"Prepossession" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but the whole consciousness of an age, though an age doubtless with its differences of more or less imaginative individual minds—with one, here or there, eminent, though but by a little, above a merely receptive majority, the spokesman of a universal, though faintly-felt prepossession, attaching the errant fancies of the people around him to definite names and images. The myth grew up gradually, and at many distant places, in many minds, independent of each other, but dealing in a common temper with ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the author has not elaborated it into a finished work, or done full justice to his talents in its general treatment. We do not agree with Mr. Headley in his notion of Cromwell, and think that his marked prepossession for his hero has unconsciously led him to alter the natural relations of the facts and principles with which he deals; but still we feel bound to give him credit for an extensive study of his subject, and for bringing together numerous interesting details which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... alive, and when I myself went there for the first time, in 1870, he asked me too to hunt them up; but they had all then disappeared. His fondness for the French doubtless accentuated his repugnance to the English, at that time still their traditional enemy. The combination of Irish and French prepossession could scarcely have resulted otherwise; and thus was evolved an atmosphere in which I was brought up, not only passively absorbing, but to a certain degree actively impressed with love for France and the Southern section of the United States, while learning to ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... undressing-room, this prepossession was still further strengthened. Here we found a square hall, well lighted from above, having on three of its sides elevated recesses for the visiters, and on the fourth, the passage from the outer porch to the hall, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... the half-fear, half-expectation of meeting her mischievous smile. Their glances met; to his surprise hers was smileless, and instantly withdrawn, but not until he had been thrilled by an unconscious prepossession in its luminous depths that he scarcely dared to dwell upon. What mattered now this passage with Don Caesar or the plaudits of his friends? ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... such people that the hero of The Money Master, Jean Jacques Barbille, lived. He was the symbol or pattern of their virtues and of their weaknesses. By nature a poet, a philosopher, a farmer and an adventurer, his life was a sacrifice to prepossession and race instinct; to temperament more powerful than logic or common sense, though he was almost professionally ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... party, honestly disapproved Mr. Gladstone's measure. But their party motives and party affiliations gave it no chance of an impartial verdict at their hands. They went into the jury-box with an invincible prepossession against the scheme of their opponents. When all these difficulties are duly considered, and especially when regard is had to those which I have last enumerated, the suddenness with which the new policy was launched, and the fact ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... sent him, at the age of fifteen, to the university of Montpelier. Petrarch remained there for four years, and attended lectures on law from some of the most famous professors of the science. But his prepossession for Cicero prevented him from much frequenting the dry and dusty walks of jurisprudence. In his epistle to posterity, he endeavours to justify this repugnance by other motives. He represents the abuses, the chicanery, and mercenary practices of the law, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... struck with terror, Retire: but look into your past impression! And you will find, though shuddering at the mirror Of your own thoughts, in all their self-confession, The lurking bias,[705] be it truth or error, To the unknown; a secret prepossession, To plunge with all your fears—but where? You know not, And that's the reason why ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... moving up an incline of progressive passions. The love of her father had filled her youth, and that had given way to the love of her mate, which in time would dim before the love of her child. Outside these phases of a governing prepossession—filial, conjugal, maternal—she knew nothing, felt nothing, and ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the obscurer fields of creation, or under extraordinary casualties, though science professes to have no such facts on record. It is here to be remarked, that such facts might often happen, and yet no record be taken of them, for so strong is the prepossession for the doctrine of invariable like-production, that such circumstances, on occurring, would be almost sure to be explained away on some other supposition, or, if presented, would be disbelieved and neglected. Science, therefore, has no such facts, for the very same reason that some small ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... have just read; it is published six days before the trial, so that an unimpassioned, unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and to form its opinions accordingly, and to go into court with a happy, just prepossession against ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my infancy, considered by the sailor as a promising genius, because I liked punch better than wine; and I took care to improve this prepossession by continual inquiries about the art of navigation, the degree of heat and cold in different climates, the profits of trade, and the dangers of shipwreck. I admired the courage of the seamen, and gained his heart by importuning him for a recital ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... men are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist, though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. Even the animal creation ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... of the elect. Perhaps it was this quality of the petite in her which appealed to him—for a little man cannot endure to be laughed at for his size, even in secret—or perhaps it was only the intuitive response to a something which in his prepossession he only vaguely sensed, but Rufus Hardy felt his heart go out to her in a moment and his voice sank once more to the caressing fulness which she most ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... these various problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... marked by all the old Covenanters' directness, and in spite of her prepossession in Nora Costello's favor, showed clearly that she looked upon her as an extremist, if not ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... claimed as an integral part of "the book of religion"—the title which Matthew Arnold asserts for the entire Bible. The phrase can scarcely be applied to the Old Testament, unless it be read through a medium surcharged with association and prepossession. Much of its morality has been outgrown; many of its early stories are revolting to us: much, of which the inner meaning is at one with our deepest life, is disguised under phraseology wholly alien to our modern thought and speech. As a manual of devotion, or as a textbook for ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... which laid down his views on foreign affairs. "Our true alliance," he had told them, "is not with the Latin peoples, but with men who speak our tongue, with our brothers in America, and with our kinsmen in Germany and Scandinavia." This prepossession, notable in one who came afterwards to be regarded as the closest friend of France among English politicians, shaped his action when the crash came. It tempted him to the German side, but contact with Prussian militarism showed where his real ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... too much Thomas Carlyle, I venture to caution you against that tremendous individual. He is subduing your genius to his own special humors; he is alloying your mental activity, to a fearful degree, with dogmatic prepossession; he is making you an intellectual routinier, causing thereby an infiltration of that impurity of which all routine at last dies. For years we that love you most have seen that you were ceasing more and more to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... parties to lay aside prejudice and prepossession, and examine with us this most important social ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... less easily converted from the original prejudice—or prepossession. So am I. I have learned to place the utmost confidence in the first impression. In my own case it is invariably correct, and if for any reason whatever I suffer any later characterization to take its place, I am ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... was meted out to Job by his so-called friends was measured to the servant, and at the Impulse of the same heartless doctrinal prepossession. He must have been had to suffer so much; that is the rough and ready verdict of the self-righteous. With crashing emphasis, that complacent explanation of the Servant's sufferings and their own prosperity is shivered to atoms, by the statement of the true reason for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... they now stand. The question will, no doubt, present itself, Is the end worth the cost? That question can, of course, not be answered in absolute terms, inasmuch as it resolves itself into a question of taste and prepossession. An answer to it would also not be greatly to the purpose here, since it would have no particular bearing on the course of action likely to be pursued by these pacific nations in their quest of a settled peace. It is more to the point to ask what is likely to be the practical ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... doubt be made for early prepossession. But at a maturer period of life, after looking at various metrical versions of the Psalms, I am well satisfied that the version used in Scotland is, upon the whole, the best; and that it has in general a simplicity and unction ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... had something of the amateur about it, was in itself of the greatest importance. For, from not being, till he took up any point, familiar with the literature bearing on it, his mind was absolutely free from any prepossession. He was never afraid of his facts, or of framing any hypothesis, however startling, which seemed to explain them...In any one else such an attitude would have produced much work that was crude and rash. But Mr. Darwin—if one may venture on language which will strike no one who had conversed ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... had seen him, there beside the pool, she definitely had liked him; while they had delved into the mysteries of the alphabet upon the log his patient, willing, helpful kindness had increased her prepossession in his favor. It was only when, after disaster had so swiftly, so unexpectedly, descended on them and she had compared his body, made apparently more slender in comparison to the rude-limbed mountaineers she knew than it was really by tight-fitting knickerbockers and golf-stockings and its well-cut ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... consecrated in the annals of their story. Our Shakespeare was, I think, the first that broke through this bondage of classical superstition. And he owed this felicity, as he did some others, to his want of what is called the advantage of a learned education. Thus uninfluenced by the weight of early prepossession, he struck at once into the road of nature and common sense: and without designing, without knowing it, hath left us in his historical plays, with all their anomalies, an exacter resemblance of the Athenian stage, than ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... very lucky cheat for me, Sir Jacob; for it gave you a prepossession in my favour under so advantageous a character, that I could never have ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... for love is not love. It is only a prepossession, pleasant and profitable, promising many every-day advantages. True love is a deep and elemental thing, a secret incredible glory, in a way, it is even a spiritual triumph. And we should have another name for love like this. For it is the long, ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... cultivated, received the simplicity, yet depth, of his inquiries, as he came among them day after day, utilising all their lore, and yet continually asking what they neither knew nor suspected the drift of. He began his study with a prepossession against the idea of the immense diversity of modern pigeons having originated from one common stock. Yet if such modification has taken place in any creature, pigeons may furnish an example, for they have been kept and bred for thousands of years, being recorded in Egypt about 3000 B.C., and ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... nineteenth year, and was, as we have said, a gentle, timid, shrinking girl. Though she did not encourage, she would not reject the attentions of the polite and elegant stranger, who had so much that was agreeable to say that she insensibly acquired a kind of prepossession ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... mentioned in the Introduction, was to be found in the general disfavor with which American pacifist tendencies were regarded in Germany. Nine-tenths of the American nation are pacifists, either through their education