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Predilection   Listen
noun
Predilection  n.  A previous liking; a prepossession of mind in favor of something; predisposition to choose or like; partiality.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Predilection" Quotes from Famous Books



... performance. It was in fact an opera, and operatic peculiarities remained after all restriction had been taken off. Scott assigns on the whole far too much influence to the French drama and to the personal predilection of Charles. The subject is a large one, and has never been fully handled, but readers may be referred to the present editor's Dryden, pp. 18-20; and still more to an essay on Sir George Etherege by Mr. E.W. Gosse in the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... whole territory. This was partly avenged by the Neuburgers, who gained absolute control of Dusseldorf. Here were however no important fortifications, the place being merely an agreeable palatial residence and a thriving mart. The States-General, not concealing their predilection for Brandenburg, but under pretext of guarding the peace which they had done so much to establish, placed a garrison of 1400 infantry and a troop or two of horse in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... deceitful, and that every habit of useful action must resolve itself into some elementary practice of manual labour. And I would, in all sober and direct earnestness advise you, whatever may be the aim, predilection, or necessity of your lives, to resolve upon this one thing at least, that you will enable yourselves daily to do actually with your hands, something that is useful to mankind. To do anything well with your ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the two Englishmen, whom Napoleon freely permitted to follow their own pleasure in their movements, being desirous of not adding fuel to any possible fire of animosity and of showing every respect to every Frenchman, whatever his predilection. ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... kept her in good order) to obtain this or that article of dress, more especially the white "Paduasoy." He cared nothing how she was dressed; she was always lovely enough for him, as he took pains to assure her, when she begged him to express in his answers a predilection for particular pieces of finery, in order that she might show what he said to her parents. But at length he seemed to find out that she would not be married till she had a "trousseau" to her mind; and then he sent her a letter, which had evidently accompanied a whole box full of finery, and ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... which ought to be based upon a profound conviction, an overwhelming passion, an intense enthusiasm, is often little more than the abandonment of a personality to a mood of intoxicating ebullience; while the humour of the Shakespeare story lies in a sense of the way in which a national predilection will override ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... That's the spirit I like, Humplebee. Then you have no marked predilection? That was what I wanted to discover—well, well, we shall see. Meanwhile, Humplebee, get on with your arithmetic. You are good at ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... other pleasures which we find in the tender glance, in the kiss of her who is by our side, that it seems to us, more than anything else, a sort of transport of gratitude for the kindness of heart of our companion and for her touching predilection of ourselves, which we measure by the benefits, by the happiness that she ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... monk supposed to have a predilection for any particular chamber?" asked Meredith. "Ghosts are uncertain visitors, I know; but it would be something to pass a night where one ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... to her again? How could she inform Captain of the compact she and her friends had made without involving Mary in it? Her mother would naturally inquire the reason for this rather remarkable movement. She might be displeased, as well as surprised, over Mary's strange predilection for the French girl. Her Captain knew all that had happened during her freshman year. On that memorable day when she had leaped into the river to rescue Marcia Arnold, and afterward come home, a curious little figure clad in Jerry Macy's ample garments, the recital of those stormy ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... state of affairs, another event occurred which changed the current of feeling, and by its possible consequences distracted the Marquess from his brooding meditations over his discomfiture in the matter of Hellingsley. The Prince Colonna, who, since the steeple-chase, had imbibed a morbid predilection for such amusements, and indeed for every species of rough-riding, was thrown from his horse ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... its scorn of ages, Its predilection for the past, Turns back about a billion pages And lands us by the Cam at last; Is it the thought of "Granta" (once our daughter), The Freshers' Match, the Second in our Mays That makes our mouth, our very soul to water? Ah no! Ah no! It ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... from enjoying the laugh that this story may produce, in which he is very ready to join them.' He, however, requests me to observe, that 'my friend very properly chose a long word on this occasion, not, it is believed, from any predilection for polysyllables, (though he certainly had a due respect for them,) but in order to put Mr. Braidwood's skill to the strictest test, and to try the efficacy of his instruction by the most difficult exertion of the organs of his pupils.' BOSWELL. 