscious right to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... by the sound of loud growlings, which made Uncle Mark and several of the party start to their feet, with guns ready to receive the bear from whom they expected an attack. Recollecting Jacques' propensity to practical joking, I lay quiet; and I heard my uncle come back soon afterwards, growling almost as much as the supposed bear, and observing that the brute had got off, though it must have been close to the camp. I said nothing, though I suspected who had performed ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... as one of the brightest ornaments of this nation. Originally, his name was Winfred, or Winfrith, and he was born at Kirton, in Devonshire, then part of the West-Saxon kingdom. When he was only about six years of age, he began to discover a propensity to reflection, and seemed solicitous to gain information on religious subjects. Wolfrad, the abbot, finding that he possessed a bright genius, as well as a strong inclination to study, had him removed to Nutscelle, a seminary of learning in the diocese of Winchester, where he ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... there, but in their fissures rose stately trees, under whose umbrage nestled the villages of the people. We found the various village elders greedy for cloth, but the presence of the younger son of Nzogera's men restrained their propensity for extortion. Goats and sheep were remarkably cheap, and in good condition; and, consequently, to celebrate our arrival near the Malagarazi, a flock of eight goats was slaughtered, and distributed ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... slightest propensity either to extravagance in herself or to the encouragement of extravagance in others, the Princesse de Lamballe was a model of prudence, and upon those subjects, as indeed upon all others, the Queen could not have had a more discreet counsellor. She ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... must be admitted that to bestow intellectual culture upon the pupils, without giving them religious instruction, is to draw forth and add to the powers of the mind, without giving it any helm to guide it; in other words, it is to increase the capacity, without diminishing the propensity, to do evil. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the mind. The imaginary positions I loved most, were generally of the painful kind: the greater the sufferings of the personages concerned in my various plots of combined circumstances, the more was my propensity gratified. From this morbid state of excitement, I was, of course, often precipitated, by the mere decay of the cerebral energy that fed it; and when I was forced again to contemplate and mix with the common affairs of life, I felt the contrast ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... had ever since his youth developed a peculiar kind of mean and silly propensity. Having moreover from tender infancy grown up side by side with Tai-Y, their hearts and their feelings were in perfect harmony. More, he had recently come to know to a great extent what was what, and had also filled his head with the contents of a number of corrupt books and licentious ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of the Collector's, had a streak of genius as an architect and several lesser gifts, among them a propensity for borrowing and a flexible tenor voice. He trolled an ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Social developments tended to the same, and no longer either wishing or finding it possible to roam, they were all now, through an entire century, taking up their ground and making good their tumultuous irruptions; with the power of moving had been conjoined a propensity to move. Rustic life, which must essentially have been maintained on the great area of German vagrancy, was more and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... always be soothed into smiles by an open bureau with large liberty to upheave its contents from turret to foundation-stone. As the infant world ascended from cambric and dimity to broadcloth and crinoline, its propensity for investigation grew stronger. It loved not bureaus less, but a great many other things more. What sad consequences might have ensued, had this passion been left to forage for itself, no one can tell. But, by the wonderful principle of adaptation which obtains throughout the universe, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... then the peanuts are cracked and munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforces the views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the sable crowd is a great cause of disorder. They laugh as hens cackle—one begins ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... Miss Mitchell, of Nantucket, has lately discovered a planet, long looked for? I can not conceive why "honor to whom honor is due" should not be rendered to woman as well as man; nor will it necessarily exalt her, or foster feminine pride. This propensity is found alike in male and female, and it should not be ministered ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... plying the hammer, the file, and the chisel, in preference to the saw and the plane. Many a cuff did the foreman of carpenters give him for absenting himself from his proper shop and stealing off to the smithy. His propensity was indeed so strong that, at the end of a year, it was thought better, as he was a handy, clever boy, to yield to his earnest desire to be placed in the smithy, and he was removed thither accordingly in ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... and he certainly looks and acts the part," she murmured to herself as the wagon rattled away from the sidewalk, "but his propensity for turning up at the right time and the right place is rapidly becoming a matter of habit." A door beside the desk stood ajar, and above it, Patty read the words "WASH ROOM." Pushing it open she glanced into the interior which was dimly lighted by a ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... Then ought I.