and sentimental prepossession in favor of the principle, or out of a sense of commercial expediency. People in the United States did not understand that the German people, owing to their tragic history, are compelled to cultivate and to uphold the martial spirit of their ancestors. The types of the German ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... on the subject, and they make everything answer, in reason's spite, to their favourite theory. In addition to the difficulty of explaining customs and manners foreign to our own, there are all the obstacles of wilful prepossession thrown in the way. It is not, therefore, much to be wondered at that nations have arrived at so little knowledge of one another's characters; and that, where the object has been to widen the breach between them, any slight differences that occur are ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... is to receive instruction with a willing and a humble mind! In attending to your discourse I feel myself in the healthy state of a pupil, when without one hostile or contrarient prepossession, he listens to a teacher in whom he has entire confidence. And I feel also how much better it is that the authority of elder and wiser intellects should pass even for more than it is worth, than that it should be undervalued as in these days, and set at nought. When any person ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... seemed suddenly to leap up to his with that strange look of awakening and enthusiasm which he had noted before. And in its complete prepossession of all her instincts she rose from the bed, unheeding her bared arms and shoulders and loosened hair, and stood upright before him. For an instant husband and wife regarded each other as unreservedly as in their own chamber ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... no preconception or prepossession of his own was suffered to bar his way to the final truth he was seeking, and he joyously renounced even a conclusion if he found it mistaken. I do not know whether Mrs. Agassiz has put into her interesting life of him, a delightful story which she told me about him. He came to her beaming ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of an historian of the highest order. A clear and comprehensive vision, a wide knowledge and careful study of human nature, free and generous sympathies are united in him with a penetrative imagination which vivifies the life of past times, with a reverence for truth which excludes prejudice and prepossession, and with a profoundly religious spirit. The tone of his thought is manly and vigorous, and his style, with the beauty of which the readers of his essays have long been familiar, is marked by quiet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... interesting in her appearance, and, I assure you, Louisa, I am quite disposed to think favourably of her; but we shall have an opportunity of seeing more of her, probably, and then we can form a more decided opinion of her character. There is always danger in giving way to a sudden prepossession in favour ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... we have taken care—and this, I think, ought to be set down to our credit—that every estimate for every item included in the programme shall be submitted to vigilant scrutiny here as well as in India. I have no prepossession in favour of military expenditure, but the pressure of facts, the pressure of the situation, the possibilities of contingencies that may arise, seem obviously to make it impossible for any Government or any Minister to acquiesce in the risks on the Indian frontier. We have ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... birth, the servant of a genuine poetic interest, a kind of vivification of nature. Played upon by those accidents of language, the Greek mind becomes possessed by the conception of nature as living, thinking, almost speaking to the mind of man. This unfixed poetical prepossession, reduced to an abstract form, petrified into an idea, is the conception which gives a unity of aim to Greek philosophy. Step by step it works out the substance of the Hegelian formula: 'Was ist, das ist vernuenftig; ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... moment. I suppose mine was affected by the mist and rain which graced the capital of Piedmont on the morning of my arrival there. Another incident, microscopic, and almost too ludicrous to mention, had no less its weight in the scale of prepossession. I was tired and hungry, and, while the diligence was being unloaded, I entered a caffe close by, and called for some buttered toast. My hair (I had plenty at that time) stood on end at the answer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... exhibition and expressed dislike for the artist's prepossession with form, and for the savage models he ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... authorizing the Executive to take forcible possession of Florida and of Galveston in the event of Spain refusing to satisfy the reasonable demands made upon her. Now, stimulated by indignant feeling, his prepossession in favor of vigorous action was greatly strengthened, and his counsel was that the United States should prepare at once to take and hold the disputed territory, and indeed some undisputed Spanish ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... doing at five o'clock last Tuesday afternoon. Nobody whose life does not run in mechanical grooves can do anything of the sort; unless, of course, the facts have been very impressive. But this by the way. The great obstacle to veracious observation is the element of prepossession in all vision. Has it ever struck you, sir, that we never see anyone more than once, if that? The first time we meet a man we may possibly see him as he is; the second time our vision is colored and ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... two kings for its associates in the triple alliance, it affected in some sort to put itself at their head so as to do all the speaking, and that it was willing to become the seat of all the manoeuvres that were going on against France, which was very likely to render it suspected of some prepossession in favor of Spain." John Van Witt defended his country with dignified modesty. "I know not whether to regard as a blessing or a curse," said he, "the incidents which have for several years past brought it ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Chair certainly sat up. "Stay not a moment, Howadji," we exclaimed, "in removing our deep-seated prepossession that New York is the most expensive place on ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... lines we can perceive not one of those higher attributes of Poesy which belong to her in all circumstances and throughout all time. Here every thing is art, nakedly, or but awkwardly concealed. No prepossession for the mere antique (and in this case we can imagine no other prepossession) should induce us to dignify with the sacred name of poetry, a series, such as this, of elaborate and threadbare compliments, stitched, apparently, together, without fancy, without plausibility, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... counsel or to do some act', it is clear that the fact of the Devil's bodily presence at the meetings had to be proved first, then the fact of the 'conference', and finally the attempts at murder. The reports of the trial do not, however, differentiate these points in any way, and the religious prepossession of the recorders colours every account. It is therefore necessary to take the facts without the construction put upon them by the natural bias of the Christian judges and writers. The records give in some detail ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... Singular prepossession of a man of genius, who does not see that to COMPARE, to APPRAISE, to APPRECIATE, is to MEASURE; that every measure, being only a comparison, indicates for that very reason a true relation, provided the comparison is accurate; that, consequently, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... time before Pembroke could shake this prepossession of a sincere humility from Miss Beaufort's mind. But after having set in every possible light the terms with which his friend had spoken of her, he at length convinced her of what her heart so earnestly wished to believe—that the love of Sobieski ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... after all, though she would never know it, whom he loved best in the world. He had wanted to save her, in the one worldly way of saving her, from open shipwreck, for her own sake, against every prejudice and prepossession of his mind. But if she would not have that, why it was his business to save her as she wished, to do for her whatever she wanted; to act as her agent, her ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... said. "I don't think Peter could quite afford the amount of ground he has bought, and the house he is building. I think possibly he is tying himself up in obligations. It may take him two or three years to come even on it; but it is a prepossession with him. Now can't you see that if we go to him and tell him this sordid, underhand, unmanly tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt, how his big heart is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is building with such ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... framed from my writings, and which I shall easily crumble into dust, but the bias of the court. It is the state of the atmosphere; it is the vibration all around, which will echo his bold assertion of my dishonesty; it is that prepossession against me, which takes it for granted that, when my reasoning is convincing it is only ingenious, and that when my statements are unanswerable, there is always something put out of sight or hidden in my sleeve; it is that plausible, but cruel conclusion ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... have witnessed, I have still a trace of doubt—doubt which is weak, indeed, to-day, but which may, perchance, be stronger to-morrow. Yet such doubts, if they come, will not be due so much to any defect in the actual experiment as to the inexorable strength of prepossession which holds me back from adopting a conclusion which contravenes the habitual and almost unanimous opinion ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... madly in love, and that her passion was not sufficiently romantic; in which piece of folly my rebel encouraged her, and the affair broke off in a manner which has brought on her the imputation of having given way to an idle prepossession ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... special occasion," said Mr. Philip, with so genial an expression that she stared up at him, her eyebrows knit and her mouth puckering back a smile, her deep hopeful prepossession, which she held in common with all young people, that things really happened prettily, making her ready to believe that it was all a mistake and he was about to announce a treat or a promotion. And he, reading this ridiculous sign of youth, bent over her, prolonging his kind beam and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... community: For, the French pretending their Indiamen to be men of war, their officers were apprehensive that any distinction granted to Mr Anson, on account of his bearing the king's commission, would render them less considerable in the eyes of the Chinese, and would establish a prepossession at Canton in favour of ships of war, by which they, as trading vessels, would suffer in their importance: And I wish the affectation of endeavouring to pass for men of war, and the fear of sinking in the estimation of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... thought well of my services; and if I have imagined that a majority has been prejudiced against me, I have formed that conclusion merely from the effects which I have seen and experienced, and not from any undue prepossession against particular individuals, whether Brazilian or Portuguese. But when your excellency adds that those transactions between the late minister and myself, which, owing to their having been conducted verbally, have been ill-understood, have invariably been ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... may turn out so!' repeated Jasper. 'You know—and Mr. Grewgious should now know likewise—that I took a great prepossession against Mr. Neville Landless, arising out of his furious conduct on that first occasion. You know that I came to you, extremely apprehensive, on my dear boy's behalf, of his mad violence. You know that I even entered in my Diary, and showed the entry to you, that I ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... wealth and honours: notwithstanding the prepossession of the court in favour of this Italian architect, notwithstanding his talents, he did not succeed in his enterprise. After having forwarded the foundation of this edifice, he made a pretext of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Falkland bestowed on her in return, appeared sufficiently encouraging to a mind so full of prepossession as that of Emily. There was a particular complacency in his looks when directed towards her. He had said in a company, of which one of the persons present repeated his remarks to Miss Melville, that she appeared to him amiable and interesting; that he felt for her unprovided and destitute ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Frazier who had been permitted to go to the village this morning returned with a pasel of Roots and bread which he had purchased. brass buttons is an article of which these people are tolerably fond, the men have taken advantage of their prepossession in favour of buttons and have devested