'One of the best critics of our age' is, I believe, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... Elliot had fallen ill of the jaundice, and having imbibed a very strong dislike to the name of doctor, whether musical or medical, refused the solicitations of his friends to receive a visit from any one of the faculty; to this eccentricity of feeling he added a predilection for curing every disease of the body by the use of simples, decoctions, and fomentations extracted from the musty records of old Culpepper, the English physician. Pursuing this principle, Elliot every day appeared to grow ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... conveniences or inconveniences that would attend its adoption. All this will be done, and in a spirit of interested and suspicious scrutiny, without that knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state which is essential to right judgment, and with that strong predilection in favor of local objects which can hardly fail to mislead the decision. The same process must be repeated in every member of which the body is constituted; and the execution of the plans framed by the councils ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... Cincinnatus, returning to his plough with a goodly-sized branch of willow in his hand; figuratively returning, however, to a figurative plough, and from no profound affection for that honoured implement of husbandry (for which, indeed, Mr. Sawin never displayed any decided predilection), but in order to be gracefully summoned therefrom to more congenial labours. It would seem that the character of the ancient Dictator had become part of the recognised stock of our modern political comedy, though, as our term of office extends to a quadrennial ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... provided, but the engagement is not for a definite period as it would be on a tour, and a curious difficulty arises through this arrangement, since the actress who has once been beautifully dressed has a natural and very comprehensible predilection thenceforward to continue to be so delightfully gowned. Her own opinion as to what a dress should cost almost invariably, after a London engagement, ceases to be on a level with what her yearly income should permit. Clothes assume a horrible ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... and tedious journey back to Brighton again, for the patient seemed to tire easily, and he evinced a marked predilection for sitting by the roadside and singing. It was very late before David reached his house. Bell beamed his satisfaction. Van Sneck, with a half-gleam of recognition of his surroundings, and with a statement that he had been there before, lapsed into silence. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... interfere with some of its details of great practical consequence. The gradual amelioration of the criminal code—a restriction of capital punishments, demanded by the humanity of the British public—was allowed by the ruling classes with doubt and grudging. Some conspicuous cases confirmed their predilection in favor of the scaffold. What punishment, they asked, would transportation have proved to Fontleroy, who from the spoil of his extensive forgeries, might have reserved an ample fortune? It was reported, and not untruly, that many had carried ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... apt to become monosyllabic when a certain train of thought was forced on him. Also a short deep line of frown appeared under the white scar: but Christopher had not yet learnt to pay full heed to these signs: also he had a predilection for getting at the root of any matter he had once begun to investigate, ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... Duchemin paraded successfully a false face of resignation, protesting no predilection whatsoever for a watery grave, no infatuate haste to challenge the Hun upon his chosen hunting-ground. In the fullness of time it would be permitted to him to go down to the sea in this ship. Meanwhile he found it apparently pleasant ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... the Baroness had a particular predilection for Jacquemin, it was perhaps she, who, in her gay chatter, had related the story to the reporter, and who, without knowing it probably, assuredly without wishing it, had furnished an article for 'L'Actualite'. In all honor, Jacquemin ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the rain pattering on the windows, and the fire in my little grate looking all the brighter from the contrast, a timid knock came to my door. I put down the Pensees of Pascal,—a book for which I have a strange predilection, though I do not like ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... get that pink, long-tailed waist of your'n to let Bettie make one by, please," said Mother Mayberry, with total unconsciousness of that very strong feminine predilection for exclusiveness of design in wearing apparel. The garment in question was a very lovely, simply-cut linen affair that bore a distinguished foreign trade-mark. "I know you feel complimented by her wanting to make one for herself by it, and maybe Clara May and Pattie, ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the fact that books held an unaccountable fascination for him, he could not explain this predilection, for their influence over him ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... patriarchal term. Could I revert to the age of twenty, and carry back with me all the experience that forty years more have taught me, I can assure you, that I would employ much the greatest part of my time in engaging the good-will, and in insinuating myself into the predilection of people in general, instead of directing my endeavors to please (as I was too apt to do) to the man whom I immediately wanted, or the woman I wished for, exclusively of all others. For if one happens (and it will sometimes happen to the ablest man) to fail in his views with that ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... People who fancied themselves favoured with direct revelations from Heaven; people who thought it right to keep the seventh day of the week as a Sabbath instead of the first day; people who cherished a special predilection for the Apocalypse and the Book of Daniel; people with queer views about property and government; people who advocated either too little marriage or too much marriage; all such eccentric characters as are apt to come to the surface ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... her with observation. He himself had slight depth for a man doomed to live by his wits, and he was under the disadvantage of really feeling something of what he said. He was not a rascal by predilection; merely driven that way by the forces which in our social ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... customs that we have been used to, and which are justly called a second nature, make it too often difficult to distinguish that which is natural from that which is the result of education; they frequently even give a predilection in favour of the artificial mode; and almost every one is apt to be guided by those local prejudices who has not chastised his mind, and regulated the instability of his affections, by the eternal ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... one thing," said I, "connected with this matter which surprises me—your own lukewarmness. Yes, making every allowance for your natural predilection for dog-fighting, and your present enamoured state of mind, your apathy at the commencement of such a movement is to ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... born, and where the author of "Pickwick" first became on terms of friendship with many of the brilliant men of letters of his day. The knocker is held in its place by a fleur-de-lis of the same metal, and it was Serjeant Talfourd who humorously rallied Dickens on his supposed predilection for the French, who at that time were in the midst of preparing that series of more or less revolutionary movements which preceded the downfall of Louis Philippe and the ascendency of the ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... answer. They confirm, as far as they go, the general impression as to Massinger's point of view which we should derive from his writings without special interpretation. 