—Ver. 445. Nestor here shows a little of the propensity for boasting, which distinguishes ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... an infernal ball. It became endowed with a fiendish propensity to run up a player's leg and all about him, as if trying to hide in his pocket. Grace's efforts to find it were heartbreaking to watch. Every time it bounded out to center field, which was of frequent ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... seen elsewhere, and indeed, thanks be to God, within the limits of my own home. The best I can say for it is that I do not think it was a vicious childhood. I do not think, trying to look at the past impartially, that I had a strong natural propensity then developed to what are termed the mortal sins. But truth obliges me to record this against myself. I have no recollection of being a loving or a winning child; or an earnest or diligent or knowledge-loving child. God forgive me. And what pains and shames me most of ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... gravely. He was still a little suspicious of his chum's propensity to tease. It did not tend to make him less uneasy when, a little later, Captain Eri opened the parlor door and whispered, "Say, Perez, I've jest thought of some-thin'. What are you goin' to say to M'lissy Busteed? Her ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... am!' she cried, 'that this thing has happened. But you are very fortunate that it has occurred in my house, rather than in somebody else's, for I know what measures to take to cure you of the propensity to crime which you have so clearly shown. I shall, of course, have to send you away immediately; for I could never again trust you in my home, for although it is only a trifle that you have stolen,—yes, deliberately stolen,—yet anyone who takes only ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... sense of life's gravity: at least, as we go on in years, we are all tempted to frown upon our neighbour's pleasures. People are nowadays so fond of resisting temptations; here is one to be resisted. They are fond of self-denial; here is a propensity that cannot be too peremptorily denied. There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbours good. One person I have to make good: myself. But my duty to my neighbour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Revolutionary thought "represented an attack on over- interference, vested interests, superstition, and tyranny of every form. It showed a marked propensity to ignore history, and to judge everything by its immediate reasonableness. It pictured a society free from all laws and coercion, freed from all clerical influence and ruled by benevolence, a society in which all men had equal rights and were able to attain the fullest self-realization. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... who though very amiable in the main, and obliging in their offices to others, have yet that most unhappy propensity of being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... principally on fish, roots, and mountain rice, but they occasionally make a raid on the neighbouring valleys and carry off the herds. So great was their cattle-stealing propensity in Spanish times, that several semi-official expeditions were sent to punish the marauders, particularly on the Cordillera de Zambales, on the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice: but he that hopes to be a good angler, must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practiced it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... by what means) of speaking a much purer English language than that which is in general spoken on the parent soil. This astonished me much; but it is really the case. Amongst his many good qualities he has one unenviable and, I may add, a bad propensity: he is immoderately fond of smoking. He may say that he learned it from his nurse, with whom it was once much in vogue. In Dutch William's time (he was a man of bad taste) the English gentleman could not do without his pipe. During the short ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... afterwards too fond of similar useless baubles."[3] This species of delight is soon over, and is succeeded by a desire to triumph in the ignorance, the credulity, or the cowardice, of their companions. Hence that propensity to play tricks, which is often injudiciously encouraged by the smiles of parents, who are apt to mistake it for a proof of wit and vivacity. They forget, that "gentle dulness ever loved a joke;" and that ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... gentleman. So that here, to the husband, Goneril's touch had the dread operation of the heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So, at favorable times, he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately, would venture in private interviews gently to make distant allusions to this questionable propensity. She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it was witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish ones; but if the unfortunate man liked connubially to rejoice his soul with such ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... with ZUG. Strictly speaking, ZUG means Pull, Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, Expedition, Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line, Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, Disposition: but that thing which it does NOT mean—when all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... landlord, and the goodness of his