themselves of all they had in possesson which they have given in exchange ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... which, in matters of the greatest moment are hardly shook off: and which we only think true, because we were made to believe so, before we were capable to distinguish between truth and falsehood. But there was one prepossession which I confess to have parted with, much to my regret: I mean the opinion of that native honesty and simplicity of manners, which I had always imagined to be inherent in country-people. I soon observed it was with them and us, as they say of animals; That ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Burnes on a nominally commercial mission, which, in fact, was one of political discovery, but without definite instructions. Burnes, an able but rash and ambitious man, reached Cabul in September 1837, two months before the Persian army began the siege of Herat. He had a strong prepossession in favour of the Dost, whose guest he had already been in 1832, and the policy he favoured was not the revival of the legitimate dynasty in the person of Shah Soojah, but the attachment of Dost Mahomed to British interests by strengthening his throne ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... brought forward by investigators who judge a priori, without acquaintance with the facts, upon uncertain theoretical grounds and with prepossession against ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... honourable expansion, should not have imputed it, as I was apt to do, to unseasonable insult for my tenderness to you, on one hand; to perverse nicety, on the other; or to (what I was most alarmed by, and concerned for) prepossession for some other person: And this would have saved us both much fatigue, I of ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... harmful. The most important of these is that which regards Bach as having had a higher idea of his art than later composers had, and of having intended to illustrate in his works a very high degree of skill, contrapuntal cleverness, and the like. This prepossession is included in the phrase which describes all serious music as "classical," as contradistinguished from that which is ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... whole investigation. Nature had been proved a figment of human imagination so that, once rid of all but a mock allegiance to her facts and laws, we might be free to invent any world we chose and believe it to be absolutely real and independent of our nature. Strange prepossession, that while part of human life and mind was to be an avenue to reality and to put men in relation to external and eternal things, the whole of human life and mind should not be able to do so! Conceptions rooted ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... writers have usually placed it. The question, that is, has usually presented itself to them as one concerning the relative strength of the impulse in men and women. When so considered, not hastily and with prepossession, as is too often the case, but with a genuine desire to get at the real facts in all their aspects, there is no reason, as we have seen, to conclude that, on the whole, the sexual impulse in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... other hand, there was a prepossession, quite as unreasoning, for Hallock. There was absolutely nothing in the chief clerk to inspire liking, or even common business confidence; on the contrary, while Hallock attended to his duties and carried out his superior's instructions with the exactness of an automaton, ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... tormenting doubt and suspense, till the morning arrived, and tidings were received that Wiatte had been killed in the streets. This event was antecedent to that which had occasioned Mrs. Lorimer's distress and alarm. I now remembered that fatal prepossession by which the lady was governed, and her frantic belief that her death and that of her brother were to fall out at the same time. Could some witness of his death have brought her tidings of it? Had he penetrated, unexpected and unlicensed, to her chamber? and were these ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... What prepossession, what blindness, must it be to compare the son of Sophroniscus to the Son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there is between them! Socrates, dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... the Devil, by means of their dress and equipage, soon found admittance at court. Faustus regarded the Prince with the eyes of a man whose heart was already prepossessed in his favour; and to carry this prepossession even to conviction, nothing more was necessary than the noble exterior of the Prince himself. He was, or appeared to be, frank and open; endeavoured to please and to win all hearts without appearing to do so; was familiar without laying aside his dignity, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... thoughts and his sophistical arguments.... He opens his mouth only to contradict. 'It seems to me,' he gracefully says, 'that the truth is exactly the contrary of what you say,' or 'I cannot agree with your opinion,' or even 'that used to be my prepossession, as it is ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... little while he thought confusedly of the collapse of his expedition into the secret places of his own heart with Dr. Martineau, and then his prepossession with Miss Grammont resumed possession of his mind. Dr. Martineau ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... wildness in his look, and he several times struck his head with his hand. After conversing with Junot about a quarter of an hour he quitted him and came towards me. I never saw him exhibit such an air of dissatisfaction, or appear so much under the influence of some prepossession. I advanced towards him, and as soon as we met, he exclaimed in an abrupt and angry tone, "So! I find I cannot depend upon you.—These women!—Josephine! —if you had loved me, you would before now have told me all I have heard from Junot—he is a real friend—Josephine!