'Shakespeare,' says Coleridge, 'gives the permanent politics of human nature' (whatever they may be!), 'and the only predilection which appears shows itself in his contempt of mobs and the populace. Massinger is a decided Whig; Beaumont and Fletcher high-flying, passive-obedience Tories.' The author of 'Coriolanus,' one would be disposed to say, showed ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... This predilection sometimes led him into strange difficulties, especially in medicine, where he loved to use all the "terms of art." Technical expression had a fatal fascination for him, especially when he did not understand them. I remember ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... was, of course, very great among the habitans, as he travelled from parish to parish and from seigniory to seigniory, drawing bills and hypothecations, marriage contracts and last wills and testaments, for the peasantry, who had a genuine Norman predilection for law and chicanery, and a respect amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the actes of a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate intricacy of his own, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the proudest of nations could not bear to part even with the name and the shadow of a supremacy which was no more. All, from the grandee of the first class to the peasant, looked forward with dread to the day when God should be pleased to take their king to himself. Some of them might have a predilection for Germany; but such predilections were subordinate to a stronger feeling. The paramount object was the integrity of the empire of which Castile was the head; and the prince who should appear to be most likely to preserve that integrity unviolated would have the best right ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... morning brought his thirty or forty followers to camp in the hollow where was a spring of clear water—the hollow which had for long been known locally as "the Indian Camp," because of Wolfbelly's predilection for the spot. Without warning save for the beat of hoofs in the sandy soil, Grant charged over the brow of the hill and into camp, scattering dogs, papooses, and ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... from such a variety of circumstances, would be as reasonable as applying splints to an arm, when the thigh happens to be fractured; but enough, we would hope, has been said to disabuse the mind of the public of a predilection for these pretenders. Dyspepsia is a disease that has existed for ages, and through ages has it readily been cured. In its simple form there is no mystery about it, and when it becomes complicated, it requires more than the knowledge ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... of living fairly intoxicates one, and every bird's throat is swelling with happy music, who but a Calvinist would croak dismal prophecies? In Ireland, old crones tell marvellous tales about the hawthorns, and the banshees which have a predilection for them. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... ultimately become a mass of corruption, with the extinction of life. If we meet with an individual whose habits are abstemious, as regards the drinking of wines or fermented liquors, we generally discover him to have a great predilection for that valuable commodity salt, which article being in its nature antiseptic, answers the same purpose as wine. Therefore, the labouring man, whose narrow circumstances prohibit him from the advantage of a daily use of wine, by taking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various

... presence in both scarps of a line of small Buddhist cells, the apertures of which are visible at a considerable distance and appear like the portholes or gun-ports of the fossilised vessel. Unless one has a predilection for pushing one's way through a perpendicular jungle or crawling over jagged and sunbaked rock, the only way to ascend the hill is from the south-western side, from the upper portion of which still frown the outworks and bastioned ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... was necessarily a week of hard work, culminating in the task of getting all details into perfect marching order, and setting every item in readiness for the start at dawn. This done, the British predilection for "letting off steam" resulted in a night of uproarious hilarity, incomprehensible to those ignorant of the conditions which gave it birth, and unable to realise its tonic effect on men who are setting out to face danger, hardship, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... months till they learnt enough of the Greek grammar to read a Greek one. In the second session they were able to accompany him through some of the principal Greek classics, but the time was obviously too short for great things. Smith, however, appears at this time to have shown a marked predilection for mathematics. Dugald Stewart's father, Professor Matthew Stewart of Edinburgh, was a class-fellow of Smith's at Glasgow; and Dugald Stewart has heard his father reminding Smith of a "geometrical problem of considerable difficulty by which he was occupied at the time when their acquaintance commenced, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... laugh that this story may produce, in which he is very ready to join them'. He, however, requests me to observe, that 'my friend very properly chose a LONG word on this occasion, not, it is believed, from any predilection for polysyllables (though he certainly had a due respect for them), but in order to put Mr Braidwood's skill to the strictest test, and to try the efficacy of his instruction by the most difficult exertion of ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... development, was, on