suppers, are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... faults with this great lever, Will. However deeply bedded in propensity, However firmly set, I tell thee firmer yet Is that vast power that comes from ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... capacity. Of course I was very grateful for this, but some of his characteristics did not impress me favorably, and I sometimes wished the distance between our camps greater. His most serious failing was an uncontrollable propensity to interfere with and direct the minor matters relating to the command, the details for which those under him were alone responsible. Ill-judged meddling in this respect often led to differences between us, only temporary it is true, but most harassing ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... writer. Mr. Reed conceives him to have been a Jesuit, and Pope terms him an Irish priest. Langbaine says, that "his acquaintance with the nobility was more than with the muses, and he had a greater propensity to rhyming, than a genius to poetry." As a proof of the former assertion the Duke of Newcastle prefixed two copies of verses to his characters, in which he calls Flecknoe ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... fire among his subjects, which continues even to this day in some places in Persia. Others assert that Ham was the author of it, and then his son Canaan; and it is most probable that the unfortunate sons of an accursed father were the first who, following the propensity of their own heart, sought out sensible objects to which they might offer a superstitious worship. As the two sons of Ham, Canaan and Mizraim, settled, the one in Phoenicia, and the other in Egypt, it is probable that these were the first nurseries of idolatry; and the sun, being looked ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... low in the west; he had overlooked the fact that it was customary for the Hunter establishment to sup early during the warm summer months. But when he turned to find Sarah watching, stiff and uncompromising, from the doorway, he remembered with painful certainty her attitude toward his propensity to pick up any stray that might catch him in a moment of too pronounced mellowness—stray human or ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... flattering testimonial. He was at that time located in New York as an editorial contributor and occasional "special correspondent" of a leading newspaper. He had seen much of life—tasted much of its pains and pleasures—perhaps thought more than either; and though with a little too much of a propensity for late hours and those long stories which would grow out of current events seen in the light of past experience, he was held to be a very pleasant companion by other men than ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... driven not by any change in our basic objective, which remains peace and freedom for all mankind. Rather, the need for change is driven by the inexorable buildup of Soviet military power and the increasing propensity of Soviet leaders to use this power in coercion and outright aggression to impose their ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... constantly asks himself; and his greatest enigmas are the smiling faces of habitual industry, stimulated by the wants of the day, or fears for the future. If he is excited to exertion, it is commonly to indulge some vicious propensity, or display his scorn of those pursuits which render others happier than himself. If he seek to relieve his inanity in books, his literature ascends no higher than the romances, the newspapers, or the scandal, of the day; and all the nobler pursuits of mind, as well as body, are utterly lost ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... horrors of the sea, and even think we could undergo them twenty times for such a sight. We came into the harbour last night, and landed as soon as we could collect our wits, and mother collect us; Madame has been at Gibraltar before, and so ought to have had the use of hers, but knowing her propensity to lose her way, we made Hargrave look after her, while we three elder girls each took a little child. Both the mothers looked after our things. The boys and Jenny were left behind. So we landed just before ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... traced to the ownership of Thomas Edward, he was dismissed from the school in great disgrace. His perplexed parents sent him to another school, the teacher of which used more vigorous measures to cure him of his propensity, applying to his back an instrument of torture called "the taws." It was in vain. From this second school he was expelled, because some horse-leeches, which he had brought to school in a bottle, escaped, crept up the legs of the other boys, and drew ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... (occupation of land under lease from an American codefendant).[798] On the other hand, it was held in a recent case, that Oregon was entitled to require that one pleading insanity as a defense against a criminal charge should prove same beyond a reasonable doubt, and to make "morbid propensity" no defense.