—and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... seating himself by her again, "is it possible you don't see that what happened yesterday has altered the whole position of things? What infatuation is it, what obstinate prepossession, that blinds you to that? It is too late to say what we might have done or what we ought to have done. Admitting the very worst view of what has been done, it is a fact we must act on now; our position is altered; the right course is no longer what it was before. We must accept ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... clasped behind his back and his eye taking in, as it seemed at a glance, everything that was going forward, he struck me as the beau-ideal of a naval officer. I took a strong liking to him on the spot, an instinctive prepossession which was afterwards abundantly justified, for Mr Austin—that was his name—proved to be one of the best officers it has ever been my good ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... regard, perhaps compassion. She could not help thinking much of the extraordinary circumstances attending their acquaintance, of the right which he seemed to have to interest her, by everything in situation, by his own sentiments, by his early prepossession. It was altogether very extraordinary; flattering, but painful. There was much to regret. How she might have felt had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth; and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... you did not reason about him, and read about him only when you were compelled. When you heard the gospel stories read in church, or learnt them from painters and poets, you came out with an impression of their contents that would have astonished a Chinaman who had read the story without prepossession. Even sceptics who were specially on their guard, put the Bible in the dock, and read the gospels with the object of detecting discrepancies in the four narratives to show that the writers were as subject to error as ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Andrea's prepossession for Marianna was crossed by the captivating charm which Gambara could not fail to exert over every genuine artist. The composer was now forty; but although his high brow was bald and lined with a few parallel, but not deep, wrinkles; in spite, too, of hollow temples where the blue veins showed through ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... disadvantage: they lose in one way what they gain in another; and although many of them become eminent in public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers who enter the arena, become great. They are respected, heard, and admired, by virtue of a class-prepossession in their favour; yet, after all, they must select from the ranks of the aristocracy of talent their firmest and best supporters, to whom they may delegate the heavy responsibilities of business, and lift from their own shoulders the burden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... by her manner, and observing her with a watchful eye as she coquetted with his friend, he speedily came to the conclusion that St. George was right in his estimate of her character at least, although he now seemed to be flattered and amused by her evident prepossession ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... of these methods in the examination of the literary evidence on which miracles are believed. The first, the prepossession concerning the philosophical impossibility of miracles, is seen in Spinoza; the second, the impossibility of using testimony as a proof of them, in Hume; the third, the question whether they were attested by eyewitnesses, is the ground ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... then, that in conferring honours and offices, the people, when it has no knowledge of a man from his public career, follows the estimate given of him by the general voice, and by common report; or else is guided by some prepossession or preconceived opinion which it has adopted concerning him. Such impressions are formed either from consideration of a man's descent (it being assumed, until the contrary appears, that where his ancestors have been great and distinguished citizens their descendant will resemble ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... construction. Even in the adult, they are very frequent. I know a person who is always afraid of being smothered, and for this reason urgently asks that in his coffin his shirt be not tight at the neck: this odd prepossession of the mind belongs neither to memory nor to imagination. This particular case illustrates in a very clear form the nature of the first flights of the mind attempting to exercise its imaginative powers. Without enumerating other facts of this kind, it is more desirable to follow ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... expected not to see a countenance so intelligent, nor manners so well formed as those of Cecilia: thus mutually astonished and mutually pleased, their first salutations were accompanied by looks so flattering to both, that each saw in the other, an immediate prepossession in her favour, and from the moment that they met, they seemed instinctively ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... air hissed briskly in the pinnacles, and roared through the belfry windows beneath. I cannot describe the eager exhilaration which filled me; but I guessed that the impulse which bids men fling themselves from such heights is not a morbid prepossession, not a physical dizziness, but an intemperate and overwhelming joy. It seems at such a moment so easy to float and swim through the viewless air, as if one would be borne up ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... there was a resemblance, she thought, to some one she knew and was attached to. It could not be to her father, she said to herself, and yet her father's face recurred to her mind more frequently than any other when she thought of that of the young man she had seen; and from that fact a sort of prepossession in the youth's favor took possession of her, making her long to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... natives, who seem to make up the total population of the place. They were creatures possessed of scarcely any intelligence, and quite destitute of curiosity about objects that they had not seen before. Neither did their appearance lead to the slightest prepossession in their favour. They wore no vestige of clothing; their skin was black and their hair woolly; and the partition of the nostrils had a sharp bone thrust through by way of ornament. The only object that they showed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... his deep attachment to me long before he forced my name upon papa with such apparent insolence. If papa could see these proofs with a woman's interest, he would have a full apology in them. Here, too, is the bird that sings my name. What strength of prepossession the master must have had to make the feathered pupil repeat the sound of 'Vesta,' and call me 'sweet!' What resources, too, without the use of money or social aids! He knows the story of our English beginning, while we make it an idle boast; but to him Cromwell ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... those little arts and graces which distinguish men of the world from boors and peasants, and separate their character from those intensely vulgar sentiments which are called the national character. Apart from any natural prepossession in my own favour, I believed I was. Still, in every page of this enlightened writer, I find some captivating hypocrisy which has never occurred to me before, or some superlative piece of selfishness to which I was utterly a stranger. I should quite ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... at least to have stopped there, but hurried away by an implacable resentment, he accused her, or caused her to be accused by Conde, of having wished to betray his interests to serve those of the Duke de Nemours, giving her even to understand that "if a like prepossession took her for another, she was capable of going to the same extremities if that person desired it."