the surface at least, one of political and religious reaction; and reaction often assumes the aspect of progress, nay, in some cases is identical with progress. Most of the poets, dramatists, and other writers of the Romantic School were, either by affinity or predilection, legitimists and neo-Catholics. Gothic art, mediaeval sentiment, the ancient monarchy and the ancient creed, were blended in their programme with the abrogation of the "unities," and a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... made your dear mother my helpmeet in my public life, sustained her, at the sacrifice of every personal predilection, in constant companionship with her husband at sea. She bore the misery of sea-sickness without a murmur or complaint. Fear in storm and tempest she never knew. She made yachting, notwithstanding its drawbacks, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... private reading, I can only speak of what I remember. History continued to be my strongest predilection, and most of all ancient history. Mitford's Greece I read continually; my father had put me on my guard against the Tory prejudices of this writer, and his perversions of facts for the whitewashing of despots, and blackening of popular institutions. These points ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... his, and he has been at the pains to modernise some of the Canterbury Tales. Those persons who look upon Mr. Wordsworth as a merely puerile writer, must be rather at a loss to account for his strong predilection for such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo. We do not think our author has any very cordial sympathy with Shakespear. How should he? Shakespear was the least of an egotist of any body in the world. He ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... salvation. This new attitude in tie matter relieved her of much of her responsibility, but left her not less anxious to do what she could for her kind in the matter of calories. She was, as she had shown in her treatment of Billy, not entirely blinded by her growing predilection in favor of the doctrine ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... wholly consistent that I should choose an unassuming and grave lodging-house on my arrival at the place of my destination; for, apart from my predilection of religious tenets, quietude is closely allied to much thought; and while my training had made me desire the quietude as a part and portion of the best of life, friend Barbara had made thought inexpressibly pleasant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... English fields and flowers, would have good reason to insist that the measure of his large landscape art is a large experience. I only suggest that if one loves Broadway and is familiar with it, and if a part of that predilection is that one has seen Mr. Abbey and Mr. Parsons at work there, the pleasant confusion takes place of itself; one's affection for the wide, long, grass-bordered vista of brownish gray cottages, thatched, latticed, mottled, mended, ivied, immemorial, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... letting that girl devour the other half,—she gave him some reputation. He would speak to her; they were old friends; nothing wrong—eh, father? It would not be hard to persuade her. This Pepita had a predilection for anything that was unusual; she was rather—romantic. He would explain to her who the great artist was, enhancing the honor of acting ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... expressed an accepted convention rather than a personal predilection. It was not the room of a young man of conscious tastes. It was solid, cheerful and somewhat naif. There was a great deal of very clean white paint and a great deal of bright wall-paper. There were deep chairs covered with brighter chintz. There were blue and white tiles around the fireplace ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure you I attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... I have not before named; but that only brother was a second self. Not that he resembled me in any respect, for he was beautiful to a prodigy, and I an ordinary child; he was wholly free from any predilection for learning, being mirthful and volatile in the highest degree; and though he listened when I read to him the mysterious marvels of my favorite nursery books, I doubt whether he ever bestowed an after- thought on any thing therein contained. The brightest, the sweetest, the most sparkling creature ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... Hospital in 1702 and continued his connection with this school until his early death. He had a reputation for wit and learning, and also for imbibing somewhat too freely. In his poetry he especially cultivated the style of the free Pindaric ode, a predilection which won him a mention without honor in Johnson's life of Pope (Lives of the Poets, ed. Birkbeck Hill, III, 227). Even the heroic couplets of his poem on "Poetry" aim rather at pseudo-Pindaric diffuseness than at epigrammatic concentration of statement. As a critic Cobb deserves attention in ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb

... Regiment, however, had already been prominent on the fighting line. It had won reputation with the bayonet at Cerro Gordo, and before Mexico was reached there were other battles to be fought, and other positions to be stormed. A youth with a predilection for hard knocks might have been content with the chances offered to the foot-soldier. But Jackson's partiality for his own arm was as marked as was Napoleon's, and the decisive effect of a well-placed battery appealed to his instincts with greater force than the wild rush of a charge of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... important for its bearing on Renaissance art that I may be permitted to dilate at greater length on Signorelli's choice of types and treatment of form in general. Having a special predilection for the human body, he by no means confined himself to monotony in its presentation. On the contrary, we can trace many distinct grades of corporeal expression. First comes the abstract nude, illustrated by the "Resurrection" and the arabesques at Orvieto[212]. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... peculiar powers; that is to say, I wish California to be practically overlooked while I am governor and I wish it understood that I shall be governor as long as I please. Alvarado will hold no office under the Americans, and is as ready to retire now as a few years later. Of course my predilection for the Americans must be carefully concealed both from the Mexican government and the mass of the people here: Santa Ana and Alvarado know what is bound to come; the Mexicans, generally, retain enough interest in the Californias to wish to keep ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... attention in England, and conducted the Courier and Enquirer with great success for many years. The Times is now the most reputable of the great New York dailies, and Mr. Raymond has made it influential both at home and abroad. He has retained, amidst his social and political successes, a predilection for "Bohemia," and became an indefatigable correspondent. I rode out with him sometimes, and heard, with interest, his accounts of the Italian war, whither he also went in furtherance of journalism. Among our ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... ancestry. Finn was never beaten. The Lady Desdemona had never lowered her flag to any bloodhound. Jan had passed his first test at the head of the list, among twenty-seven competitors, and despite his judge's special predilection ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... was raging in the unconnected and far-distant districts of Behar and Dacca." (Bengal Reports, p. 125.) Again (p. 9), that in Bengal "it at once raged simultaneously in various and remote quarters, without displaying a predilection for any one tract or district more than for another; or any thing like regularity of succesion in the chain of its operations." In support of what is stated in these extracts, the fullest details are given as to dates and places; and at page 9 ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... nevertheless their lawful child, as well as their puling offspring of advanced age and decayed health. I saw them, Adam—Winter showed the nursery to me while they were gathering courage to receive me in the drawing-room. There they lay, the children of predilection, the riches of the East expended that they might sleep soft and wake in magnificence. I, the eldest brother—the heir—I stood beside their bed in the borrowed dress which I had so lately exchanged for ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... and a half in length without the tail, but with a spread of wing of more than eight inches. Its regular food consists chiefly of gnats, midges, and other small flies, in pursuit of which it often frequents the vicinity of water, but it has a curious predilection for raw meat, and in search of this it often makes its way into pantries, where the little thief will be found clinging to a joint of meat, and feeding upon it with avidity. This fondness for meat makes the Pipistrelle very ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... is prone to positivism and kindred forms of materialistic philosophy, and we must expect the derivative theory to be taken up in that interest. We have no predilection for that school, but the contrary. If we had, we might have looked complacently upon a line of criticism which would indirectly, but effectively, play into the hands of positivists and materialistic ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... man's air and deportment, and not in his clothes; and which it is as difficult for a gentleman to put off as for a vulgar fellow to put on. The company generally felt it, and used to call me little gentleman Jack. The girl felt it too; and in spite of her predilection for my powerful rival, she liked to flirt with me. This only aggravated my troubles, by increasing my passion, and awakening the jealousy of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... This predilection for sea idiom is assuredly proper in a maritime people, especially as many of the phrases are at once graphic, terse, and perspicuous. How could the whereabouts of an aching tooth be better pointed out ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... others; or, once more, the gentleman of fortune, who evolved from his school-day acquisitions a feeling or a passion for higher things, and made it the business of his maturer time—even made it his career—to carry out on a scale and on lines dictated and governed by circumstances the predilection formed in boyhood. On the contrary, there are for our consideration and instruction the libraries which owed their existence to less interesting motives, to the vague and untrained pursuit of rare and expensive books and MSS., on the judgment of others in rivalry ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... In 1890 there were 1,215 Winnebago on the reservation, but nearly an equal number were scattered over Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan, where they now live chiefly by agriculture, with a strong predilection for hunting. ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... fear, attribute after attribute, oceans opening into oceans of divinest beauty; to lie astonished in unspeakable contentment before the vision of God's surpassing Unity, so long the joyous mystery of our predilection, while the Vision through all eternity seems to grow more fresh and bright and new: O my poor soul! what canst thou know of this, or of these beautiful necessities, of thy exceeding love, which shall only satisfy itself in endless alternations, now of ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... love occupies a larger space in her thoughts, and is more essential to her happiness, and that therefore she ought to be the wooing party; that otherwise the male is a shy and dubitant creature—that he has often a selfish predilection for the single state—that he often pretends to misunderstand tender glances and delicate hints—that, in short, he must be resolutely pursued and captured. They add, moreover, that unless the Gy can secure the An of her choice, and one ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the relations of father and son were improved. The prince had for his abode the little town of Rheinsberg, where he could indulge, with a circle of congenial friends, in the studies and amusements to which he was partial. He grew up with a strong predilection for French literature, and for the French habits and fashions—free-thinking in religion included—which were now spreading over Europe. On his accession to the throne, Frederick broke up the Potsdam regiment of giants, and called back to Halle the philosopher ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... sufficiently reasonable to insure prosperity. In due time Slee replied that, while boarding was a "miserable business anyhow," he had been particularly fortunate in securing a place on one of the most pleasant streets—"the family a small one and choice spirits, with no predilection for taking