[799] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... there is hardly any other means of educating the spirit of a people in this respect, except by War, and that too under bold Generals. By it alone can that effeminacy of feeling be counteracted, that propensity to seek for the enjoyment of comfort, which cause degeneracy in a people rising in prosperity and immersed ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... deformed in person, blind in one eye, one leg shorter than the other, one arm somewhat withered, with a mind as eccentric as his person was deformed. To say nothing of the deformity of his habits, suffice it, he had a propensity for taking snuff that may seem almost incredible, when in these days those who use it are not very much inclined to expose the article. He used to carry it in his coat-pocket, which was made of leather; ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... remarkably intelligent, active, bright and strong. From remarks made by various members of the Gordon family and their domestics, both Jackman and his servant had been led to the conclusion that the boy was the very impersonation of mischief, and were more or less on the look out for displays of his propensity; but Junkie walked demurely by their side, asking and replying to questions with the sobriety of an elderly man, and without the slightest indication of the latent internal fires, with which ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... possible for a white man to approach. He was a Siwash (male Indian) with one exception—his love of the coin. But then, he had an object in this ambition; and a fault, if it is a means to a worthy end, must be commended. He had this propensity developed to the most pronounced degree. It was a disease with him, for which there was no cure. In outward appearance he was a typical B.C. specimen of the obsolete "coureur de bois" of eastern ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... article in La Lectura, Ortega y Gasset illustrates my propensity to become offensive by recalling that as we left the Ateneo together one afternoon, we encountered a blind man on the Calle del Prado, singing a jota, whereupon I ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... less distrusted or feared him. Nor were these feelings unreciprocated. Unless duty called, he seldom went among the crew. Hard stories too were told about him; something, in particular, concerning an hereditary propensity to kill men and eat them. True, he came from a race of cannibals; but that was all that was known to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... he cannot be admitted to approach the Divinity till the purging fire shall have expiated the stains with which his soul was infected. The same fire, in others, will cancel the corruption of matter and the propensity ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... a conviction that there is no propensity in Frank to waste one of those guineas of which he is so enamoured. Without the least love of money, Frank is a rigid economist. The father indulges no false wants because it would be expensive; the son has none to indulge. Habits which in the one are the fruits of avarice, in ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... suppose," said she, "that I am offended at the manner you took of showing me you had found out my propensity. It was a very good idea, and I shall be delighted to become better acquainted with my new friend," at the same time placing her hand upon him. "He is a very handsome little fellow, but I must tell you frankly ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... overcome the propensity I feel to add Mr. Burke to this illustrious catalogue, though the name of this gentleman leads me out of the circle of the cabinet. Mr. Burke raised himself from an obscure situation, by the greatness of his abilities, and his unrivalled genius. Never was distinction more nobly ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... bless it in the cathedral before Santa Guadalupe. During the ceremony, it was said, there grew a fine head of flaxen hair on the image and it received beautiful blue eyes. And it had the miraculous propensity to ever after wink its eye in the presence of a priest and at the approach of a Christ-hating Jew, it would spit. This virtue saved much wealth for the family of Don Jose, as they were ever put on their guard ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... pride of learning, pride of beauty, pride of wealth, pitilessness for all creatures, malevolence towards all, mistrust in respect of all, insincerity towards all, appropriation of other people's wealth, ravishment of other people's wives, harshness of speech, anxiety, propensity to speak ill of others, violent craving for the indulgence of lust, gluttony, liability to premature death, violent propensity towards malice, irresistible liking for falsehood, unconquerable appetite for ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... eager perusal of works of fiction. I regard this fact as an indication of a want of her nature. Not, therefore, to eradicate but to control, and direct, and restrain, this propensity, would I make an endeavor. In the words of the afflicted Lady Russell, used on the anniversary of her husband's execution, I would say, "I do not contend with nature, but keep her as innocent as I can." Select only such writings of this class as some judicious friend ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... fair-minded referees would allow me five dollars for. I am sure I spent more than that for ammunition, to say nothing of time, traps, dog-food, etc., during the year or two that I was playing the despot and trying to exterminate them. Now that I have rid my mind of the barbarous propensity to kill them, I really enjoy seeing them sitting up by their holes, or peeping at me ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... have observed it. You had set your affections on Arthur; and thinking he had thrown himself away, you do not resist the common propensity ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an evil name on account of a propensity which led her at times to commit actions that seem worthy only of a demon of lewdness. This was, however, only the hysteria of a moment, not the settled habit of her life. On one notable occasion, by diverting the attention of the bestial pig-god Kama-pua'a, and by vividly presenting to him ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... grow up solitarily in any locality. When one arises, the absence of all external and social incentives to the study can only betoken an inherent propensity and constitutional fitness for it. Such a man is too much in earnest to keep his knowledge to himself, or to wish to stand alone. He makes disciples,—he aids, encourages, guides them. His own researches are fully communicated; and this with a prodigality proportioned to his own ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... crone the singular beggar-woman who was generally to be seen on the steps of the Franciscan Church, chuckling to herself and laughing, and soliciting alms from the worshippers; he himself, urged by some inward inexplicable propensity, had often thrown her a hard-earned penny, which he had not had to spare. "Leave me, leave me in peace, you insane old woman," he said; "but you are right, it is hunger more than my wound which has made me weak and miserable; for three ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... age of eleven years that a catastrophe took place which changed my prospects in life, and I must, therefore, say a little more about my father and mother, bringing up their history to that period. The propensity of my mother to ardent spirits had, as always is the case, greatly increased upon her, and her corpulence had increased in the same ratio. She was now a most unwieldy, bloated mountain of flesh, such a form as ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Electress Sophia was not perhaps a very estimable, though a very intelligent princess. But she was eighty-four when the crown came within reach, and she died of rage at an unfriendly letter from Queen Anne, betraying her Jacobite propensity. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... a small hole through the vessel's bottom, and pushing up a stick with a handkerchief attached, that they were enabled to attract the attention of a passing ship, by whose people they were cut out. Old Mitchell's propensity for fishing was very singular. Almost down to the last, when in his hammock under the forecastle, he would have a line passed to him whenever he heard fish playing about; and he would catch at it as it was drawn through his fingers, until ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... properly want somewhat more time than might another man to do it in; but not, I venture to say in spite of Goethe, through innate inadequacy to his task and unconquerable weakness of the will; not, I venture to think in spite of Hugo, through immedicable scepticism of the spirit and irremediable propensity to nebulous intellectual refinement. One practical point in the action of the play precludes us from accepting so ready a solution of the riddle as is suggested either by the simple theory of half-heartedness or by the simple ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... information respecting the Balagnini, the great pirates of these seas. They are represented as in habiting numerous small islands in the vicinity of Sooloo: their origin is Badjow. I apprehend there would be little difficulty in breaking their power, and curing the propensity ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... been, as I could always have very well dispensed with them. I required them for your own good, rather than my own. Before habits of industry are formed, necessity is the only thing which will overcome our natural propensity to indulge ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... occasion in human affairs," he added, "which more uniformly exemplifies this propensity of human nature than the exit of a President of the United ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... French have as great an aversion for traveling as the English have a propensity for it, both English and French have perhaps sufficient reasons. Something better than England is everywhere to be found; whereas it is excessively difficult to find the charms of France outside France. ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... guns; but there will be little benefit from the new law unless a reward shall be offered for the destruction of the birds of prey which swarm in every portion of the island—eagles, falcons, kites, hawks, ravens, crows, and last, but in cunning and destructive propensity not the least, the "magpies." These birds exist in such numbers that unless steps are taken to destroy them it will be hopeless to expect any increase of game. When a magpie wakes in the early morning his first thought is mischief, and ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... peace and enjoyment in the fulness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man completely happy; I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling which I gave an account of in my first setting out in the world to have been so predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, and I might, at sixty one years of age, have been a little inclined to stay at home, and have done ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Byron, recorded in Julian and Maddalo, was of a less ardent sort. Indeed Byron said of it, "As to friendship, it is a propensity in which my genius is very limited.... I did not even feel it for Shelley, however much I admired him." [Footnote: Letter to Mrs. (Shelley?) undated.] Arnold's Thyrsis, Tennyson's In Memoriam, and more recently, George Edward Woodberry's North Shore Watch, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... visit like this, we did not see the best sample of this isolated community: I hope not, for their sake; for our followers had a greedy, overreaching air and manner really disgusting, and in all our little transactions exhibited a sordid grasping propensity one could not expect to meet with in a people so out of