[2] The accusation is yet more absurd than odious. The Duke de Nemours was not the least in the world a party chief; he was a friend of Conde, whose fidelity could only be shaken through ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... strong prepossession in favour of Sir Raffle, in spite of his praise of John Eames. The harsh voice of the man annoyed her, and his egotism offended her. When, much later in the evening, his character came on for discussion between herself and Mrs ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... can have thought of him. You are not a girl to expose yourself to the ridicule, &c., of all your female acquaintance by romance and nonsense. I cannot conceive that a niece of mine could degrade herself by a mean prepossession for a man who has never made any declaration of his attachment to her, and who, I am sure, feels no such attachment. That you may not deceive yourself, it is fit I should tell you, what otherwise it might not be so ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... temper, lucidity, courage, and serenity were equally blended. In his criticism of books, as in his criticism of life, he aimed first at Lucidity—at that clear light, uncoloured by prepossession, which should enable him to see things as they really are. In a word, he judged for himself; and, however much his judgment might run counter to prejudice or tradition, he dared to enounce it and persist ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... has been possible for man, under the prepossession of a mistaken philosophical theory, to assume the whole brute creation to be without consciousness. When Descartes had learned something of the mechanism of the human body, and had placed the human soul—hospes comesque corporis—in ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... is ridiculously unnatural, and outrages our knowledge of life; men are much more apt to criticize than to praise the absent; but it shows a prepossession on Shakespeare's part in favour of Posthumus which can only be explained by the fact that in Posthumus he was depicting himself. Every word is significant to us, for Shakespeare evidently tells us here what ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... farmer, when their very first essay turns to so good account? Seriously, I am quite pleased with the success of mystery, and infinitely obliged to you for the kind things you say about my picture. You must thank Mrs. Whetenhall, too, for her prepossession about my cheeses: I fear a real manufacturer of milk at Strawberry Hill would not have answered quite so well as our old ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the abnegation of blood that constitutes the priest, as is brought out with great emphasis. He must act for Jehovah's sake as if he had neither father nor mother, neither brethren nor children. Blind prepossession in people's conceptions of Judaism has hitherto prevented the understanding of these words, but they are thoroughly unambiguous. What they say is, that in consecrating himself to the service of Jehovah a man abandons his natural relationships, and severs ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... stuff. I doubt that it will ever be studied for its style in our new Schools of Literature; a devilish cunning if often there, but it leaves a smack of the pharmacopoeia. However, as George Gissing used to say, "the artist should be free from everything like moral prepossession." This lets in ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... still more ancient standing law of the kingdom. In the matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors appear to be in the right; perhaps not always: but if the lawyers mistake in some particulars, it proves my position still the more strongly; because it demonstrates the powerful prepossession towards antiquity with which the minds of all our lawyers and legislators, and of all the people whom they wish to influence, have been always filled, and the stationary policy of this kingdom in considering their most sacred rights and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... one of those difficult situations, in which prepossession, being compelled to fluctuate in uncertainty between several points at once, has no sooner determined and fixed upon one side, than it removes and gets ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... given by spectators of the events of that night are extremely interesting. Many, no doubt, went there with a prepossession, raised by the unfavourable reports of her personal appearance; and if lofty stature were indispensibly necessary to a heroine, no external appearance could be much less calculated to personify a Thalestris than Miss Brunton's—but the mighty mind soon made itself to be felt, and every ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... me by this assurance! It encourages me to indulge my prepossession in his favour; and you know not with what pain I should have repressed the sentiment! Ah! dearest Aunt, entreat my Mother to choose ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Barry ill-naturedly endeavoured to damp his enthusiasm. Whenever Marie Antoinette was the topic, she pointed out the irregularity of her features, criticised the 'bons mots' quoted as hers, and rallied the King upon his prepossession in her favour. Madame du Barry was affronted at not receiving from the Dauphiness those attentions to which she thought herself entitled; she did not conceal her vexation from the King; she was afraid that the grace and cheerfulness ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... by a few preliminary remarks to clear the ground. First of all, there is one ridiculous objection which I quote only to record. I mean that which suspects at the bottom of the theories which we are going to discuss some dark background, some prepossession of irrational mysticism. On the contrary, the truth is, we have here perhaps better than anywhere, the spectacle of pure thought face to face with things. But it is a complete thought, not thought reduced to some partial functions, but sufficiently sure of its critical ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... the corner of his eye, and the gem-like lustre of his blue orbs revealed a freshness of soul and an eternal youth such as fable grants to the sea-gods. He displayed his bare arms