boarders, and consenting to the present arrangement only because of the anticipated pleasure of your company." The price, Slee added, would be reasonable. As a matter of fact a house on Delaware Avenue—still ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Jerusalem with splendid churches, and his new capital on the Bosphorus with the first of the three historic basilicas dedicated to the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia). One of the greatest of innovators, he seems to have had a special predilection for circular buildings, and the tombs and baptisteries which he erected in this form, especially that for his sister Constantia in Rome (known as Santa Costanza, Fig. 66), furnished the prototype for numberless Italian baptisteries in ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... Upani@sads as S'a@n@dilya, Yogatattva, Dhyanabindu, Ha@msa, Am@rtanada, Varaha, Ma@n@dala Brahma@na, Nadabindu, and Yogaku@n@dalu, shows that the Yoga practices had undergone diverse changes in diverse schools, but none of these show any predilection for the Sa@mkhya. Thus the Yoga practices grew in accordance with the ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... Rafaello. These four children grew up together, and the Palatine prince was pleased to mark that Frederick, though full of martial ardour, showed intellectual tastes as well; yet the father did not live long to watch the growth of the boy's predilection therein, and there came a day when the crown of Louis III was acquired by his heir, Louis IV. Still quite young, the latter was already affianced to Margaret of Savoy; and this engagement had incensed various ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... detestable, the materials trifling, his reflections humane but silly. He disposes all under reigns of Roman emperors and English kings, whether they did any thing or nothing at Leicester. I am sorry I have such predilection for the histories of particular counties and towns: there certainly does not exist a worse ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... yet, though he may become religious, it is hardly to be expected that he will become a very precise and straightlaced person; it is probable that he will retain, with his scholarship, something of his gypsyism, his predilection for the hammer and tongs, and perhaps some inclination to put on certain gloves, not white kid, with any friend who may be inclined for a little old English diversion, and a readiness to take a glass of ale, with plenty ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... "imperial" itself he had shown a marked (p. 363) predilection from his earliest days. Henry Imperial was the name of the ship in which his admiral hoisted his flag in 1513, and "Imperial" was the name given to one of his favourite games. But, as his reign wore on, the word was translated into action, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... Commonwealth there is a difference of opinion regarding the relative value of the manner in which the predominating breeds, the Berkshire and Yorkshire, are crossed in raising pigs for market. This no doubt will always exist, owing to predilection of breeders towards particular types, and to the relative merits resulting from the various crosses. The main point is that both breeds are wonderfully well suited to Australian conditions, and that they are prolific. Brood sows will, if kept in an ordinarily thrifty ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs

... disease is not identical with the germ causing abortion in cattle. It exerts its action, however, in a similar manner, and appears to have, under certain conditions, a predilection for the genital organs of the mare, where it induces certain morbid changes whereby a premature expulsion of the fetus is the result. The germ is usually present in the fetal membranes and also in the aborted fetus. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... drunkenness, such as sailors, carriers, coachmen, and other wandering tribes whose ventral insurrections are not periodically quelled by regular and comfortable meals. Country doctors, for the same reason, not unfrequently manifest a stronger predilection for their employers' bottles than their patients do for theirs. In the absence of innocuous and benign appliances, the deleterious are had recourse to exorcise the fiend that is raging within them. These views are explicable by the laws of ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... and from which he never quite recovered. This too, according to Dr. Sadger,[76] marks the neurasthenic, and often constitutes a hereditary taint. Lenau thereupon shifted once more and entered upon a medical course, this time not absolutely without predilection. He did himself no small credit in his medical examinations, but the death of his grandmother, just before his intended graduation, provided a sufficient excuse for him to discontinue the work, which was never again resumed or brought to a conclusion. But not ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... power any longer exists in the great family of Europe: the state of the question is therefore changed. It is now how corrupt nations will act against corrupt nations equally enlightened? But if the citizen of Geneva drew his prediction of the extinction of monarchy in Europe from that predilection for democracy which assumes that a republic must necessarily produce more happiness to the people than a monarchy, then we say that the fatal experiment was again repeated since the prediction, and the fact proved not true! The excess of democracy inevitably terminates ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... her father had been a man of immoral habits was not new to her. His predilection for fast women had long ago made it impossible for her to live in the same house with him for more than a week at a time. But that he had trampled in the mire the lifelong friendship of an honourable man for the sake of an ignoble passion revealed an unexpected ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... badly that she fled to France and begged the protection of Louis XIII. This he gave her, a French army was at once set in motion against Lorraine, and it was in this struggle that Turenne had first fought under the French flag. He had always evinced the strongest predilection for the life of a soldier, and when he reached the age of fourteen, Richelieu being at the time engaged in breaking the power of the Huguenots and in the siege of La Rochelle, the boy's mother sent him to his uncle Maurice of Nassau, who at the death of his father ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... twin dales at the time of this story, you might have met Parson Leggy, striding along with a couple of varmint terriers at his heels, and young Cyril Gilbraith, whom he was teaching to tie flies and fear God, beside him; or Jim Mason, postman by profession, poacher by predilection, honest man and sportsman by nature, hurrying along with the mail-bags on his shoulder, a rabbit in his pocket, and the faithful Betsy a yard behind. Besides these you might have hit upon a quiet shepherd and a wise-faced dog; Squire ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... settled life of civilization. I had known such a woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the same struggles, temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her life and movements by the prejudice in her veins—the prejudice of racial predilection. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... stay lashed to the mast, while you run about the country disporting yourself with insane people. And just as I was thinking that I had nicely cured you of this morbid predilection for psychopathic institutions! It's very disappointing. You had seemed almost human ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... London, and, with that simplicity and candour by which he was distinguished, related to him every circumstance of his story. Mr. Moreland had no predilection in favour of lord Thomas Villiers. His sister, whom he esteemed in all respects an amiable woman, had by no means lived happily with her husband. Avarice and pride of rank were the farthest in the world from being the foibles ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... Bassville's friend! But for all this the Bassvilliana was publicly burnt before the cathedral in Milan, and Monti was turned out of a government place he had got, because "he had published books calculated to inspire hatred of democracy, or predilection for the government of kings, of theocrats and aristocrats." The poet was equal to this exigency; and he now reprinted his works, and made them praise the French and the revolutionists wherever they had blamed them before; all the bad systems and characters were depicted as monarchies ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... never weary; and she drew her friend on to talk of him, if the conversation threatened to stray to anything less interesting. The girl was used to Ida's sudden fancies for men, for the married woman was both susceptible and fickle, and Noreen judged that this sudden predilection for Dermot would die as quickly as a hundred others before it. But ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... is as incontestable as your very charming amiability. With a sagacious eye you observed my predilection for the silent "compatriot," apparently rather sombre, but of excellent composition at bottom. [A box of caviare, which Madame Rubinstein had sent to Liszt.] Doubtless the advantages which appertain to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... blow. "If you think I have practised the small-sword every day of my life for ten years to suffer myself to be shot at like a rabbit in the end—ho, really!" He laughed aloud. "You have challenged me, I think, Sir Terence. Because I feared the predilection you have discovered, I was careful to wait until the challenge came from you. The choice of weapons lies, I think, with me. I shall instruct my ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... frequently got smashed up, which he knew to be unpleasant for him. This came to an abrupt end half way through the term. Then he took, quite suddenly, to motor bicycling. All this is merely to say that the incalculable factor that sets temperament and natural predilection at nought had entered into Peter's life. Of course, it was absurd. Urquhart, being what he was, could successfully do a number of things that Peter, being what he was, must inevitably come to grief over. But still he indomitably tried. He even profaned the roads and outraged all aesthetic ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... in the evening this time, and remembering a predilection of the laird's, begged for a game of backgammon. The result of his policy was, that, of many weeks that followed, every Monday evening at least he spent with the laird. Ginevra was so grateful to him for his attention to her father, and his efforts to draw him ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... His birth was noble—his connexions wealthy—his own fortune moderate. He had been an early follower and admirer of Clisthenes, the establisher of popular institutions in Athens after the expulsion of the Pisistratidae, but he shared the predilection of many popular chieftains, and while opposing the encroachments of a tyranny, supported the power of an aristocracy. The system of Lycurgus was agreeable to his stern and inflexible temper. His integrity was republican—his loftiness of spirit was patrician. He had all the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in most cases expected to result in an entrance to the clerical profession, but the law had by this time begun to have a more distinct claim upon attention, and the medical profession had always demanded those who could show a positive predilection for it.[1] The doctor, however, did not learn his science under any organized educational system, but by personal association and study with an older practitioner, a system which naturally lessened the likelihood of persons drifting into the profession upon slight grounds of preference. The ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... him very much," replied the Dean. "He is always good-humoured, and I think he's honest. I own to a predilection for ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... plant makes its appearance above ground, light, as well as air, becomes necessary to its preservation. Light is essential to the development of the colours, and to the thriving of the plant. You may have often observed what a predilection vegetables have for the light. If you make any plants grow in a room, they all spread their leaves, and extend their branches ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... the cows were milked as they presented themselves, without fancy or choice. But certain cows will show a fondness for a particular pair of hands, sometimes carrying this predilection so far as to refuse to stand at all except to their favourite, the pail of a stranger being unceremoniously ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... it was a handsome cavalcade," continued the