the world, and who are in the possession of great plenty: their island yields abundance of corn and common vegetables, the sea upon their shores is famous for the quantity and quality of its fish, and therefore ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... a Propensity to set any Work in a ridiculous and false Light, are so far from being the Characteristicks of a true Critick, that they are the certain Marks whereby we may know that a Man has not the true Spirit ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... elparoli. Pronunciation elparolado. Proof (for press) presprovajxo. Proof pruvo, provo. Prop subtenajxo, subteno. Propaganda propagando. Propagandism propagandismo. Propagate propagandi. Propel antauxen pusxi, irigi. Propensity emo, inklino. Proper (exact) gxusta. Proper konvena. Property propreco, posedajxo. Prophecy profetajxo. Prophesy profetajxi. Prophet profeto. Propinquity proksimeco. Propitiate favorigi, trankviligi. Propitious ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the halls of study, which were long narrow verandahs, and found several white-bearded and sagacious-looking Moollahs reading out portions of the Kor[a]n to their attentive scholars, with a grave countenance and a loud nasal twang, exciting a propensity to laughter which I with difficulty repressed. I do not think the reasoning of the college is very deep, or that the talents of its senior wrangler need be very first-rate, and am inclined to suspect that this pompous reading was got up for the occasion ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... learned to covet in silence, to dissemble, to dissimulate, to lie, and at last to steal,—a propensity for which I had never hitherto had the slightest inclination, and of which I have never since been able quite ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... bellicose propensity," said Burr, "must be punished. I shall have him arrested by the ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." All attempts to correct the depravity of man, to stay the headlong propensity to vice, to abate the madness of ambition, will be found deplorably inefficient, unless we apply the restrictions and the tremendous sanctions of religion. A profound regard and deference for religion, a constant ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... sign of moral principle, or of the concrete or its heroisms, or the simpler affections of the heart, Poe's verses illustrate an intense faculty for technical and abstract beauty, with the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page—and, by final judgment, probably belong among the electric lights of imaginative literature, brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat. There is an indescribable magnetism about the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... story of a girl—a little girl—who had a propensity for getting into trouble, because she had not learned the lesson of obedience. She masters this, however, as the story tells, and in doing so she and her brother have a ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... fatal to her aunt, the ill-fated Eleanor, was as innate in the bosom of Caroline; no opportunity had yet offered to give it play, still the seeds were there, and she could not resist the temptation now presented. Even in her childhood Mrs. Hamilton had marked this fatal propensity. Every effort had been put in force to check it, every gentle counsel given, but arrested in its growth though it was, erased entirely it could not be. The principles of virtue had been too carefully instilled, for coquetry to attain the same ascendancy and ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... man can have. I might provide for her decently enough out of doors for something like a pound a week; and that would be a cheap enough way of paying off all old scores. But I'm not quite clear that it would be a safe way. A life of idleness might develop Mrs. Woolper's latent propensity for gossip—and gossip is what I want to avoid. No, that ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... The propensity of Campbell to adapt or imitate the thoughts and expressions of others has often struck me. Let me then suggest the following (taken at random) as further, and I believe hitherto unnoticed, illustrations of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... with a thief no one is willing to trade." Latter voyagers have borne similar testimony to their brethren still further north; but their honesty seems to have arisen from the want of temptation; for the same missionaries add: "We have discovered that this propensity is not altogether wanting in the northern Esquimaux, who now and then, if they think they can do it without detection, will make a little free with their neighbour's property." And a further acquaintance with the natives ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... an astronomer by accident. He was taken from school on account of his illness, when Sacrobosco's book De Sphaera having been lent to him, he was so pleased with it that he immediately began a course of astronomic studies. Pennant's first propensity to natural history was the pleasure he received from an accidental perusal of Willoughby's work on birds. The same accident of finding, on the table of his professor, Reaumur's History of Insects, which he read more than he attended to the lecture, and, having been ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... exciting pastime. We have frequent record of the habitual high play of Marie de Medicis, who found in it a solace for her sick-room and a diversion from her domestic annoyances, and thus the dangerous propensity of the monarch was heightened by the presence of the loveliest women of the land and the charm and fascination of wit ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... to its timbers. If the deceased has been a chief, or a soldier related to his chief, it is not uncommon to slay his favorite pony and place the body beneath the scaffold, under the superstition, I suppose, that the horse goes with the man. As illustrating the propensity to provide the dead with the things used while living, I may mention that some years ago I loaned to an old man a delft urinal for the use of his son, a young man who was slowly dying of a wasting disease. I made him ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... absurd, yet the impulse to perform them was irresistible—a mysterious dread hanging over me till I had given way to it; even at that early period I frequently used to reason within myself as to what could be the cause of my propensity to touch, but of course I could come to no satisfactory conclusion respecting it; being heartily ashamed of the practice, I never spoke of it to any one, and was at all times highly solicitous that no one should ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... man of low extraction, who had been knighted by an Irish lord-lieutenant in some convivial frolic. No one could tell a good story, or sing a good song better than Sir Terence; he exaggerated his native brogue, and his natural propensity to blunder, caring little whether the company laughed at him or with him, provided they laughed. 'Live and laugh—laugh and live,' was his motto; and certainly he lived on laughing, as well as many better men can contrive to live ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... a friend of yours (tho not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to dedicate to one friend anything containing such matters about another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done therefor. I like a row, and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim "jealousies"; but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, "of whom could you be jealous?"—of none of the living certainly, and (taking all and all into consideration) ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... There exists a propensity, it seems, in the people of this part of the country, particularly about Agen, to fix contemptuous epithets on strangers who settle amongst them; it matters not from what land they come,—it is sufficient that the Gascon idiom is ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... delightful manner, making a tour of the "rows" and the odd corners with quaint buildings. The tourist, fortified with his red-backed Baedecker, is a common sight to Chester people, and his "dollar-distributing" propensity, as described by the English writer I have quoted, is not unknown even to the smallest fry of the town. Few things during our trip amused me more than the antics of a brown, bare-foot, dirt-begrimed little mite not ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... the least formidable of all. The one most to be dreaded is that which results from the excessive and premature exercise of the reproductive functions, for, as has been well observed, "the too frequent indulgence of a natural propensity at first increases the concomitant desire and makes its gratification a part of the periodical circle of action; but by degrees the over excitement of the organs, abating their tone and vitality, unfits them for the discharge of their office, the accompanying pleasures ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... her out to solitary musing among her native mountains, causing her to form innumerous combinations from common objects, giving strength to her perceptions, and swiftness to their arrangement. Love had come, as the rod of the master-prophet, to swallow up every minor propensity. Love had doubled all her excellencies, and placed a diadem on her genius. Was she to cease to love? Take the colours and odour from the rose, change the sweet nutriment of mother's milk to gall and poison; as easily might you wean Perdita from love. She grieved for the loss of Raymond ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... are forced to do what he would have us do—admire the ingenuity of the poet, together with his knowledge of effect, rhythmical and dramatic, his flexibility and strength of versification, and marvellous faculty of word painting. This propensity to make all things subservient to the advancement of Art is not always productive of present good to one's fellow beings, whatever may be the results to posterity, as the luckless women who cross the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into the town, and it went the way of his stipend—into the pockets of his gambling companions. Again he returned home as full of grief as before. The Indian soon heard of what had happened, for he loved the padre very much; so he brought him another bag of silver. The padre's propensity was incurable, and he lost that as he had done the first. The Indian's generosity was not yet worn out, and he brought him a third bag full of ore. When the padre saw it, he could scarcely believe his ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the superiority of the soothing system. The vinegar of criticism would have festered the wounds of his vanity; the art of (must I call it) flattery healed them. It left a scar, I acknowledge; for the doctor still wrote verses, and still had a lurking propensity for climbing the slippery slope of poetic renown. But the realities of life are fortunate correctives to this passion, and, like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... grave tone and face, knowing all the while that there was no fear whatever for the people of Sark. Was there a propensity in me, not hitherto developed, to make ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
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