and muscular neck with an old man's vanity. Never had a gloomy idea, an evil prepossession, or a keen remorse, arisen to disturb his long and peaceful life. He had never seen a tear flow near him without hurrying to wipe it; poor though he was, he had succeeded in pouring out benefits that all the kings of the earth could not have bought with ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... there find should derive a weight from your name to which they are by no means intrinsically entitled. I will therefore examine what you have advanced, from a hope of being able to do away any impression left on the minds of such as may be liable to confound with argument a strong prepossession for your Lordship's talents, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... mention purely to obviate the prepossession of the art being so frivolous, so unworthy of the attention of the manly and grave, as it is vulgarly, or on a superficial view, imagined. It is not high notions of it that I am so weak as to aim at impressing; all that I wish is to give just ones: it being perhaps as little ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... truth, this was no casual display got up for effect, but the common routine of an establishment conducted with prudent foresight, for the profit of its owners as well as the comfort of our people. And yet, such was the fanatical prepossession of these Englishmen, whose idea of Spanish factories and barracoons was formed exclusively from exaggerated reports, that I could not satisfy them of my truth till I produced our journal, in which I noted minutely ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... between the orator and the audience is expressed in what is called the pertinence of the speaker. There is always a rivalry between the orator and the occasion, between the demands of the hour and the prepossession of the individual. The emergency which has convened the meeting is usually of more importance than anything the debaters have in their minds, and therefore becomes imperative to them. But if one of them have anything of commanding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... fluent talker, to her. It was, of course, scarcely to be wondered at that this handsome, capable girl should call forth any man's admiration. Gifford himself was indeed beginning to fall desperately in love with her, but this naturally made Henshaw's rather obvious prepossession none the less disagreeable to him. This, then, he reflected, was the explanation of what Miss Morriston had hinted at, what she had described as his objectionable excess of politeness at their meeting that morning. Happily, however, Gifford ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... be able to satisfy you of the insufficiency of them. In either case, I hope we shall put an end to those irregularities which ever will be the portion of a government where the supreme authority is controverted." In this roundabout way, Governor Hutchinson finally reached as a conclusion the prepossession with which he began; namely, that whereas a disturbed state of government is, ex hypothesi, a vital evil, assertions or denials which tend to cause the ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... eyes might be opened to the Word's witness, and his mind illumined; then he set about a systematic examination of the New Testament from beginning to end. So far as possible he sought absolutely to rid himself of all bias of previous opinion or practice, prepossession or prejudice; he prayed and endeavoured to be free from the influence of human tradition, popular custom, and churchly sanction, or that more subtle hindrance, personal pride in his own consistency. He was humble enough to be willing ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... made me amends in some measure for this loss. He seemed to be an exceedingly good-tempered and intelligent man; and I felt in this short time a prepossession in his favour one does not easily form for an ordinary person. This, I flattered myself, was also the case with him, and it would mortify me not a little to think he had quite forgotten me, as I am sure ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... A curious prepossession of the African mind, curious and yet general, in a land where population is the one want, and where issue is held the greatest blessing, is the imaginary necessity of limiting the family. Perhaps this form of infanticide is a policy ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... first who was taken with him: Miss Hyde seemed to be following the steps of her mistress: this immediately brought him into credit, and his reputation was established in England before his arrival. Prepossession in the minds of women is sufficient to find access to their hearts: Jermyn found them in dispositions so favourable for him, that he had nothing ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... in a Country where the Religion of Suesi is directed by the Pepa, who stiles himself the Sovereign Arbitrator of it, had imbibed a strong Prepossession for what in the Kingdom of the Kofirans is called Bigotry, or misplaced Devotion. The Customs and religious Notions of this Nation, which were more free and rational than in the Country of this Princess, had been a Constraint upon her Inclination, without lessening ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... longed for an opportunity to atone for his past unkindness, and to testify his present gratitude; moreover, he felt at once indignant at, and ashamed of, his late conduct in joining the popular, and, as he now fully believed, the causeless prepossession against his young friend, and before a more present and a stronger sentiment his habitual deference for his brother's counsels faded easily away. Coupled with these favourable feelings towards Clifford were his sagacious suspicions, or rather certainty, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... injudicious, and many write under the bias of party prejudice, which strangely perverts the judgment. By this, James Basnage could, in his History of the Jews, (b. 6,) notoriously mistake and misrepresent, by wholesale, the clearest authorities, to gratify his prepossession against an incontestable miracle, as the most learned Mr. Warburton hath demonstrated in his Julian, (b. 2, ch. 4.) Some write history as they would a tragedy or a romance; and, seeking at any rate to please the reader, or display their art, often ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... restraining the council's jurisdiction, and the strong prepossession of the people as to the sacredness of freehold rights, made the Star-chamber cautious of determining questions of inheritance, which they commonly remitted to the judges; and from the early part of Elizabeth's reign they took ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various |