proprietor, his predilection for pomp overcoming his churlishness. "The princess on a steed with velvet housings, set with precious stones. Her ladies attired in eastern silks. Behind the men of arms; Francis' troops in rich armor; the duke's soldiers more simply ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... and methodical statistic, to which the genius of the Norseman and the Arab each contributed a quota. The Arabians, by their primitive nomadic habits, by the necessities of their system of taxation, by their predilection for astrology, by their experience as pilgrims, merchants, and poets errant, were specially qualified for the labour of geographical investigation. Roger supplied the unbounded curiosity and restless energy of his Scandinavian temper, the kingly comprehensive ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... Bonaparte had a special predilection for the canaille. I don't mean this for you, D'Hubert. You are one of us, though you ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... parts of Greece, but more particularly by the Athenians, who believed in her special predilection for ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... implies the right to command. He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers, with bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door work. He had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to do something fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring multitudes gathered at mighty musters or imposing cattle-shows. He had ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... predilections, they were with the Whigs; but he was not weak enough to let any predilection be a burden to his interests. Where was the best opening for him? The Tories—I still prefer the name, as being without definite meaning; the direct falsehood implied in the title of Conservative amounts almost to a libel—the Tories were in; but from the fact of being in, were always ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... tales unfortunately suffer from a hackneyed use of situations, materials, and ideas, suggestive of the hack writer. Gorki's cheap sentiment, and maudlin pity, often result in clap-trap and padding which are foreign to the artist proper. But this is the effect of his predilection for individuals ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald

... by this absence to go and breathe a little at my chateau of Petit-Bourg, where I was accompanied by Mademoiselle de Blois, and the young Comte de Toulouse; after which I betook myself to the mineral waters of Bourbonne, for which I have a predilection. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... younger, Novae Athenae. From this place he afterwards moved to Naples, where he applied himself with great assiduity to Greek and Roman literature, particularly to the physical and mathematical sciences; for which he expressed a strong predilection in the second book ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... that if such was their sentiment he was ready to undertake the arduous duties of the station, in which he himself would assist him with the fruits of his experience; that if on the contrary they felt a predilection for his rival, no blood should be shed on his account, the prince and his tutor being resolved in that case to yield the point without a struggle, and retire to some distant island. This impressive appeal had the desired effect, and the young prince was ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... in very handy sometimes as a bedstead. I have known two men to sleep upon it on occasions; its breadth being considerable. For a long time it went by the name of O'Gaygun's four-poster, that gentleman having a predilection for sleeping on it. He is a huge, bony Irishman, and somewhat restless in his sleep. Accordingly, it was no unusual thing for him to roll off the table in the night, and descend upon the floor with ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... which they thought repugnant to the true interest of their country. The new ministers combated in council every such plan, however patronised; they openly opposed in parliament every design which they deemed unworthy of the crown, or prejudicial to the people, even though distinguished by the predilection of the sovereign. Far from bargaining for their places, and surrendering their principles by capitulation, they maintained in office their independency and candour with the most vigilant circumspection, and seemed determined to show, that he is the best minister to the sovereign ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... them with a determined predilection and confidence in exclusion of your English subjects, who placed your family, and, in spite of treachery and rebellion, have supported it upon the throne, is a mistake too gross even for the unsuspecting generosity ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... color of his eyes?" "Black," responded the passenger. "Ah," said Mr. Thompson, referring to some mental memoranda, "Char-les's eyes was blue." He then walked away. Perhaps it was from this unsympathetic mode of inquiry, perhaps it was from that Western predilection to take a humorous view of any principle or sentiment persistently brought before them, that Mr. Thompson's quest was the subject of some satire among the passengers. A gratuitous advertisement of the missing Charles, addressed to "Jailers and Guardians," ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... however, conceive that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence than any tu quoque. Issues that involve the welfare of peoples are far too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments of personal taste and predilection which we follow in inviting a dinner party, or selecting companions for a vacation tour. If a man has abused your brother, or got drunk in the street, you do not ask him to go with you to the Yellowstone Park. ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... characteristics of these Africans; their ferocity in attack, their devouring passion to be in with the bayonet, their predilection for "no quarter." We recall those tales that they themselves willingly tell, all in much the same words and with the same gestures. They raise their arms over their heads—"Kam'rad, Kam'rad!" "Non, pas Kam'rad!" And in pantomime ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse



Words linked to "Predilection" :   acquired taste, liking, predisposition, orientation, penchant, weakness, preference, taste



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